A critique of Brave Little State's segment on Airbnbs

Submitted by headgasketidiot t3_120mve1 in vermont

I normally quite like /u/bravestatevt, but I have some big issues with this one, mostly with their interpretation and framing, though I do have one of fact.

The piece starts with 2 stories; one about someone who once lived on a wonderful little street that lost their house to Airbnb, and the other of a small town conflict Airbnb is causing. I think those were nicely reported, but I will come back to this later.

Here's where they get to the stats:

>We can’t assume these results would be consistent across the whole state. But statewide data suggests most short-term rental operators are small-scale, rather than people with Airbnb empires. According to Transparent, a vacation rental data company, 93% of short-term rental owners in Vermont operated just one or two listings in January 2023. On the flip side, the other 7% of owners with more than two listings accounted for almost half of all listings in the state.

>So, there’s a small number of owners who have an outsized impact on Vermont’s short-term rental landscape. And, therefore, an outsized impact on the narrative about short-term rental owners.

This is a bizarre framing. Let me reframe it: 50% of STRs are owned by just 7% of owners, which gives them an outsized impact not just on the narrative about short-term rental owners, which isn't really what we care about, but on the actual economics of STRs and therefore on the impact of STRs on housing, whatever it may be.

They go on to talk about how people need the STRs to afford where they live:

>The survey found that short-term rentals are helping many residents afford to live there.

>"One of the most interesting questions in the survey was the question of 'what do you do with the income?'" Emily says.

>Forty-two percent of respondents said they use the income to supplement the cost of living in Lamoille County. Thirty-nine percent said they use the income for insurance, medical costs or automotive costs.

>“I really had no idea that this many people were using short term rentals to be able to afford to live in the community,” Emily Rosenbaum says. “And I thought it was a really important thing, because that is not the narrative we hear.”

Let me reframe this, with the opening stories of the episode in mind. Our economic situation is such that middle class folks have turned to mining our communities to stay afloat. This isn't a story about how Airbnb is providing an important lifeline for people; it's one of decades of policy failure that has resulted in people desperate to hold on carving up their own communities, and the conflict that causes, which they reported on so nicely at the beginning. That people are willing to hold on to that lifeline despite how obviously negatively it affects their friends actually kinda sucks, especially when you consider that that lifeline only accounts for 50% of Airbnbs. The other 50% are owned by large companies. That's a lot of overhead for a very small lifeline.

The piece goes on to interview Julie Marks, the founder of the Vermont Short-Term Rental Alliance. I won't bother with that one.

Then, they interview Leslie Black-Plumeau with the Vermont Housing Finance Agency:

>Remember, Vermont has around 10,000 short-term rentals right now that take up an entire home. But Leslie’s focused on a different number. The estimate that Vermont needs to add 30 to 40,000 more year-round homes to make up for years of underbuilding, and to keep up with growing demand of people who want to live here. [emphasis added]

That bolded piece contains an implied factual claim, and VPR should have provided context if not an outright fact check. I think this is very important because it has become an obviously accepted truth that people are moving here in droves, and while that is kinda true on the scale of previous net migration, it is absolutely not true on the kinds of scales people normally talk about population.In other words, Vermont saw an "explosion" of migration in 2020, but that's only when compared to our usual population growth, which is basically flat and has been for decades. Here's some numbers from the census.

Vermont's population has grown just 5.6% since 2000. From the census, the population is now 645,570. In 2000, it was 609,618.

(645,570 - 609,618) / 645,570 = 5.6%

Compare that to the US's rate of 15%.

Our population growth in the last year, according to the census, is less than 100 people.That big "spike" in migration that we collectively are still freaking out about, which happened at the beginning of the pandemic, is a few thousand people, or .7% of the population. In other words, it was a one-time aberration in an otherwise basically flat line, which we quickly returned to.

More importantly, I think this part of the piece really buries the lede. According to that block quote, there are 10k short term rentals, and we need 30-40k more houses "to make up for years of underbuilding."

Read that another way, and it kinda sounds like SFH STRs might account for 1/3-1/4 of our missing housing. That's like a lot. Let's contextualize that with another huge political crisis. 25% of our emissions in the US comes from electricity generation. Look at how much effort and political will people are spending on changing it over to renewables -- and rightly so. If one single factor might account for 25% of our housing crisis, it is a huge deal.

There's also that other claim, which again they let go by without context. We're 30-40k short due to "underbuilding." That's an interpretation, not a fact. Let me provide an alternative interpretation of the shortage, which I think is a good counterbalance:

20% of housing is second homes (17%) and vacation rentals (3%). Those homes are functionally kept outside the housing pool. That means, theoretically, we could have 25% more housing inventory tomorrow if we just take the empty vacation homes and Airbnbs. Plus, if we accept that 20% of our housing will remain functionally outside the pool, and the only way is to build our way out of it, does that mean we're going to have to build 25% more housing than we need to build otherwise as vacation rentals and second homes continue to get snatched up? That seems like a problem.

Vermont has 331,106 homes. If 20% are vacation homes and STRs, that means there's 66,221 homes in that 20% -- well over the 30-40k we're short. I understand this assumes that houses are fungible, and not all these houses are in the right places etc., but I think that simple analysis casts some doubt on the interpretation and assumption that the shortage is due to "underbuilding." Those numbers all really jumped out to me as the obvious interpretation, and if it's wrong, I think they missed an opportunity to explain why that is.

edit: typos

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Twombls t1_jdi30mr wrote

Yeahhh the heartstring pulling from airbnb owners is always weird. Its proven that you can pass a law that bans invesors from renting out entire neighborhoods, yet still lets airbnbs function as "intended". Burlington did so. As it turns out though. People just renting out a spare room in their house is in the minority.

Also that survey may have bias. As someone just renting out an airbnb room to live here. Is probably more likely to respond to a survey. Than some property investor.

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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdi3u6f wrote

Yeah, it was a really strange editorial choice.

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you_give_me_coupon t1_jdi9bba wrote

> Yeah, it was a really strange editorial choice.

I think it's entirely expected of VPR and NPR. :(

Thanks for your post, it's really good, and lays out a lot of the reasons I stopped donating to, and then stopped listening to, VPR and NPR. I'm sure /u/bravestatevt will read your post, but I don't expect anything will change, because the issues with their coverage are structural.

The whole post was good, but this part stood out:

>Let me reframe this, with the opening stories of the episode in mind. Our economic situation is such that middle class folks have turned to mining our communities to stay afloat. This isn't a story about how Airbnb is providing an important lifeline for people; it's one of decades of policy failure that has resulted in people desperate to hold on carving up their own communities, and the conflict that causes, which they reported on so nicely at the beginning.

This is something I saw over and over before I gave up on VPR/NPR. Big issues with real impact on regular people would usually get reported on (sometimes stories just wouldn't be covered, but that's another issue), but when the root causes were right there and obvious, the reporting would nonetheless be some dissembling mush about "nuance", or "complexity", usually with a heavy-handed implication that there was nothing to be done.

Why does this happen, when following threads back is straightforward and would make for engaging stories? I would bet anything that certain lines of inquiry are just banned at VPR, either implicitly or explicitly, depending on who or what would be implicated. If the thread leads back to our overall economic system, or failures of some (allied) political party over decades, or especially if they lead back to businesses owned by the oligarchs who fund VPR/NPR, then no one is going to pull on those threads. This happens a lot, because basically every major problem we face leads back to material economic conditions imposed on us by the oligarch class.

TLDR: NPR and its affiliates are beholden to the oligarch class who largely fund them. This affects their coverage in significant ways, leading to specific problems like you pointed out, among others. As long as NPR is funded by billionaire "foundations", it is going to work in the interest of those billionaires.

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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdib08w wrote

Yeah, I pasted this elsewhere in the thread, but an argument much like you're making is laid out in some detail here: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/09/npr-is-not-your-friend

The whole thing is very Manufacturing Consent. I don't doubt the reporter's honestly; I just think that, as Chomsky famously said in that interview, the people who end up doing the reporting are the kinds of people who believe the kinds of things they do. When's the last time anyone at VPR gave an openly anticapitalist framing of an issue? I think On The Media is probably the only NPR show that dabbles in leftist thought. Meanwhile, there are like 10 different shows that are just neoliberal apologia (How I Built This is just capitalist great man propaganda. Science Friday has tons of uncritical coverage of corporate products, etc.).

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BeckyKleitz t1_jdj6kao wrote

Oh now see...I like Science Friday. I hate it that I've missed it again today. :(

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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdj7khe wrote

It's not a bad show per se. I like listening to the cool shit people are doing. I myself do R&D at private companies for a living, and I think some of the stuff I've made is pretty cool. But it does very uncritically report on the R&D of private companies while avoiding the greater context in which they're being made, and clearly views private companies in the market as the vessel through which technology progresses, and humanity with it.

I think they could do with a dose of critical theory every now and then, especially when they start talking about medical technologies. Those can get pretty hard to listen to.

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curiousguy292 t1_jdmqew0 wrote

I agree. There’s some truth to this. I feel like every story has to contain some sort of social justice component to be allowed to air. I remember recently counting 4 stories about the change in DEI officer in Burlington government! Wtf. VPR is totally out of touch with most Vermonters

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you_give_me_coupon t1_jdmzq0h wrote

For sure. Inserting race into every story, especially where it's irrelevant, and always in the most contentious and off-putting way possible, has got to be a top-down directive. It's too ubiquitous and serves the donor class's interests too well. My favorite recent NPR story was something like "in historic first, Boston elects Asian mayor, here's how that's bad for black people." Out of touch indeed.

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curiousguy292 t1_jdn2bul wrote

It’s too bad because it used to be the best source of information in Vermont. Now it just seems to pander to what must be a small segment of Vermont society. Maybe those are the donors?

One exception I have to mention is Erica Heilman. She does “Rumble Strip” and some reporting. She gets it. She did a series called “What class are you?” Where regular people talked about classism in Vermont. It wasn’t very flattering towards the typical VPR listener. It was the most true grit real programming I’ve heard in years.

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Twombls t1_jdi67lt wrote

I would be curious to see if whoever was the creative lead on this episode has any relevant investments. It reeks of the stuff that they brought to burlington city council when we banned airbnbs.

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liquorcabinetkid t1_jdi55cb wrote

To understand the housing crisis we should keep in mind that while we need 30-40k homes to be added to inventory to meet the demand, people who need housing can't afford what the market is building.

Check the median price for a house in your county; in CC it is now over 500k.

This isn't really an accident. It's more like making undesirable people move into the flood plain and then acting surprised when a flood washes them away.

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Vtjeannieb t1_jdiohtg wrote

Longtime Vermonter here, and someone who was involved in the housing business. Builders have always built for the top of the market because it’s easier to make a profit. Those who built for entry-level properties generally had a larger parcel of land they could subdivide and build multiple units.

But as much as we’d like to see more affordable housing, the more expensive homes do have the function of allowing people to move out of their starter homes into something that better fits their needs. I’m an example of this. When I bought my first home, I couldn’t afford to live in the area I wanted. But after a few years, I saved some bucks and developed more equity , and was able to sell my little starter home to someone who was just thrilled, and moved to a larger home in my preferred area.

This cycle worked for many years, at least in Northern VT. It’s been disrupted lately by more nonVermonters moving in, more corporate investors, and homes converted into short term rentals.

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columbo928s4 t1_jdje1uw wrote

> the more expensive homes do have the function of allowing people to move out of their starter homes into something that better fits their needs.

another way to look at this is that unlike the working class, if upper-income people want to buy a house, they are going to buy a house. so if there is no new-build luxury housing available, they're instead going to purchase homes that otherwise would have gone to lower-market buyers. this has happened in a lot of desirable cities that have underbuilt for decades; houses and apartments that at first look would seem to be part of the market for the working class and first-time buyers have instead been bid up on and purchased by upper-class buyers because there is so little higher-end housing available. so while luxury housing might not be what we want to see built, allowing those units to go up takes a lot of pressure off of the lower end of the market

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SnooMaps1313 t1_jdkmlam wrote

Someone (from Rhode Island if their license plate is an indication) in my NNE neighborhood recently bought a little house identical to ours, which was at the bottom of market pricing in late 2020. Then they built onto it this past year and essentially doubled its size and amenities. That starter home has been converted and removed from the starter home market forever.

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GrittyPrettySitty t1_jdmytny wrote

>This cycle worked for many years, at least in Northern VT

That cycle worked because of the population boom from the boomers.

Also, normalizing changing locations to get to a "better place" or a more desirable place seems to be an acceptance that we are not trying to make every place better overall.

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No-Ganache7168 t1_jdkjnwc wrote

When I got married my husband and I bought a $150,000 home that was 1000 square feet with three small bedrooms one upstairs bathroom and a half bath in the basement. It was on a 100X150 lot. Would first time homebuyers purchase such a home if more were built? It seems everyone wants a 2,000 SFT home on a few acres. Of course, those homes are going to be more expensive

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you_give_me_coupon t1_jdi72dw wrote

Thanks for pointing this out. New housing will just be bought by hedge funds, AirBnb speculators, 3rd-home types, and out-of-state WFH yuppies, just like now. We need rules that incentivize housing going to people who need it and actually live here.

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landodk t1_jdictj2 wrote

OP already pointed out that “out of state WFH yuppies” are not the problem. They add to the price pressure a bit, but they also pay taxes and live in our communities. They actually live here too

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Twombls t1_jdijva3 wrote

Also how many "wfh yuppies" actually moved here. My anctedoctal experience is a lot of them left after the lockdowns subsided a bit.

Also who is a WFH yuppie. I work from home for a VT based company. I used to commute into the office but gave up when it became a sickfest. Most of my direct coworkers left the state due to housing and affordability. Vt isn't as desirable to everyone as this sub makes it out to be sometimes.

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you_give_me_coupon t1_jdjbsh7 wrote

> Also how many "wfh yuppies" actually moved here.

Just on my street in southern VT? 8 households. At least 5 of those (the only ones I know for sure) paid cash for their houses. 4 bought sight-unseen. They haven't left, unfortunately. Meanwhile my working-class friends can't even come close to affording to buy a house, and are living in dumpy rentals, in one case without working heat.

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[deleted] t1_jdia638 wrote

Brave Little State is fantastic for some stories but they definitely have a habit of “both-sidesing” and doing superficial reporting on topics like this. Here they just pinball back and forth between talking points from different camps without much analysis. To just regurgitate a talking point like “AirBnBs help people afford their homes” without further examination is poor journalism.

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PhineasSwann t1_jdizds5 wrote

Julie Marks has done a great job of putting the "just little people renting out a room" narrative to fight regulations and investigation into the serious impact STRs have had over the past decade in taking LTR stock out of circulation. It's a shame there's no organization to refute her propaganda directly. The Vermont Lodging Association sometimes does, because they want STRs to follow the same rules/inspections/laws/guidelines that inns and real B&Bs do. But unfortunately, their viewpoint quickly gets tarred as "they just don't want the competition." (Full disclosure: I own a small B&B, but also list on AirBnB).

The STR survey Lamoille County did show that 60% of residents said they'd had a negative experience with an STR in their community. That was eye-opening.

It's a difficult subject. In our community, yes, most of the formerly-LTRs-converted-to-STRs service the local ski tourism economy. But unfortunately, if you want to work for that economy, there's no place here to live - you have to commute an hour or more to get here.

For those who keep trying to disconnect the cause-and-effect, just plot two charts: The decline in long-term rental stock 2013-2023, and the exponential growth of short-term rentals from 2013-23.

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Twombls t1_jdjdsaj wrote

Whats funny is under most antiairbnb regulation. The "small guy renting out a room" is largely unaffected. They usually still allow renting out rooms or entire residinces that count as a primary residence.

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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdjl6bi wrote

Yeah it's the classic capitalist propaganda that convinces people to have solidarity with capital by talking about your sweet little neighborhood small business or whatever. Just cause? That's the state forcing your nana to let that deadbeat live in her attic in perpetuity, never mind that the rule doesn't apply to that situation in ten different ways. Airbnb? What about that sweet old retiree just trying to keep up their house? Etc.

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No-Ganache7168 t1_jdkk9xh wrote

Marks is a propaganda machine. When our town limited airbnbs to one per owner last year she spoke to our planning board about how this was a bad idea bc they bring money into communities. Well, Julie so do people who actually live and work here year round.

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Pen_Active t1_jdiodst wrote

Really nice job thinking and articulating this response. I think you’re right that Airbnb is a significant part of our housing problem.

One nit to pick: a portion of short terms rentals are not made to be long term housing. This is because many short term rentals are located deliberately in tourist destinations (you referred to the location issue) and the format of this housing is made to serve visitors (think tiny kitchens in ski chalets or distance from markets, work opportunities, etc.). It is difficult to say how many of these short term rentals could actually be used for long term housing. I would speculate many STRs ARE actually taking away housing from locals, but your numbers will be lower when taking this into account.

I favor the use of zoning to designate some areas or buildings as STR-appropriate in places that are unlikely to serve locals but otherwise making STRs illegal everywhere else. I don’t know how much of our housing crises this would solve but then we would truly know how much housing Vermont lacks.

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Twombls t1_jdjdg2d wrote

I mean a lot of rental housing in those resort areas that would be previously rented out houses that resort employees lived in. You are right that ski condos dont really count as housing though. They tend to be horrific quality substandard buildings. And a lot of the time you aren't even allowed to live in them full time because that would become apparent.

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SeeTheSounds t1_jdipr1n wrote

Yeah definitely calling bullshit.

Why the hell they using January data when that is offseason vs during the summer months?

There is an individual who owns 10 airbnb’s on Mallets Bay alone. The type of airbnb owner that uses their income for “automotive costs” owns a new Audi, $70k+ truck, new corvette or new Porsche 911, and more.

Don’t want to hear that bullshit anymore about “if I can’t str on airbnb I won’t be able to survive!!!” Yeah fucking right.

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jonahhillfanaccount t1_jdij5rb wrote

I’d be curious as to how the “what do you do with the income?”

Was it an open response or was it multiple choice?

If it’s multiple choice, then that automatically frames the answers, if this survey was sent out by Airbnb or a short term rental advocacy group, of course they will frame the multiple choice answers so that it looks like STR owners are “using the money to get by”

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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdj894m wrote

That's a very thoughtful critique that I overlooked. I'd take it a step further now that I think about it. Money is fungible. That's like its thing. To ask what someone does with specific money they make is a useful question in some limited budget-making capacity, but interpreting it seems pretty... complicated. What will I do with the money I make today? What about the money I make working for my other job? Sort of a stupid question...

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BothCourage9285 t1_jdiqpz6 wrote

>That means, theoretically, we could have 25% more housing inventory tomorrow if we just take the empty vacation homes and Airbnbs.

Take?

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Twombls t1_jdjdya1 wrote

Please. I mean the best way to do it would be to raise property tax on non residences so high that it becomes unprofitable

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jteedubs t1_jdjp24m wrote

20% 2nd homes includes seasonal camps, deer camps, and off the road system 4 season camps. Actual 4 season homes that are useable (ie on the road system, insulated, plowed, yadda, yadda) is a much lower percentage.

The real problem is more psychological, people want the idyllic Vermont of open land single housing. In reality we need a paradigm shift to communal open spaces and close co habitation, That means condos, apartments, and developments where grass is in short supply but woods are preserved.

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amoebashephard t1_jdi5brb wrote

I think part of the "under building" numbers are counting housing that is substandard. I don't have the article or numbers ATM, but I believe there is a significant portion of elderly in Vermont living in dangerous and substandard housing that isn't always captured in these housing numbers.

Edit: 7k houses substandard living conditions VT digger 2020

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NothingToSeeHere1670 t1_jdi8oc9 wrote

Excellent critique and even better explanation, I hope you’ll get a response from the BLS team!

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iampg t1_jdix0we wrote

  • The ownership stat you point to (7% of owners own 50% of STRs) is likely inaccurate. Transparent probably gets its data from rental listing websites, and not property records (that would be highly difficult, if not impossible with entities like LLCs in play). There are many many companies who operate STRs for owners and therefore list many many properties that they don't own. This is definitely worth looking at more deeply, but I don't think this number is accurate enough to be relevant, although the concept is.
  • Many other previously accommodations are now gone. It used to be common for one or more small inn or hotel to operate in every single small town, as well as multiple Bed & Breakfasts, guest houses, etc. Take Burlington for example - think about how many motels there are/were in town and down Shelburne Rd. that are no longer accepting short term guests. Sounds crazy at first, but look at every 20-50 room motel and then consider that the visiting population is growing, and each one of those rooms now becomes an apartment that someone has chosen to rent short term.
  • Most Second Homes and STRs were never part of the available housing pool. A [multi] million dollar lake or ski house, or rural retreat/farmhouse/lodge is not suitable for long term rental in a meaningful way. There's no way to take an empty 8 bed, 10 bath luxury home and repurpose it as an affordable rental. Keep in mind that much like our economy, our housing stock is not zero-sum. Someone owning a large second home does not mean that another person doesn't get to have a home - it doesn't take away from anyone else. That house wouldn't have existed without the will and resource of whoever owns it, and they haven't repurposed it from a local person looking for long term housing.* The larger socioeconomic implication probably points at that second home owner taking something from someone to build that house, but more like taking money from local people wherever they made that money...
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yeehaw_brah t1_jdjcm8i wrote

I always think the vacation home argument is a bit of a fallacy. Many of those homes are out in the sticks and terribly inconvenient for anyone trying to work a job. Additionally, many of those homes are not really equipped to be a residence or even to be used year round.

The average AirBnB, on the other hand, would probably be a great housing unit, excepting the condos that are specifically meant to service the ski resorts.

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Loudergood t1_jdjpvcn wrote

You'd be awfully surprised just how far some people commute in this state.

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DiscHorse t1_jdi9qbu wrote

There's a reason we like to say that NPR stands for Nice Polite Republicans.

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thisoneisnotasbad t1_jdighw2 wrote

I think the percents are a little dishonest.

7% own 50% of 2.5%. So that 7% represents about 1.25% of housing stock. I think you will find similar numbers with long term rentals and business properties.

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whateverkitty-1256 t1_jdm8sc2 wrote

I think you summarized it well with the 50% of STRs are owned by just 7% of owners is the headline and as you suggest the outlier emotional anecdotes are disjointed from the main story.

Have you unpacked that 7%? I would assume that within that 7% there are probably more variations worth looking at.

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mrpete82 t1_jdiswld wrote

Nice analysis OP.

This is a profoundly complicated issue, and not an easy one to solve. Nor, apparently an easy one to report on.

Regarding the “build our way out of it” idea, your point about converting second homes to primary residences makes sense. That said, the housing stock is generally so old/undermaintained, that I think there’s decades worth of development to get us to where I’d like us to be. I’m in favor of a lot of the work to make it easier to build in dense areas and village centers.

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BeckyKleitz t1_jdj5krv wrote

I'm so confused...I distinctly remember Vermont paying people to move there just a few years ago. Where did all those people go?

Also, Vermont is #3 on the list of the highest rates of homelessness by state.

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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdjzjzx wrote

Yeah, the thing about our world is that it doesn't actually work, so we end up wanting contradictory things. We need to attract workers, but we also don't have enough housing, so we want to build more, but if you deregulate, then you end up with awful suburban sprawl, plus we also want to preserve the forest. Regulate? Now it's unaffordable. State housing? Come on, be serious -- plus we have no money. Raise taxes on the wealthy? No because they'll leave and then we won't have jobs. We need to save the environment, but we also need economic growth; if we don't have enough economic growth, we don't have the money to spend on saving the environment.

At the heart of this is a population with a fundamentally religious belief in an economic system that just doesn't work, but we cannot question it, so we try to meet its contradictory demands, and the results are nonsense.

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No-Ganache7168 t1_jdkiyfr wrote

Vermont has always had second homeowners. The shortage started to escalate when people who otherwise couldn’t afford second homes bought them bc they could rent them on Airbnb with little financial risk.

They started buying them with small down payments. In most areas they can pay their mortgage while still using them for several weeks or months per year. I have a neighbor who lives in NYC but stays here from December through march so her daughters can ski. She and her husband work from home and fly to nyc once a month. The rest of the year they rent their home for $400 a night and based on the cars that come and go they have a high occupancy rate.

Would they have purchased a second home if they had to pay two mortgages? I have no idea but having a second home that also generates income is a good deal.

As far as the Stowe people mentioned are concerned, most have more than one home and rent out the second to pay for both mortgages. It’d not like they are renting rooms above their garages.

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PhineasSwann t1_jdm101y wrote

BTW, I think the 10,000 STR figure for Vermont is low. There's no way to know, because the state refuses to register them, so it has no clue how many actually exist.

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vastdeaf t1_jdy5itv wrote

As much as I empathize with everything being said, my experiences staying at AirBonobo/ Vrbo have been >80% small, middle class hosts. A family (multiple siblings in their 60s who lived in adjoining houses) who rented out their deceased parent’s house which shared a backyard with theirs in Utah. A CP railway conductor who used his railroad pay to renovate 3 small properties and maintains them in his time off from work in Minnesota. A semi-retired guy who lives off his rental up the hill from him in Maine. I really think things have gone wrong with the platform since it started (like everything on the internet that’s been around too long). The prices have skyrocketed for what you get. I also grew up in VT and find it hard to imagine ever moving back bc affordability. Other than say essex county, island pond has some affordable houses for sale.

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bravestatevt t1_je1mhkg wrote

Hey OP u/headgasketidiot - I wanted to weigh in here to say that it's genuinely cool to see how much time you took to absorb the information in the episode and respond in all these ways. I appreciate your thoughtfulness. Same goes for many of the commenters in this thread. It's never easy to hear critique of something my colleagues and I spend so many hours working on, but it's important and I'm grateful for it. There are a couple things I want to address directly:

To the point about the "growing demand of people who want to live here" -- I agree that there seems to be a perception that people are moving to Vermont in droves that does not match reality. I was focusing on data about the increase in demand for "year-round households" (an increase that predates the pandemic). See this overview from the VHFA (https://www.vhfa.org/news/blog/30000-40000-more-vermont-homes-needed-2030). The pandemic accelerated things slightly, but factors like more flexible remote work options and climate migration have the potential to increase in relevance in the future. And given that Vermont has the *lowest* rental vacancy rate in the nation already, and that there is currently a clear shortage of year-round housing stock, any increase in demand (even a relatively slight one) has an outsized impact. This is the reason I included the line ("and to keep up with the growing demand of people who want to live here"). I'd be interested in a deeper comparison of population data vs year-round household data, and I appreciate you pointing out that the influx is not as dramatic, numbers-wise, as some seem to think.

Meanwhile, I agree that ~10,000 short-term rentals does represent a potentially large chunk of the "new" year-round housing needed to meet demand. That's one of the reason I wanted to include the numbers, though I could have put a finer point on it. One of the reasons I didn't is the fact that VT does not have a statewide rental registry, which makes it impossible to know how many of those 10,000+ short-term units could realistically serve as long-term ones -- i.e. they aren't just seasonal camps, etc. As a reporter (and as a VT resident), this is frustrating! And it's why I wanted to include more detailed stories about Airbnb units that *could* serve as year-round housing, and the impact of that, in the episode as well.

Based on my reporting, I think much of our housing crisis can be attributed to factors other than short-term rentals, but addressing STRs is also an important step for Vermont to take. One housing expert I spoke to described the necessary approach to the state's housing crisis as "silver buckshot, not a silver bullet" and it stuck with me.

I hope this helps shed some light on my and my team's approach to this piece, even if it's not completely satisfying. Again, I'm grateful for the thoughtful critique!

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4low4low4low4low t1_jdicusl wrote

Yeah just seize everyone’s second homes and force them to rent to people that can’t afford them…it’ll fix everything..

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hippiepotluck t1_jdiut7g wrote

We don’t have to seize them. We just need to tax them appropriately so that short term and long term rental income becomes more equal.

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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdj1ej3 wrote

In 1970, due to widespread inflation, Nixon issued an executive order that stopped all price and wage increases. It made them illegal. In 2022-2023, we have serious inflation, yet supposedly much more progressive administration is so staunchly neoliberal that anything other than tinkering around the margins of the market is heresy.

The government is the only institution in public life that has any democratic accountability, but the neoliberal hegemony is so overwhelming, that in just 50 years, no one can imagine its role being anything other than minor nudges to the market, hoping it'll tweak the incentive structure a bit.

We need to start thinking bigger than just making our already insane tax structure even more insane in the hopes that it'll convince markets to have more moral outcomes. I don't know what the answer is, but the conversations being had right now are so narrow that we're never going to find it.

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hippiepotluck t1_jdjmuzb wrote

What does thinking bigger mean to you?

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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdjojht wrote

I started my comment to you with what I think is a great example that's super relevant to the moment, though not the topic at hand. If you're asking about housing specifically, I would like to see the government actually do things directly to fix housing. Just ban airbnb for anything not owner-occupied. Offer social housing directly. I'd love to see proposals on ways to build it, eminent domain strategic STRs and vacation homes, whatever else policy dorks dream up. I'd like to see a conversation switch to actually directly addressing the problem instead of everything being ticky tacky tax here and disicinenvize there.

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hippiepotluck t1_jdk347t wrote

I would agree with all of this, I just don’t know how to get momentum behind any new ideas. There’s so much resistance to any kind of change.

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Galadrond t1_jdllfhi wrote

At this rate I’m 100% for seizing corporate owned STR properties and turning them into social housing.

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Christopher_LX t1_jdj1z53 wrote

Seizure won’t fly as an official program, but it could work as a grassroots movement. It’s pretty hard to evict a squatter. Even harder to evict 10,000 squatters spread around the state.

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Galadrond t1_jdllhm9 wrote

Amen. Direct collective action will certainly get people’s attention.

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Galadrond t1_jdll6ad wrote

It’s becoming increasingly clear that we’re just going to have to tax and regulate STRs out of existence if not ban them outright.

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hellibot t1_jdja1wi wrote

Don’t agree. I think they were trying to say who owns ABNBs and successfully did so in a neutral way.

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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdjfzpc wrote

That's a pretty weird argument considering the entire premise of the show is that they answer a listener question:

>What is the status of Airbnb in Vermont? How many units are taking away from locals? And what can be done about it?

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hellibot t1_jdjhg9w wrote

I just meant in terms of your first few paragraphs about framing. I thought it was a neutral assessment of “who” owns STRs. I haven’t listened to the episode, so have no opinion on the full episode and whether it answered the listener’s question. I will say it sounds like like not enough housing has been built is an accurate assessment. Otherwise, there’d be enough housing for short-term and long-term inhabitants and housing would be cheaper.

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headgasketidiot OP t1_jdjm093 wrote

If you didn't even know the question they were trying to answer, how can you disagree with my critique that the way they framed the answer was weird. That's like a crucially important piece of context.

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hellibot t1_jdjnvqk wrote

I knew the question and read your very very long post about it too.

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kier00 t1_jdiahi6 wrote

I'd like to provide a response:

  1. I usually look for evidence that those who are against Airbnbs are not NIMBYs who wrap themselves with the affordable housing argument. Almost every person I've spoken to in person who is against Airbnb is an obvious NIMBY.

  2. Almost every working class person who I have spoken to on the issue is very afraid of Airbnbs disappearing because of the direct and second and third order effects that economic activity generates. I also find it very curious that the anti-Airbnb crowd has absolutely no proposed ideas for how to replace that economic activity.

  3. You state with the back of the napkin math that 25% of the housing crisis can be solved by taking back Airbnbs. Let's put aside the constitutional issues with your ideas and I will, for sake of argument, accept the math. That means 75% of the issue is due to other factors. Why are you focusing on the 25% when 75% is a bigger number?

  4. You speak of affordable housing. Airbnbs provide a lot of jobs that will dissappear with your ideas and no proposed replacement for that income. It doesn't matter how low rent is when unemployment spikes.

The anti Airbnb ideas are DOA for most of the state for these reasons.

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[deleted] t1_jdicpnu wrote

1 - NIMBY describes a behavior, not a class of people. You are correct that some people dangle affordability concerns in bad faith to try to block unwanted development. However, here there is real evidence that short-term rentals are having a major impact.

2 - That is anecdotal evidence at best. Tourist towns did fine before AirBnB using bed and breakfasts, motels, etc. The market will adapt.

3 - restricting short-term rentals is not unconstitutional, just like have local zoning codes is not unconstitutional. And the focus on the 25% is entirely appropriate given how difficult it is to develop new housing in Vermont (lack of labor and suitable land being major factors amongst others).

4 - again, there is no evidence to suggest that AirBnB is propping up the hospitality industry. If there is demand for it, other forms of guest accommodation will come online.

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kier00 t1_jdikty8 wrote

"The market will adapt" is what supposedly high minded people say when their proposed ideas will not affect them (or benefit them) and they have no idea how to account for those who will be negatively impacted.

How will the market adapt? How long will it take? What do we do with those who cannot adapt in time before they go bankrupt? Etc etc.

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hippiepotluck t1_jdivlu3 wrote

Air B and B has existed for 15 years. The market will adapt.

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Azr431 t1_jdid9gt wrote

Airbnbs provide a lot of jobs? Lol

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DavePastry t1_jdio95f wrote

I mean I employ 4 people to help run my STR's, to say nothing of the litany of restaurants and shops that operate entirely on the largesse of tourists money.

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Azr431 t1_jdirzao wrote

You employ 4 people at most likely unlivable wages to support your business model that's deleterious to communities. That's your justification? lol

Airbnbs do fuck all for tourism in all but the most niche markets. Pretty sure tourism existed before airbnb

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kier00 t1_jdikbhc wrote

Yes. A simple Google search will show you studies that support both positions.

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Twombls t1_jdif8p9 wrote

>Almost every working class person who I have spoken to on the issue is very afraid of Airbnbs disappearing because of the direct and second and third order effects that economic activity generates. I also find it very curious that the anti-Airbnb crowd has absolutely no proposed ideas for how to replace that economic activity.

Look up studies done on banning airbnb in Europe. It turns out that airbnb users contrubute significantly less to the economy than actual hotel people

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blipblapblorp t1_jdig6rz wrote

#4 is surprising to me. Where have you read that AirBnBs provide a lot of jobs?

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kier00 t1_jdik8ks wrote

A simple Google search is easy enough to do.

There are studies to support both positions. My anecdotal experience indicates it does provide a lot of jobs, and that local businesses and artisans are very against Airbnb restrictions since they provide a significant portion of their revenue.

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ThePecanRolls5225 t1_jdiiyxk wrote

Do you own an air bnb or two? Just in the interest of transparency

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kier00 t1_jdiju3f wrote

I do not own or operate an Airbnb. I do derive some of my income from them.

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Loudergood t1_jdjqlbc wrote

I live in a tourist town. Half the stores and restaurants shut down in the off season because of those vacation homes being empty. Year round residents will stabilize things.

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