How the sharing app has affected local neighborhoods
It’s undeniable that Airbnb, which operates as an online space for hosting or renting short-term lodging, has changed the way people travel. Often touted as a way to experience a place “like a local,” it’s true that a stay in an Airbnb can add local flavor to any trip.
Rather than a generic, impersonal hotel located near the highway, Airbnb puts travelers in real neighborhoods, often straight into people’s guest bedrooms. The hosts can interact with their guests, which leads to fun connections, and the guests get to enjoy the comforts and quirks of a real home.
On top of these benefits, there’s the financial payoff as well. Airbnbs are often cheaper than comparable hotel rooms, benefitting the traveler, and Airbnb is a great way to put an underutilized guest bedroom to use, putting money right into the pocket of the host.
So, what’s the downside?
Well, some people are concerned that the model of the cozy guest bedroom in a local home is becoming more the exception than the rule. In many cities, homes and apartments are being turned into exclusive Airbnb properties with no permanent residents at all. This is often (though not always) the case when an entire home is available for rent instead of just a single room.
In Chattanooga’s St. Elmo neighborhood alone, there are at least twenty listings for whole-house accommodations, and while every one of these might not be purely Airbnb properties, many of them are. So what does this mean for the health of the neighborhood, and the city as a whole?
Studies on Airbnb data have shown that an excess of Airbnb properties in a city removes housing from the market and drives up rent, resulting in gentrification. Also, it has the potential to slowly turn thriving neighborhoods into ghost towns, as available properties are snatched up not by eager homeowners ready to put down roots, but by commercial operators.
Airbnb can also have a negative effect on a city’s most popular tourist areas. In New Orleans, where tourism is high, hotspots like Bourbon Street are rapidly losing residents as desirable properties are increasingly converted into lucrative Airbnbs.
In some cities like New York City and Portland where residents have complained about these effects, Airbnb has instituted a “One Host, One Home” policy, meaning that hosts can’t list more than one rental. Unfortunately, this policy has proved difficult to enforce, and for Chattanooga, it doesn’t exist.
Even with these potential issues, Airbnb is a great way for visitors of Chattanooga to experience the best parts of the city, and it has other positive effects as well.
The board of the neighborhood association of St. Elmo notes the way that Airbnb has caused beautification in the neighborhood, stating that “a few contractors and residents of St. Elmo have taken some pretty unattractive homes and turned them into attractive properties, which benefits the neighborhood as a whole.”
To stay informed, it’s easy to hop onto Airbnb, type in your neighborhood, and look through the available listings. Maybe it’s a good topic to bring up at your next neighborhood association meeting. Either way, the long-term effects of Airbnb in Chattanooga remain to be seen.