My home is my castle
BY ANDREW WOODHOUSE
My home is my castle. It’s where I live unchained. I pay my mortgage, strata levies and rates. It belongs to me and I’m not giving it up or allowing it to be degraded. I’m defending my way of life.
Bring up the drawbridge, lower the portcullis, unleash the crocodiles into the moat, man the battlements. We are at war.
Why? When Sydney Council granted DA approval for my block as “residential apartments” it couldn’t be offices, short-term serviced apartments, a hostel or brothel.
Now they’re backtracking and want to grant a “licence”, magically overruling its original DA, so anyone from anywhere can move in for a night or two using new planning laws. But council’s idea is unworkable as it doesn’t have auto-powers of entry.
Forthcoming state government legislation due in April supports this free-for-all because of something called Airbnb: a mega-American on-line company and self-interest lobby group.
Like Stayz.com.au, it’s a bed and breakfast booking website swamping the airwaves offering lucrative short-term rentals. Airbnb takes cuts from all directions: 3% of rental from landlords, 3% from the renter and another 3% if overseas currency is involved. My landlord friend swears by it.
But it’s a free market isn’t it? Well, not absolutely free.
These unknown multi-arrivals and departures are strangers, not neighbours. They’re security risks, some trash apartments, leaving trails of destruction behind them and increased levies for all owners. Maestri Towers in the CBD drove out Airbnb and saved millions and reduced their levies.
Airbnb reduces affordable housing. It pushes up site rentals and squeezes out long-term lessees, reducing real estate agents’ role, who control the quality of tenants. It suffocates real hotels, where clean rooms are guaranteed and I don’t have to share a kitchenette or haggle over water usage with landlords.
Airbnb admits candidly, “most listings are let while the host residents [landlords] live there.” Too cosy for me.
Landlords use their new income to cover their mortgage or holidays, exacerbating the problem.
With Airbnb you may need to book a year in advance and be bi-lingual. Each site is very different. Check-in and out times vary enormously. Large pre-booking bonds apply. Resident hosts can cancel any time, even on arrival. And if things go “missing” because of your light-fingered landlord or the electrics are faulty? Your problem. The unit doesn’t match the ad photos or the bond isn’t refunded? Your problem.
Airbnb’s hands are clean: they’re just an on-line match-maker.
Chris Reedy, author of “What‘s Yours Is Mine”, says Airbnb externalises its costs and sidesteps valid consumer laws: it’s unsustainable, unaccountable and doesn’t take responsibility for services offered.
But Rachel Botsman, author of pro-Airbnb book, “What’s Mine Is Yours”, says this co-share system is inevitable and redefines how we live — my point exactly. And Fairfax media, owners of Stayz.com.au last week used scare tactics to claim changing by-laws was underhand.
It’s no wonder other cities like Berlin, New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Chicago, London and Paris are pushing back.
Now a collective of big Owners’ Corporations are hiring sharp political lobbyists, APA, and raising $300,000 for a counter attack.
Our one-stop-shop Minister for Planning, Environment, Heritage and whatever else, the religious, righteous, Honourable Doctor Robert Gordon Stokes, B.A, LL.M., Ph.D., Dip. Bibl. Stud. states, “Impacts on housing affordability are being considered … short-term letting creates economic opportunities … party houses are a real concern.”
Doh. It’s not just about parties, Bob; it’s about my right to enjoy my long-term chosen environment.
Let me live in peace or I will re-enact the scene from the film “UP”. A disenchanted owner uses a sea of balloons to lift their home skyward out of reach of the clutches of developers and government land-grabbers.
