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.
I think it is a perception issue primarily and I think pretty hard to quantify though I can share my own experience: some time back neighbors sold and new owners came in and turned it into an airbnb.
Seeing constant different groups of people come and go has definitely made neighbors on the block uneasy. Who is to say someone staying in an airbnb is not scoping out the surrounding area for example?
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.
Knowing whether it was 5% or 40% makes no difference- either one could be enough to cause the negative consequences listed in the article. More studies would be needed to draw further conclusions.
You are beginning to create arguments that do not exist to justify your position. It is unfortunate that you resort to circular reasoning and logic to support a non-existant claim.
If you think that 5% bad neighbors is enough to ruin a whole neighborhood then it would be tough to blame it on AirBNB since most neighborhoods allow subletters in some form (ADUs in SFH areas, apartment subletters in apartment areas). Meanwhile, the only way to get to 40% is really by AirBNBs.
I don't see how one can say that a magnitude difference, and knowledge of what the baseline is without AirBNB, would not change your opinion.
People want to be data driven until the data goes against their feelings. You see the same in SF, the narrative was that crime has spiked during COVID and after seeing stats that it didn't, the new narrative is that the perception of crime is still important, the data didn't matter
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.