Buzzcocks – Noise Annoys
When we moved into the house we live in now, there were a handful of families with kids, like ours, and a larger number of retired people. Lots of old ladies living in big houses by themselves. Most of the kids have grown up and moved out and new families with young kids have been priced out.
At the same time, many of the elderly neighbors have downsized or needed some assistance so they sold their houses. This has created the perfect environment for people with tons of money to swoop in. Rarely the buyer actually lives there. Sometimes they keep it as a second home, but most of the time they make some minor renovations and they rent it out as an Airbnb. This annoys the crap out of me.
In the first place, it turns our neighborhood into a ghost town for much of the week. Then there’s the fact that it’s made housing impossible to come by. No one is going to rent to someone long term for a reasonable price when they can make that same amount of money renting it out for a weekend. When people do rent these big houses for a few days, there are so many people and cars that our normally quiet street is suddenly noisy. Not for nothing, it also means one less voter lives here now.
The house across the street from us sold a year and a half ago. The woman who lived there was a widow and really couldn’t keep up this giant five bedroom house anymore. The guy who bought it had grown up in the area and his parents had a house in the next town over. He and his wife had had a baby and we thought they were looking to relocate to be near family and out of the city, or at least have a summer place. They spent a year making small changes. Then all of a sudden one weekend there were four cars there and lots of people. At first I thought they had just let friends stay there, but when it happened again I went online and sure enough, Airbnb. They are charging something like $800 a night. If you have five couples staying there, it works out to be a bargain, I guess, but now it’s ten people having a party weekend instead of a 70-something year old widow. I am not happy.
Just on my block, on our side of the street only, out of eight houses, there are four that are either second homes the owner uses infrequently or Airbnbs. The other side of the street is pretty much the same.
I’ve never understood why people who rent are seen as undesirable. Transient. We have lived in our house for 20 years now and at this point, we’re the ones who have lived in the neighborhood the longest. The transient ones are the seven cars parked on the street and doubled up in the driveway across the street, partying all weekend.
Noisy Cats 