Sen. Elizabeth Warren is reportedly still in the running to be Hillary Clinton’s Vice President, and while her attacks on big banks are popular with a Clinton target demographic—millennials—her new crusade against Airbnb probably won’t do much to endear her to the under-35 crowd.
Along with several other Democratic senators, Warren is calling for a full investigation of the sharing economy, and specifically, the sharing rental market.
In an angry letter to the Federal Trade Commission, Warren and colleagues Sens. Brian Schatz and Dianne Feinstein demand to know what the FTC is doing to curb these short-term rental agreements, including Airbnb, VRBO and others. Claiming that the sharing economy undercuts “middle class values” by encouraging regular people to operate small-time rental operations, Warren and her colleagues insist that something must be done to end such capitalistic nonsense.
The group also claims that allowing a short-term rental market undercuts affordable housing and encourages racial discrimination, since individual homeowners who lease out their property for days or weekends at a time aren’t bound by the same non-discrimination policies as hotels.
Airbnb insists its site caters to middle-class users looking to make extra money on the side, not large conglomerates renting out vacation homes or bed and breakfasts en masse. Per Airbnb, the typical website user makes less than $8,000 a year renting out their spare bedroom or apartment during peak times.
At the same time, millennials as a group are pretty avid users of Airbnb: According to one estimate, 25% of that demographic uses the service when they travel.
But the impetus behind Warren’s Airbnb attack is pretty clear. The AFL-CIO, whose PAC gives generously to Democrats, has been after Airbnb for years at the behest of the Motel and Hotel Trades Council. That’s likely why Democrats in cities like New York and San Francisco have been desperate to crack down on Airbnb operating within their boundaries: Airbnb undercuts hotel profits in major tourist cities.
It’s probably no surprise that the AFL-CIO has been especially generous to Sen. Warren. That means that Warren has taken a lot of money from special interests to promote policies diametrically opposed to millennial interest.
