美国国家公共电台 NPR This Digital Sheriff Helps Cities Wrangle Airbnb Rules

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Airbnb and other short-term rental¹ sites, I mean, they seem like a great model, right? One person gets a place to stay on vacation; the other get some cash for loaning out their home. But there are now more than a million rentals² in residential³ neighborhoods, and this is creating problems for cities and towns. NPR's Chris Arnold reports on an entrepreneur who is trying to tame this Wild West rental landscape.

CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE⁴: There's a new sheriff in town - actually, a lot of towns - and his name is Binzer.

ULRIK BINZER: Yeah, Ulrik Binzer.

ARNOLD: OK, and it's Ulrik?

BINZER: Yeah, Ulrik. Yeah.

ARNOLD: You said...

BINZER: Ulrik is fine. It's fine. It's a Danish name, and it's weird⁵. No one can say it (laughter).

ARNOLD: OK, it's not so weird. But anyway, Binzer works in Silicon⁶ Valley, and all this started when he and his family were flying back to Denmark to visit relatives. He used to rent out his house on Airbnb, and that'd pay for the whole trip. But then his town banned short-term rentals like Airbnbs.

BINZER: Basically, no debate - just sort of was an agenda item. No one knew about it. But when I saw it in the newspaper, I obviously got interested, mostly out of self-interest at the time.

ARNOLD: You're like, hey, wait a minute - this is paying for my trip back to Europe.

BINZER: Yeah, exactly. That was exactly what happened.

ARNOLD: Binzer thought, why ban Airbnb rentals? I mean, this is hurting me. What's going on? So he went to a town meeting and started reading up - this was four years ago - and he realized that cities were really struggling with short-term rentals.

SEAN BRAISTED: Here in Nashville, we had a problem.

ARNOLD: Sean Braisted works in the code enforcement department in Nashville, Tenn. He says, for one thing, it's been hard to get homeowners to get rental permits and pay taxes on the rental income. But also, he says, Nashville is a big party town.

BRAISTED: And so we would have problems with essentially⁷ party houses that would, you know, try to pull as many beds into one house as possible and cram⁸ as many people in there.

ARNOLD: The city was getting complaints about what was going on in the house or the yard next door.

BRAISTED: We've had complaints about people allegedly having sex parties to doing all sorts of things within short-term rental properties.

ARNOLD: The city only allows Airbnb-type rentals in residential neighborhoods if the house is your primary residence. That's to cut down on investor-owned party houses or just too many investor-owned short-term rentals. But Braisted says the rules were hard to enforce. For one thing, you often don't see the actual address of the property on a site until you agree to rent it. So Ulrik Binzer, back in California, he realized cities trying to enforce this...

BINZER: It was like bringing a knife to a gunfight, right? The traditional way that cities manage compliance⁹ is a very manual method, right? So they essentially go and do a drive-by, or they try to book the property so they can get the address. And then they catch them, and it's sort of like a sting operation. It was like, you can't do that when you have thousands of these, right? So...

ARNOLD: So Binzer saw an opportunity to use his technology background to help get all this under control. He got some software developers on board, and they knocked together a bare-bones startup company.

BINZER: We went out and started talking to cities and very quickly got to something like 20 customers, like, within a couple of months.

ARNOLD: Fast forward to today, and Binzer says his company - it's called Host Compliance - is working with more than 300 towns and cities across the U.S. and Canada. Nashville is one of them. The city is using Binzer's technology to see if properties on the short-term rental sites have the right permits. Back in the Nashville permit office, Braisted explains...

BRAISTED: They crawl the Internet through those sites, and then they match those up with property records, assessor photos of the front of the properties.

ARNOLD: Binzer says his company uses artificial intelligence software to figure out the address and the owner, then people renting without a permit are told to get one or stop renting. And in Nashville, Braisted says, in just two years, the city is bringing in 50% more money each year in short-term rental taxes, and the crackdown has found 2,500 rental operators who are breaking the rules. So what does Airbnb itself think about all this? Spokesman Christopher Nulty didn't want to talk about any one specific company, but...

CHRISTOPHER NULTY: We just don't think that the best approach here is for cities to turn that responsibility over to another company whose sole responsibility is to, you know, tattle on people.

ARNOLD: Nulty says there are privacy concerns, and he says, well, you know, what's next? Are cities going to start hiring companies to check, if you buy a sink at the Home Depot¹⁰, that you've got a plumbing¹¹ permit? Ulrik Binzer says, look - he knows that Airbnb and the other sites are not his biggest fans.

BINZER: But I think, in the long run, they all realize that if this is just the Wild West, the pendulum¹² is going to swing the other direction, and there's going to be so many restrictions¹³ that it will destroy their business.

ARNOLD: Airbnb has been getting into legal battles with cities over, among other things, how much information it needs to hand over for enforcement. Binzer says his company lets cities get around that tug¹⁴ of war and get what they need to enforce the law.

Chris Arnold, NPR News.

1 rental   

n.租赁，出租，出租业

参考例句：

• The yearly rental of her house is 2400 yuan.她这房子年租金是2400元。
• We can organise car rental from Chicago O'Hare Airport.我们可以安排提供从芝加哥奥黑尔机场出发的租车服务。

2 rentals   

n.租费，租金额( rental的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• In some large hotels, the income derived from this source actually exceeds income from room rentals. 有些大旅馆中，这方面的盈利实际上要超过出租客房的盈利。 来自辞典例句
• Clerk: Well, Canadian Gifts is on the lower level. It's across from Prime Time Video Rentals. 噢，礼品店在楼下，在黄金时刻录像出租屋的对面。 来自口语例句

3 residential   

adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的

参考例句：

• The mayor inspected the residential section of the city.市长视察了该市的住宅区。
• The residential blocks were integrated with the rest of the college.住宿区与学院其他部分结合在了一起。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

6 silicon   

n.硅(旧名矽)

参考例句：

• This company pioneered the use of silicon chip.这家公司开创了使用硅片的方法。
• A chip is a piece of silicon about the size of a postage stamp.芯片就是一枚邮票大小的硅片。

7 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

8 cram   

v.填塞，塞满，临时抱佛脚，为考试而学习

参考例句：

• There was such a cram in the church.教堂里拥挤得要命。
• The room's full,we can't cram any more people in.屋里满满的，再也挤不进去人了。

9 compliance   

n.顺从；服从；附和；屈从

参考例句：

• I was surprised by his compliance with these terms.我对他竟然依从了这些条件而感到吃惊。
• She gave up the idea in compliance with his desire.她顺从他的愿望而放弃自己的主意。

10 depot   

n.仓库，储藏处；公共汽车站；火车站

参考例句：

• The depot is only a few blocks from here.公共汽车站离这儿只有几个街区。
• They leased the building as a depot.他们租用这栋大楼作仓库。

11 plumbing   

n.水管装置；水暖工的工作；管道工程v.用铅锤测量（plumb的现在分词）；探究

参考例句：

• She spent her life plumbing the mysteries of the human psyche. 她毕生探索人类心灵的奥秘。
• They're going to have to put in new plumbing. 他们将需要安装新的水管。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 pendulum   

n.摆，钟摆

参考例句：

• The pendulum swung slowly to and fro.钟摆在慢慢地来回摆动。
• He accidentally found that the desk clock did not swing its pendulum.他无意中发现座钟不摇摆了。

13 restrictions   

约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则）

参考例句：

• I found the restrictions irksome. 我对那些限制感到很烦。
• a snaggle of restrictions 杂乱无章的种种限制

14 tug   

v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船

参考例句：

• We need to tug the car round to the front.我们需要把那辆车拉到前面。
• The tug is towing three barges.那只拖船正拖着三只驳船。