Here at least in Portland, we sort of differentiate between people who live in the houses they own, versus people or companies who own property for speculation/rent collection. Most of the homeowners I know are simply happy to finally own a place they live in and stop paying rent.
It's still somewhat possible here; for example, last month, a friend who's a 42 year old bartender and just had a baby finally bought a house only about 30 blocks east (east is cheaper); if he'd had enough money for a down payment 5 years ago we would be living on the same block. I make about twice as much as he does. I want him to be living on my block. That's the kind of city that I want to live in, that's why people want to live in Portland in the first place. That's why I decided to buy my house here.
Airbnb is extremely corrosive to a "working city" environment where people of different social / income classes are able to live and work in the same neighborhoods, because it encourages petit homeowners like me to take a paycheck to abandon our properties so the hoteliers extract rent. Yet it's exactly the mixture of working class life which made Airbnb's most attractive tourist cities like Madrid and Lisbon, Portland and Amsterdam so popular with tourists.
IMHO Airbnb is a blight for landlords and renters and there's a very good argument to be made that no property outside a city-bonded hotel should be rented for less than 3-6 months. I said this about taxis not being driven by civilians back when I was a cab driver and Uber showed up, so, I can see I'm on the wrong side of history...
It's still somewhat possible here; for example, last month, a friend who's a 42 year old bartender and just had a baby finally bought a house only about 30 blocks east (east is cheaper); if he'd had enough money for a down payment 5 years ago we would be living on the same block. I make about twice as much as he does. I want him to be living on my block. That's the kind of city that I want to live in, that's why people want to live in Portland in the first place. That's why I decided to buy my house here.
Airbnb is extremely corrosive to a "working city" environment where people of different social / income classes are able to live and work in the same neighborhoods, because it encourages petit homeowners like me to take a paycheck to abandon our properties so the hoteliers extract rent. Yet it's exactly the mixture of working class life which made Airbnb's most attractive tourist cities like Madrid and Lisbon, Portland and Amsterdam so popular with tourists.
IMHO Airbnb is a blight for landlords and renters and there's a very good argument to be made that no property outside a city-bonded hotel should be rented for less than 3-6 months. I said this about taxis not being driven by civilians back when I was a cab driver and Uber showed up, so, I can see I'm on the wrong side of history...