Airbnb Annotated Bibliography
Bach, Trevor. “Is Airbnb Helping – or Worsening – Inequality in Cities?” U.S. News, U.S.
News & World Report, LP, 20 May 2019,
www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2019-05-02/airbnbs-controversial-impact
-on-cities.
In this article for the well-known online news source U.S. News, Detroit-based journalist Trevor Bach analyzes the effects that Airbnb usage has on the inequality of cities across the United States. Bach makes the case that Airbnb ultimately worses inequality in cities because it accelerates housing crises and directly leads to gentrification. In particular, he takes a close look at individuals who were priced out of their homes as a result of the burgeoning Airbnb market in cities. Bach opens his article with the story of Harper Richards, a New Orleans resident who worked many jobs to make ends meet but whose landlord evicted her and her family on short notice in order to list their residence on Airbnb. Richards’ story puts a face to the problems caused by Airbnb, with the salient, illustrative quote from Richards: “It's really the rich who are getting richer off of this situation. Airbnb has run so rampant across the entire city that there's barely any rentals left for locals, and the rentals that are available are skyrocketing in price.” Bach looks at experts in independent organizations and academics to further the point that Airbnb displaces tenants and puts pressure on already tight housing markets. One such point of research is the work of Davide Proserpio, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of California, which illustrates that Airbnb incentivizes landlords to switch from the long-term market to the short-term market because the platform reduces friction and raises profits, and this in turn incentivizes them to raise prices. Moreover, Airbnb is ill-equipped to combat listings that flout the legal regulations in cities. Bach writes about how in New York City, a February 2019 investigation revealed a complex Airbnb scheme masterminded by a former real estate broker that generated $20 million in revenue by using false addresses and identities to work around the “one host, one home” rule. In terms of origins, U.S. News is a reputable source and is likely accurate in terms of reporting, especially because they have a fact-checking process. However, U.S. News is also left-leaning, as noted by Allsides, a media bias reporting website, and this left-leaning tendency may color the writing published in the U.S. News. The value that the source has for our project lies in its human perspective and highly thorough research. The insights that Bach provides are very helpful to our narrative research, especially in terms of the individual stories of people who have been forced out of their homes because of the gentrifying effects that Airbnb has on the housing prices of neighborhoods. Through an interview with Harper, Bach takes a very human angle into a problem with widespread economic implications, which may be hard to imagine in terms of faces and stories of individuals, and we aspire to similarly tell this human story about the housing problems and gentrification caused by Airbnb. Additionally, However, a limitation about this source is that it was written in 2019, which may indicate some statistics are outdated. For instance, Bach cites the statistic that 500 million Aribnb guests stay in 81,000 cities across America, but this figure has likely dramatically changed due to COVID-19. Overall the article is still very recent (within one year of our current investigation) and therefore the observations about broader trends are still relevant to our study.
Barron, Kyle, Edward Kung, and Davide Proserpio. “The Effect of Home-Sharing on
House Prices and Rents: Evidence from Airbnb,” July 25, 2017.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3006832.
As Airbnbs have increasingly become a popular vacation resource, the impact that it has on the surrounding community is worth analyzing. In the academic journal titled “The Effect of Home-Sharing on House Prices and Rents: Evidence fromAirbnb” the authors elaborate on the effects of this new home sharing platform. Overall, the research concluded that Airbnb does have an effect on its surrounding housing market. Given that Airbnb’s average annual growth is about 44% and that a 1% increase in Airbnb listings causes about a 0.018% increase in rental rates and 0.026% increase in house prices, indicates that Airbnb is definitely a playing factor within housing and rent market price increase. This study uncovered that zip codes with a higher owner-occupancy rate are less likely to be affected by Airbnb, in addition to the fact that it typically affects the housing market through the reallocation of housing stock. More landlords are shifting their long term rental properties into the short term rental market. This shift is causing the increase of the cost of living for the surrounding long term local rental properties, therefore, proving that Airbnbs does play a significant role in establishing housing and rent prices and making the surrounding community harder to live in. This is a helpful source because it recognized the role and the impact that Airbnb has on communities that can lead to socioeconomic disparities in underrepresented communities and may be represented in the data we may encounter. While many companies insert themselves into communities with the right intention, their actions may cause more harm than good contributing to the issues that the communities are already facing. Even though this article highlights the negative impact of Airbnb, it also presents potential solutions to this slow growing problem such as the possibility of capping the number of short term rental homes, but still allowing owners to share extra space they may have.
Boone, Alastair. “There's New Research Behind the Contention That Airbnb Raises Rents”
Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 2 Aug. 2017, https://bloom.bg/3ngCxtm
In the article “There's New Research Behind the Contention That Airbnb Raises Rents” by Alastair Bloone, the author focuses on the spike in rental prices due to the rise in Airbnb listings in some of the largest metropolitan areas in the US. Using research studies, the author claimed that researchers were able to see that “for every 10 percent growth in Airbnb listings, a ZIP code’s average rent increased by 0.4 percent.” After viewing the rise in Airbnb listings and Zillow home pricing, they were able to see a correlation of small percentage increases, which do have a substantial dollar impact in the long run. For example, the researchers were able to see a 7.7 percent rise a year “from a baseline average of $1,712 per month in 2012 - that’s an estimated average increase of $131 every year.” However, the author does take in account other factors that may contribute to the rise such as population growth, income, and employment rates. By taking units off the market for Airbnb, the housing market becomes much more volatile as areas kept getting more and more absentee landlords rather than landlords who were temporarily leaving the area for a short amount of time. For example, in Hollywood, CA, Airbnb listings grew by 50 percent per year, causing rent prices to grow about 6.4 percent. The author also touches on the aspect of how Airbnb has attempted to cooperate with regulations and critics they have received such as beginning to pay hotel tax and adopting policies such as the “one host, one home” policy. However, city officials are still exploring ways to add more regulations for the company due to issues like this. Researchers believe data sharing between cities and the company will help alleviate a lot of the problems being created, which was said at the time this article was written. Our group can utilize this article as it touches base on researchers' studies on the rising rental prices due to Airbnb listings which supports our research question which involves gentrification and rising prices in cities.
Borlenghi, Andrea, and Bilgehan Uzunca. “Regulation Strictness and Supply in the
Platform Economy: the Case of Airbnb and Couchsurfing.” Taylor & Francis,
August 2, 2019.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13662716.2019.1633278.
In the article “Regulation Strictness and Supply in the Platform Economy: the Case of Airbnb and Couchsurfing” by Andrea Borlenghi and Bilgehan Uzunca, the authors analyze the relation between how strict the rules/laws are in 59 U.S. cities and the number of short-term accommodation offerings within a platform economy (920). The authors come by their research question of “Does regulation stimulate supply in short-stay accommodation platforms?” by using practical and theoretical implications as they discuss limitations of this research. Within this article, they find that with stricter regulations imposed, the higher the supply within these platforms, such as Airbnb (920). Furthermore, the authors focus on the presence of money transactions within the platforms and how this may affect the relationship between regulations and supply (926). They find that the presence of money transactions “negatively moderates the positive relationship between regulation strictness and the supply of short-stay accomodations” (920). Through their paper, they dive into legal uncertainties and how these platforms are reforming labor practices in numerous types of industries. By using various credible sources, we can conclude that this paper can be viewed as credible as they cite many published references. Our group can use this source to see the relationship between different geological areas using Airbnb and how their regulations affect the industry for the platform and industries around specific areas.
DiNatale, Sadie, et al. “Short-Term Rentals in Small Cities in Oregon: Impacts and
Regulations.” Science Direct, Pergamon, 4 Sept. 2018,
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837718300759.
In this article by Sadie DiNatale, DiNatale focuses on the short term rentals within small cities within Oregon. While research on the impacts of short term rentals are rising, they tend to be focused more in bigger cities and this study focuses on smaller ones. This provides us deeper insight as to what are the positive and negative impacts outside of the normal studies that we may usually encounter. Diving into their research, DiNatale looked at the prevalence and characteristics of short term rentals within smaller cities. And DiNatale found that similar to larger places, Airbnb’s are more prevalent in touristy spots. With that in mind, that also led them to find that relative to household income, most of the Airbnb’s were found in middle income neighborhoods. An interesting thing that was pointed out as well was that for the majority (68%), they generated less than $10,000 per year. And common with big tourist spots and bigger cities, Airbnbs continue to place pressure on long term residents and as well the housing market. For example, one thing that was mentioned was the fact that Hosts (where Airbnbs are more prevalent in Oregon) were able to generate more income per year doing short term rental versus long term rentals. This increases the motives to operate as short term vs long term, decreasing available housing to those who need a long term place to stay. This article is valuable to our research and narrative as it offers us a different scope of viewing Airbnb within smaller cities, as many sources and research tend to look at bigger cities. And we’re able to see a common theme with Airbnb here as well. While Airbnb seems to be positive with lodging taxes and tourism, negatives pop up as well. DiNatale goes over the impacts on affordable housing, long term rental housing, and nuisance levels that affect neighborhoods.
Gurran, Nicole. “Global Home-Sharing, Local Communities and the Airbnb Debate: A
Planning Research Agenda.” Taylor & Francis, January 18, 2017.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649357.2017.1383731?scroll=top.
In this article, Gurran explores the mixed emotions amongst people who live in Airbnb’s and those who own Airbnb’s. Most importantly, Gurran draws attention to the urban planner, policy makers, and how they should be dealing with Airbnb and other home-sharing apps. While on one hand individuals were able to make profit off of it, some had to deal with consequences of living next to constant strangers. Things mentioned here were binge-tourism, unruly behaviors, and neighborhood disruptions. The article also discusses the impact that Airbnb is causing onto locals by displacing them. Gurran goes into saying that this whole sharing platform and economy is feeding into the neoliberal practices. This article is great for our research because it discusses the risks of unregulated tourism accommodations, housing market impacts, and it also questions what officials should be doing with such problems affecting neighborhoods. We get information on how some cities are tackling the problems by implementing regulations such as what kind of owners one must be in order to rent out the property. Along with that Gurran is also able to note that if further properties are able to be converted to short-term accommodations, the shortage of rental housing will intensify, leading to rents and house prices to rise. And this is something that we’re interested in.
Jan, Tracy. “Airbnb Benefits Local Economies. But Mainly in White Neighborhoods, Study
Finds.” The Washington Post. WP Company, July 13, 2018.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/07/11/airbnb-benefits-local-
economies-only-white-neighborhoods-study-finds/.
Published by The Washington Post, the article “Airbnb Airbnb Benefits Local Economies. But Mainly in White Neighborhoods, StudyFinds” uncovers the fact that despite Airbnb’s effort to promote diversity, marginalized communities are still pushed to the side. It was discovered that Airbnb’s effort to promote local business and shops mostly benefit white neighborhoods over Latino and Black communities. It was concluded that while Airbnb guests usually do dine in the surrounding neighborhood where they are staying, it may not always be the case when 50 percent or more of the community residents are Hispanic or Black. Guests may feel more comfortable exploring the city where they are lodging in an Uber or Lyft instead of by foot, which demonstrates the true and ugly reality of the society we live in. The study consisted of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census, Airbnb, and Yelp reviews, and it was discovered that in predominantly white areas where there is a rapid growth in Airbnbs, it was also seen that there was an increase in local restaurant employment. On the other hand, Black or Hispanic neighborhoods with high Airbnb growth did not experience the same growth in employment, specifically restaurant employment. Even though users are drawn into lodging in Hispanic and Black neighborhoods, it is most likely due to the affordability of the surrounding area but hold back from exploring and dining in the area. Author, Tracy Jan, is communicating the wrongness of Airbnb to assume that their services equally benefit all groups of people. This effect brings upon a significant societal issue that many marginalized communities encounter today. Although it is difficult to regulate how consumers will behave to their surroundings, it is important to analyze the “racial code words” that are used on these platforms that can hurt marginalized communities.
Kung, Edward and Davide Proserpio, Kyle Barron, and David Proserpio. “Research:
When Airbnb Listings in a City Increase, So Do Rent Prices.” Harvard Business
Review, April 17, 2019.
https://hbr.org/2019/04/research-when-airbnb-listings-in-a-city-increase-so-
do-rent-price.
In the research article “Research: When Airbnb Listings in a City Increase, So Do Rent Prices” by Edward Kung, Davide Proserpio, Kyle Barron, and David Proserpio, the authors dive into how rental prices in specific areas have gone up in value due to Airbnb as Airbnb properties take up finite supply of housing in the areas. Although Airbnbs bring business into areas that are not common tourist spots, they can also increase local rent price overtime. By using consumer-facing information, zip-code level information, and zip-code level data, the authors combined what they found and studied the relationship between the data. As a result, they found that a 1% increase in Airbnb listings in an area meant 0.018% raise in rental rates and 0.026% raise in the housing market. The authors argue that although these numbers may be small, consider the rate Airbnb is growing at every year with new Airbnb listings emerging. This article can be seen as a credible source as the authors collected their data by large companies such as Airbnb, Zillow, and the American Community Survey, as they backed up their research question with the data that follows. This article can be helpful to our group because we can see the correlation between Airbnb listings and the rental prices in a specific area, as it allows us to study the gentrification Airbnb is causing in certain areas.
Lee, Dayne. "How Airbnb short-term rentals exacerbate Los Angeles's affordable housing huhuhcrisis: Analysis and policy recommendations." Harv. L. & Pol'y Rev. 10 (2016): 229.
The article discusses how Airbnb has a direct correlation to the entropy of Los Angeles’s housing crisis, along with discussing the situation it can turn into if not handled right now and proposing what the Los Angeles officials can do to help solve the crisis. The author first discusses how severe the problem is, which kind of catches the reader off guard and shocks them so the importance of the crisis sticks with them for the entire reading. Lee then discusses how the problem came to be, and how it spread so quickly due to poor administration from Los Angeles officials. After Lee provides all of this background, he then only discusses how the introduction of Airbnb into Los Angeles has severely affected and sped up the crisis significantly. The data that they use are from direct research and data collected from Los Angeles, such as collecting interviews and statistics from those living in Los Angeles that are somehow related to Airbnb’s new presence in the city. This article is significant because it provides a reader with a different perspective on how Airbnb works and how it can even attack a city as large and established as Los Angeles, justifying the concept of how much damage Airbnb can actually do to housing markets regardless of were they are. Since Los Angeles already had a very fragile housing market since all the prices where obscenely high, it took very little for it to all come crumbling down and exacerbate the affordable housing crisis, since Airbnb allowed residents to stay in entire homes/apartments for much cheaper prices than hotels. This threw everything off and forced people to adjust to it quickly, without even knowing what they were adjusting to.
Marchenko, Anya. “The Impact of Host Race and Gender on Prices on Airbnb.” Journal of
Housing Economics. Academic Press, August 12, 2019.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1051137718301815.
In the academic journal titled “The Impact of House Race and Gender on Prices on Airbnb,” researcher, Anya Marchenko, utilizes extensive data from Airbnb Insider and the US Census to examine the discrimination prevalent in Airbnb listings. Sharing economy businesses are constantly emerging and being developed, which is slowly pushing traditional business markets to the side. These new business models do not require people to meet in person before agreeing to some terms, which is increasingly putting a pressure on how people are being perceived through online platforms. Due to the rise of online scams, large companies encourage their users to post their profile pictures, facts about themselves, and descriptions about their products, in order to have them be a credible source. However, information like demographics and background, can put users at a disadvantage and allows for the probability of discrimination. Through Marchenko’s detailed and comprehensive research, it was determined that compared to White property hosts, Asians hosts earn about 5% less per day, while Black hosts earn about 3% less per day. This disparity puts Black female hosts at the most disadvantage with earnings around $350 less per year compared to their White counterparts, while Black male hosts are projected to earn $300 less per year. In order to address this discrimination, Marchenko addresses that Airbnb should focus more on creating a more user frieldly platform by making modifications, such as making the profile picture smaller, in order to prevent discrimination among users. This journal would be very beneficial to our research because it does not only describe the economic impacts of the discrimination within Airbnb, but it also describes the humanistic impact on minority groups and how Airbnb contributes to societal issues today. This effect in Airbnb price listings demonstrates a broader issue of marginalized communities and the overarching issue of gentrification.
Roelofsen, Maartje. "EXPLORING THE SOCIO-SPATIAL INEQUALITIES OF AIRBNB
IN SOFIA, BULGARIA." Erdkunde 72, no. 4 (2018): 313-28. Accessed October 29,
2020. doi:10.2307/26554736. I jijijijijhttps://www.erdkunde.uni-bonn.de/archive/2018/exploring-the-socio-spatial-inequalijijijijijities-of-airbnb-in-sofia-bulgaria/at_download/attachment
This article discusses the spatialities of Airbnb in Bulgaria’s capital: Sofia. Although Roelofsen could have chosen many other places to conduct this study, she states that since she is familiar with the location and has previous knowledge of the housing market pre-Airbnb, that shell will be able to discuss the spatialities much better. Although it is an extremely specific topic, it can still easily be applied to any other location, since it does not necessarily have anything to do with Bulgaria itself, especially since it is the capital of the country and is a very touristy area. This goes hand in hand with most other locations since Airbnb’s tend to aggregate towards areas that attract a lot of tourists. The resource argues that there are numerous inequalities with when and were the Airbnb listings are posted, and how that is directly correlated to the social-norm associated to that specific location. The resource uses the Airbnb website as its evidence and data, which is extremely beneficial since the author will be able to implement the findings directly to the real-world, since it is so freshly extracted. In addition, this adds on to the importance of the resource, since it will allow me to understand how Airbnb has spread overtime in an area so distinct as Sofia, which I can then compare to what I am familiar with and my findings throughout this project. The resource is extremely important since it will display the findings in a third-world country that is home to a very touristy city that is not extremely
modernized but is enough to have Airbnb’s available, and is significant enough for a study to be conducted on it. The resource allows me to discuss how various countries adapt to the rise of Airbnb’s, and is vital to discussing my thesis since I will now be able to use a country that we had little-to-no data on.
Sheppard, Stephen, and Andrew Udell. “Do Airbnb Properties Affect House Prices?”
Department of Economics Working Papers, Williams College, 4 Nov. 2016,
www.web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/SheppardUdellAirbnbAffectHousePrices.pdf
In this article Stephen Sheppard and Andrew Udell analyze the economic impact of Airbnb on the housing market in New York. Sheppard analyzes multiple datasets, from Airbnb listings to urban planning and crime rate databases,to calculate approximate estimates on how much residential housing has increased due to Airbnb. Sheppard starts with stating the policy debates concerning Airbnb, the lack of safety & license regulation in order to house guests as well as the economic impact to the housing market. The authors detail the multiple possible mechanisms which Airbnb could impact property values. There are three ways that Airbnb may cause property values to rise : rise of income from revenue stream of renting out Airbnbs, Increase in population from tourism, and localized economic impact of guests. The author also states that the presence of Airbnb could potentially decrease property values, with some negative impacts of guests neighborhood quality could fall and decrease in value. Using various databases and accounting for extraneous variables, the authors estimated that the price of housing increased 17.7% due to the presence of Airbnb listings in New York. Other statistics include that housing values increase by about 31% by renting out for guests. The authors also note that the increase of property value could be for the benefit of the neighborhood, by allowing more resources for schools or community resources. This source will be useful towards our narrative as a citation for numerical statistics of the economic impact of Airbnb on the housing market. The article also provides useful insight on the contributing factors towards this increase, as well as some interpretations in support of Airbnb.
Slee, Tom. "A Place to Stay with Airbnb." In What's Yours Is Mine: Against the
Sharing Economy, 21-44. New York; London: OR Books, 2017. Accessed October
29, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv62hf03.6.
In this chapter of his nonfiction book "What's Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy," Slee focuses on the major legal and social problems that Airbnb has created in the communities that it has entered. For one, Slee takes aim at Airbnb for flouting laws (such as health and safety regulations, city policies on rentals in order to control housing prices) while championing their corporate branding of authentic experiences for customers and financial freedom for Airbnb hosts. Most importantly, Slee looks at a wealth of data on Airbnb usage in different high-tourist cities to gauge the impact that Airbnb hosts have on housing prices and housing availability. Slee demonstrates the far-reaching effects are not limited to gentrification alone. For the example of Amsterdam, Slee concludes that while Airbnb is not the "primary driver of gentrification," it significantly "contributes to the problems of affordability and makes family housing worse." (36) This reading serves our research well because it provides more information about the many economic and political ramifications of Airbnb housing, especially as it lowers the quality of life for local residents. The purpose of the book was to provide an in-depth critique of the "sharing economy," so it is important to note that Slee denounces startups like Airbnb. The tone as well as the examples in this chapter may illustrate Slee's existing disapproval of Airbnb and its expansion in communities. As a digital storyteller, Slee includes many statistics in his writing as well as some data visualizations (cartographs) to help, which are undoubtedly valuable to our work as we try to use Airbnb data for our research questions. However, the source is limited in that this was published in 2017, and in the span of time leading to the present, Airbnb as a company has undergone yet more lawsuits and also withdrawn from some cities. That is something that we need to be aware of in our research.
Sokolowsky, Jennifer. “Asheville, North Carolina, Severely Restricts Short-Term Rentals.”
Avalara MyLodgeTax, Avalara, 27 Feb. 2018, www.avalara.com/mylodgetax/en/blog/2018/02/asheville-north-carolina-severely-restrict
S-short-term-rentals.html.
In the article, author, Jennifer Sokolowsky elaborates on the new law implemented by The Asheville City Council that places restrictions on short-term rental homes. Under the new restrictions, short-term rentals are required to get a special permission called “conditional zoning.” Also, new home vacation rentals are still allowed in areas categorized as “Resort,” and “homestays” are also permitted, this is when the host is present in the house during the guest stay. One of the motives for the implementation of these restrictions were due to the large number of residents who were converting their personal residence into short term rentals. This significant shift from personal residence homes to short term rentals can have lasting impact within the local economy, as hosts are given more flexibility to establish their own prices and influence rental prices. Within the span of two years, the number of short term rentals increased by 44 percent in the downtown area and 36 percent in the outside downtown area. Because Asheville is a popular tourist destination, there are many short-term rentals homes where in the year of 2017, Asheville Airbnb hosts earned the most in compared to any other hosts in the state. Tourism plays a significant role in their economy and has one of the highest employment rates in North Carolina, and it generates billions of dollars for local businesses and provides many jobs for local residence. Home Sharing apps, like HomeAway, VRBO, and Airbnb are required to collect and contribute to lodging taxes for the hosts. This is a very informative article that can benefit our researcher because it explains how city council members are concerned about the expansion of home sharing platforms and the impact it can have on their community. Also, it shows how cities should not wait for Airbnb and other home sharing platforms to place restrictions on their consumers, but rather cities themselves have to take action if they want to maintain the control of the number of home rentals in the area and the potential impact.
Törnberg, Petter, and Letizia Chiappini. “Selling Black Places on Airbnb: Colonial Discourse and the Marketing of Black Communities in New York City.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 52, no. 3 (May 2020): 553–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X19886321.
In this research article, Petter Törnberg and Letizia Chiappini criticize Airbnb and its consumer experience by specifically analyzing the difference on how white versus black individuals market predominantly black communities in New York on Airbnb. Their research shows how white hosts engage their guests through a historical perspective by promoting foreignness, elaborating on differences, and marketing the black culture as an immersive experience. Within the listings that white individuals post, there is a common theme that involves advertising the opportunity to experience the black New York community just like an exploration of a newly discovered territory. Populated cities like New York are the hub and marketplace of different identities, symbolism, life, and brands that drive the economic cycle, as it provides opportunities for many individuals despite their ethnicity. For instance, Airbnb prides themselves on the fact that they give anyone the opportunity to become self-entrepreneurs by putting themselves and their home out into the world, however, there will remain a solid line dividing who it benefits and who it does not benefit. The New York economy is not driven by local demands and interaction, but rather by global and national demands from tourism. Therefore, those national and global demands influence community decisions, like rent and representation, primarily made by those who control the surrounding real estate and property owners and are the ones who benefit from them too. While there are definitely black Airbnb hosts who benefit from the real estate capital, they advertise their community under a different light by promoting security and safety in their community, unlike their white counterparts. This is a very informative research article that heavily contributes to our research as it elaborates on the harmful effects of Airbnb on communities of color, as this effect on New York is also a mirror of other large cities in the nation. Also, it provides perspectives from both the white and black communities in which both contribute to the Airbnb system. In addition, the authors label a city like New York as a “symbolic economy” since there is a continuous creation of new symbols and identities with the intention to cultivate home-like feelings to visitors and tourists, but it is still a factor that displaces other cultures and communities. These self-entrepreneurs who use a platform like Airbnb have the ability to control the culture and community of their listing location. With the attempt to create a marketable community, other cultures are deprived and put to the side. The researcher’s findings are very beneficial to analyze the cultural and economic impact that Airbnb has on underserved communities.
Tremblay-Huet, Sabrina. "Making Sense of the Public Discourse on Airbnb and Labour:
What about Labour Rights?" In Law and the "Sharing Economy": Regulating
Online Market Platforms, edited by McKee Derek, Makela Finn, and Scassa Teresa,
393-420. University of Ottawa Press, 2018. Accessed October 29, 2020.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv5vdczv.16.
Tremblay-Huet analyzes the discourse on Airbnb, pointing out that the vast majority of Airbnb conversations overlook the labour rights of Airbnb hosts as well as that of hotel workers. She situates her argument in the context of labour rights in the tourist accommodation sector of Canada, particularly Quebec, which have been vastly changed by Airbnb. Considering that Airbnb hosts face restricted labour rights and the extended duties of self-employed workers, with an emphasis on how Airbnb hosts are not considered employees by the Airbnb company despite "Airbnb profiting enormously from these hosts, as the mediating platform between them and their guests" (397). By looking at legal regulations and the discrepancies with official Airbnb policy, Tremblay-Huet presents a convincing argument that Airbnb hosts need to be extended labour rights and protections, and just as importantly, customers must be aware of these issues if participating in the Airbnb economy. As Tremblay-Huet concludes, the hedonistic spirit of leisure tourism can "contribute to complicity in reproducing existing social subordinations" (22) and further exacerbate issues with labour rights." Tremblay-Huet's work is helpful for our research because it addresses our aim of investigating the labor costs of Airbnb as they intersect with age, race, and income level. Additionally, Tremblay-Huet's perspective on the importance of labour rights helps our research into the human costs that Airbnb hosting has on the individuals who list their homes. As a lecturer in Law at the University of Sherbrooke, Tremblay-Huet has extensive experience writing about labour rights and law. The purpose of this article is to provide an insightful clarification on the Airbnb economy, and suggest a course of action for future discourse. A limitation of this source is that it is centered on the Canadian Airbnb market and may not fully describe. However, as Tremblay-Huet only uses Quebec as an context to frame her argument, her work still applies to Airbnb's model in cities around the globe.
Wachsmuth, David, and Alexander Weisler. "Airbnb and the rent gap: Gentrification
through the sharing economy." Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
50, no. 6 (2018): 1147-1170.
David Wachsmuth and Alexander Weisler analyze the effects of Airbnb’s presence in New York in terms of impact to the housing market and tourism in the article Airbnb and the rent gap: Gentrification through the sharing economy. The authors start by detailing the political history behind Airbnb through the company’s public disputes regarding tax loopholes and withholding of records. Unlike hotels Airbnb is able to avoid certain taxes, in addition to having this advantage in the market the service also contributes to issues of gentrification. The authors argue that the new revenue flow of short term leasing creates a new form of a rent gap that invites gentrification. The appeal of short term leasing takes away affordable housing options off the market, leaving more the more expensive options and increasing the cost of permanent residence. Additionally this happens disproportionately depending on area popularity, which is what makes this type of rent gap unique. Rather than a steady rent gap over time due to redevelopment, Airbnb instead creates a sharp increase advancing before any need of redevelopment. The authors end by prompting further research to explore the effects of redistributed economic activity, uneven development, and displacement while also opening up to the possibility of policies to approach these issues. This article would be useful to support our narrative with details of the political debates surrounding Airbnb which prompt a need for regulation, similar to our analysis of Airbnb’s overdominance in the hospitality market. The article also provides analysis on the unique type of gentrification Airbnb creates.
Wegmann, Jake, and Junfeng Jiao. “Taming Airbnb: Toward Guiding Principles for Local
Regulation of Urban Vacation Rentals Based on Empirical Results from Five US
Cities,” October 6, 2017.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264837717305409.
Wegmann acknowledges within the past few years, urban rental properties have grown at an extremely fast rate. This is nothing new, but with a change in how things were marketed, the industry has grown immensely and it has also been slowly shedding light on the negative effects of this form of renting properties out. Wegmann in this article looks at how AirBnB and its industry is affecting everyday housing markets as well as environments across the United States. Wegmann takes a look into the attempts to control urban vacation rental by drawing results from five major U.S. cities. This article is helpful to our research as we’re interested in the impacts AirBnB can have on quality of life, land use, and housing market prices. Wegmann finds that the rental housing market impacts that Airbnb brings seem to only be notable within a citywide scale such as in San Francisco, CA. And within New York city, commercial operators tend to account for the vast majority of the Airbnb activity. Limitations from this article would be the fact that the data that was used for this article were scraped from AirBnB themselves. They also mention it themselves that an ideal source would be from the company’s internal records rather than what AirBnB has for the public to view.