October 27
For The Many
In the 1980s, many of us used to house exchange for a cheap and intimate way of visiting foreign countries. I exchanged houses at least five times during those years, making lasting friendships with the families that stayed in my house while I and my family enjoyed theirs. We even exchanged cars for the summer.
Part of the enjoyment was reading about all the homes that were being offered for exchange. For $15 you could post pictures and descriptions of your own house, and gain access to the hundreds of foreign house owners eager for an inexpensive vacation in the US. Matching was all done the old fashioned way, with an exchange of letters and pictures of the family. And living in someone else's house had its own rewards. You often ended up meeting their friends, and shopping in the stores that they recommended.
House exchanges have gone the way of the web these days. There are web publications of homes being offered, and instantaneous offers readily available. What used to take weeks of planning, now can be done in an afternoon.
Like many successful programs, however, house and apartment exchanges have become commercialized. Services like Air BnB make connections with other families a breeze. And you are often more protected by a long list of previous tenant evaluations. Now you can book a couple of days stay in a foreign country in less time than it used to take writing one letter.
But turning the process over to large corporations has its downsides. Air Bnb are not exchanges; they are short term rentals. You don't get to know anyone, and even your access to a foreign home is little more than a six digit code that you enter into a designated locked box. Soon, investors were buying up whole buildings to turn all their apartments into rentals. Halls were filled with tourists towing their luggage for a two night's stay. And what parties could be thrown if you didn't have to pick up all the broken dishes in the morning.
Soon tourist areas in some the the major cities were all Air BnB. Parts of Rome, Venice, and Florance ceased being real neighborhoods. The buildings were owned by distant investors, who drove up prices while they were converting more and more homes into cash paying rentals. The process made real estate more valuable, and working families just couldn't compete.
Looking at the Hudson Valley, we see the same process at work. Families can't afford to buy property that is owned by distant landlords and reserved for short term rentals. And this is where public good is destroyed for private gain. For fortunes are rarely made by simply providing necessary services. The real profit comes from destroying some measure of the public good. Whether you are warming the planet by oil production, addicting whole segments of society by selling opioids, or turning millions of homes into short term rentals to the affluent, the payoff is the same. The real fortunes are made by robbing the rest of us.
