zlacker

>>halduj+(OP)
The dynamic is a little different than in most other cities. What's really happening here is that cheap rent is a kind of entitlement in Berlin: rent controls extend across tenants so getting an apartment is really about persuading a landlord to take you rather than bidding at an appropriate price point. AirBnB gets around this by allowing rentals at arbitrary price points. This is true whether it's an owner or a renter doing the leasing, which is very different from other markets in which it's mostly a concern of renters abusing their leases.

> "The Berlin Senate’s ruling nonetheless reflects a general feeling across a city in which homes are getting harder to find: Berliners have had enough and they want their city back."

Translation: There is no pricing mechanism on rents in the city and it is becoming increasingly impossible to find an apartment.

While it's certainly true that AirBnB essentially allows landlords to flout the law, it's worth noting that the adverse effects of price ceilings on supply are the root cause of Berlin's problems and this will not solve the underlying problem of rents being far from equilibrium.

>>jvm+ih
A free market price would not fix anything - every tiny bit of flatland is already used. What you are saying is basically: Only rich people should have the right to live in central districts. I disagree and so do most Berliners.

>>doener+fl
What mechanism do you use to choose who can live in a central district, if not the ability to pay market rent?

Right to live where you are born? That adversely affects anyone not born in a central district.

>>d_t_w+Jl
Right to live where you work seems to be a good one. The problem with AirBNB isn't about too many people living in an area like SF, it's about local population being displaced in favor of richer, temporary visitors.

It's certainly a nice thing to be able to travel and visit other cultures and countries. But the advent of massive international transportation combined with few tourism hotspots has created a tourism industry that can outprice locals, and thus destroy the cultures that created the artefacts they show to tourists.

>>pyrale+UM

   Right to live where you work seems to be a good one.

The people who work in the center (often government, large companies) are usually also the most well-off, so living close to work is to a good approximation what you'd get with market prices.

   temporary visitors.

Temporary visitors typically visit the center which is where most of the cultural landmarks as well as the party-infrastructure is located.

If we generalise the "live where you work" to "stay where you spend most of your time, then it makes a lot of sense for the visitors to be housed in the centre. Otherwise you force a large amount of commuting on them. For course that doesn't matter much for each individual visitor because they are around only for a short time, but that's not the right metric. It means that Berlin's infrastructure is heavily taxed with all that unnecessary commuting by (every changing) visitors.

>>mafrib+xo1
> If we generalise the "live where you work" to "stay where you spend most of your time, then it makes a lot of sense for the visitors to be housed in the centre.

The thing is, it completely reverses the meaning of my point, which was based on concern priority, not transportation efficiency. To me, it seems important that people whose home, job and lifestyle/culture is at stake are treated preferably to people for whom the city is just a tmporary leisure.

By making sure that visitors don't effect too much locals, we also promote a kind of tourism which promotes hospitality, and which ensures that the object of visits is not destroyed by tourism consumption.