[HN Gopher] Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as resid...
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Airbnb raises violent crime rates in cities as residents are pushed
out
Author : privateprofile
Score : 83 points
Date : 2021-07-21 21:22 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euronews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euronews.com)
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| This was recently discussed on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27859115
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Researchers find correlation assume causation...
| ineptech wrote:
| I think your beef is with the author of the headline, not the
| study.
| agallant wrote:
| We use difference-in-difference models (Eq (1)) to test whether
| a rise in the prevalence of Airbnb in a census tract in one
| year predicts increases in crime and disorder in the following
| year. ... The models control for tract-level and
| year fixed effects. In order to make the parameter estimates
| that follow more interpretable, we note that the average census
| tract in the average year experienced 11.32 events of private
| conflict, 7.68 events of public social disorder, and 28.58
| events of public violence per 1,000 residents.
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn...
|
| I've not dug into the study enough to vouch for its quality as
| a whole - but it's clear the researchers are plenty aware of
| the differences between correlation and causation and are at
| least attempting to address them. This is actually often the
| case with scientific papers, even if it's lost in the media
| coverage of them.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Is it fair to say "a rise in the prevalence of Airbnb in a
| census tract in one year predicts increases in crime and
| disorder in the following year."? Probably yea, that just
| implies a correlation. Is it fair to say "airbnb raises
| violent crime in cities"? I think you'd need an rct for that
| one.
| agallant wrote:
| The sentence you're concerned with is the headline of the
| article, but isn't found in the original paper. Here's how
| they close their abstract: This result
| supports the notion that the prevalence of Airbnb listings
| erodes the natural ability of a neighborhood to prevent
| crime, but does not support the interpretation that
| elevated numbers of tourists bring crime with them.
|
| "Supports the notion" is a far more nuanced statement, I'd
| say.
|
| And again - I'm just responding to the idea that saying
| "correlation is not causation" can allow one to dismiss any
| statistical study. The study may have flaws, may overstate
| its results, could be completely terrible in fact - but the
| people who did it know about correlation and causation, and
| refuting them requires going deeper than that. In general,
| it requires looking at their paper, not the news coverage
| of it.
| mc32 wrote:
| It's possible it might mean fewer long-time residents
| means fewer people knowing the state and characteristics
| of a neighborhood and thus fewer people to notice
| patterns and know what's out of place and not, so fewer
| people to intervene against anti-social behavior and
| fewer people calling the cops, so it goes down hill. A
| tourist might not care about antisocial behavior that
| does not affect them. Mugging, breaking and entering,
| theft, etc. Whereas locals would have a stake in the
| health of their neighborhood and intervene.
| Retric wrote:
| Many properties spending significant time empty seems
| like another huge issue.
| gowld wrote:
| Not really. The article cites wild speculation made by the
| study authors:
|
| "The large-scale conversion of housing units into short-term
| rentals undermines a neighborhood's social organization, and
| in turn its natural ability...to counteract and discourage
| crime,"
|
| and the research reeks of p-hacking and non-reproducibility:
|
| Spain: >"It encourages the concentration of
| tourists who, due to their characteristics, are suitable
| targets for victimisation," Maldonado-Guzman said.
|
| but in Boston:
|
| > The researchers found that there was a positive correlation
| between higher penetration of Airbnb properties in an area -
| for example buildings containing multiple Airbnb lets - and a
| rise in violence. However, crime types associated with rowdy
| visitors, like drunkenness and noise complaints, as well as
| private conflicts, did not increase.
|
| > "It's not the number of Airbnb tourists who stay in a
| neighborhood that causes an increase in criminal activities,"
| said Professor Babak Heydari from Northeastern University.
| agallant wrote:
| Again, not vouching for the study as a whole - and agreed
| that scientists can get a bit "creative" when trying to
| actually describe and motivate causal mechanisms (in their
| defense, a very hard problem).
|
| But I'm just talking about the statistics here, and
| specifically that saying "correlation is not causation" is
| a bit overused. Researchers know about it too, those four
| words don't magically dismiss all statistical studies. Most
| modern statistical approaches are explicitly built to try
| and help address these sorts of concerns.
|
| There could well be other flaws with their statistics, and
| even if there is causation they could be failing at
| theoretically motivating or connecting it to their overall
| narrative. But it takes more than four words to make that
| case.
|
| EDIT - just acknowledging that you've since edited your
| comment to add concerns about p-hacking and
| reproducibility. And that may be the case - but it wasn't
| what I was responding to in my initial comment.
| disabled wrote:
| > But I'm just talking about the statistics here, and
| specifically that saying "correlation is not causation"
| is a bit overused.
|
| I think that term has erupted into popularity with the
| widespread adoption of AI, which is intellectually
| bankrupt. With AI you can find correlation between
| things, and draw a very basic rudimentary conclusion, but
| never actually know why this happens (the causation), in
| this day and age.
|
| For example, let's apply an unethical use of AI. Let's
| say an individual goes to the grocery store weekly and
| buys a dozen eggs and 1 container of dry shampoo (for
| washing your hair without water), every single week for
| the past 2 months. With AI and the hoarding of data, it
| can be found that this individual is going to die in the
| next 6 months to a 95% confidence interval.
|
| You get harassing ads during this, even if you are not
| going to die. The ads, of course, in this day and age,
| play into your hopes and fears anyways, which is abusive.
| in_cahoots wrote:
| It's an overused phrase because it's so often true. The
| analysis acknowledges the possibility of confounding
| variables but only makes a weak attempt to address it,
| using demographic info, income, and homeownership rates.
| This is the definition of a correlational approach. And
| to make matters worse they throw in some hypothesizing
| about Airbnb eroding the 'local social dynamic'.
|
| 'Causal linkage' is great in theory. In reality it often
| shows directionality but not causality. This is a prime
| example.
| agallant wrote:
| So, you're saying because past research has been
| correlated with causality violations, we should just
| assume it's the case when we see claims of this sort? ;)
|
| More seriously - I'm well aware of the difficulties of
| causality, and use causal direction as a great
| illustration of them. As I've said in pretty much every
| comment here - I'm not championing the study, I simply
| haven't done a deep enough pass to have a strong opinion,
| and it may have any number of subtle flaws (off the cuff
| my biggest concern is that they're focused on one city,
| and I'd like to see similar results elsewhere, preferably
| in different geographic areas and cultures).
|
| In other words, yes - more controls like you said. But I
| am responding to the overuse of a simple statistical
| argument in the face of studies that, whatever flaws they
| have, are not cases of "the researcher forgot the
| controls." Demographics, income, and homeownership are
| actually not bad features to have I'd say, and again it
| seems like most of the large claims bothering people are
| from the coverage and not the research. It'd be nice for
| people claiming to refute research to read what they're
| refuting.
| DoubleDerper wrote:
| The AirBnb "effect" has directly led to increased home prices. A
| home turning a profit thus becomes more important than how its
| guests impact a neighborhood and community. Ignoring or spinning
| the social costs is a primary goal of Airbnb's PR machine. It has
| made many neighborhoods more transitory (i.e. less homesteading,
| more short term rentals). Acknowledge the social costs to
| community and it's not surprising to read that violent crime
| rates are trending up where AirBnbs thrive.
| trident5000 wrote:
| We had anti-hoarding measures on masks but dont seem to have
| them on homes. Every additional income property you own (and
| used as such) should have an escalating hoarding penalty.
| tehjoker wrote:
| These penalties are never high enough to actually discourage
| the behavior. It's better to just ban accumulating more than
| X homes, where X could be as low as 1.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Im good with that idea on investment properties. Though I
| have no issue with people having vacation homes. Theres a
| natural limit to how many vacation homes someone can have
| without a revenue source on the asset.
| hamburgerwah wrote:
| This is similar to how most murders in the US were caused by
| Internet Explorer usage: https://i.redd.it/4h8emlr5z3c41.jpg
| handmodel wrote:
| The article doesn't mention it - and I can't find it anywhere -
| but in any neighborhood what is the highest proportion of units
| that are short-term rentals. Five percent? Ten percent in the
| super touristy areas? I have no idea and even before the other
| flaws in the study I am skeptical than anything short of 20%
| would make an impact on any major attribute of an area.
|
| I see one stat in the paper that "40% of buildings had airbnb
| listings in some tracts" but if the buildings had 10 units in
| them each this still may mean a relatively small number of total
| listings were from Airbnbs. In fact, even in Boston there are
| some tracts where I suppose that the average building must have
| 30+ units which would meant that if 60% of buildings had no
| listing the total percentage of listings that are Airbnbs is
| relatively small.
|
| >higher levels of violent crime did not appear immediately after
| Airbnb listings became available to tourists, but rather
| developed over the course of several years, the researchers said.
|
| Alternative theory. Every area had some Airbnbs. In neighborhoods
| that were being wealthier/more popular/had more jobs decided it
| was easier to just do long-term rentals. In areas where landlords
| had trouble renting them out to anyone long-term (because locals
| know if a neighborhood is nice or not) they turned more units
| into Airbnbs because outsiders don't know/don't care.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| My neighborhood has got to be at least 33% vacation rentals,
| with a few streets being above 50%.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Preface: this is just my opinion at this moment.
|
| I feel like trying to attribute specific numbers to the
| article's phenomenon is sort of a waste.
|
| It really only takes one individual who is significantly
| disruptive to change the perception of trust and safety in any
| given region. The only limit (where percentages and such start
| creeping in) is in the physical reach that individual has.
| Anybody who has lived in the same neighborhood as "that guy"
| knows this to be true.
|
| When "that guy" becomes more, the physical area may not change,
| but the level of trust and safety might, and that itself can
| propagate to other areas through gossip, news coverage, etc.
|
| I don't have much of a point, I just wanted to say that the
| upper limit of "number of people required to make a place feel
| unsafe" is exactly one.
| handmodel wrote:
| As you said if there is a "that guy" in a neighborhood you'd
| feel unsafe and Airbnb is displacing those people. It's a
| trade-off. Its not like this about adding units to a
| neighborhood but specifically that there is less community if
| that's the case there are lots of Airbnbs (they said in the
| article that noise complains and crimes leading to rowdy
| behavior did not change).
|
| If someone was on the fence about whether this community
| effect is real - after a single study - wouldn't knowing if
| 5% of units are Airbnb's are rentals versus 40% be enough to
| change your conclusions? My prior is that a community cannot
| be eroded by 10% of unknown people since that is standard for
| any tight-knit neighborhood anyway.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| FYI: Bay Area motels try to size up guests to see if their room
| will be used for a high school/college party pad.
|
| For the past 30 years.
|
| So if professional lodging managers with on-site security are
| worried about each potential guest, I guarantee app rentals are
| out of control.
| zucker42 wrote:
| With regards to your "alternate theory" here's a relevant line
| in the paper.
|
| > To further test the direction of causality for the results,
| we use a lag/lead analysis in the spirit of Granger [33, 34].
| This method is used when the sample includes multiple years and
| uses both lead and lagged versions of the treatment variable (t
| can be both positive and negative).
|
| I don't have enough experience in econometrics/statistics to
| evaluate this technique. But I would assume they've determined
| that the increase in crimes lags behind the increase in
| AirBNBs.
| TroisM wrote:
| > but in any neighborhood what is the highest proportion of
| units that are short-term rentals.
|
| I have seen areas close to 100%... in Hollywood, FL (not Airbnb
| though...)
| timwaagh wrote:
| Maybe criminals like staying at Airbnb. They have the cash after
| all and Airbnb can easily be used to hide ones identity.
| dntrkv wrote:
| They specifically point out the increase in crime is not from
| the Airbnb tourists.
| timwaagh wrote:
| I read that a bit differently. They noted that typical
| tourism related crimes did not usually increase but other
| crime did.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Sounds like good material for this website:
| https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
| tptacek wrote:
| We're considering an Airbnb ordinance where I live. A major
| motivating factor is that Airbnbs are used frequently here to
| stage parties. It's difficult for homeowners to effectively
| police their properties for these (part of the reason they're
| Airbnb'ing them is that they're not living in the immediate
| vicinity).
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| In the book "Evicted" by Matthew Desmond he discusses how high
| turnover in residents negatively affects a neighborhood's sense
| of community. The book is insightful. Depressing but still
| insightful.
|
| https://www.evictedbook.com/
|
| Editorial: This is one of things that led me to conclude that
| poverty is more than a financial condition. In fact, more and
| more I believe that poverty is a symptom of other "conditions."
| Conditions that aggregate to manifest and perpetuate poverty.
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