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"Close to subway station", "complete supporting facilities", "available for move-in at any time"... When you search for "short-term rental" on a social platform, you will see a fixed description and a series of photos of the popular "cream-style" rooms. Short-term rentals are usually calculated on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, and have become a popular way of renting for young people. However, behind the booming short-term rental market, there are problems that cannot be ignored: the authenticity of the housing is questionable, the living environment is poor, and the safety and security are worrying. Finding a satisfactory short-term rental is like "opening a blind box" (according to the China Youth Network on August 25).

"Pictures are the truth", this "old saying" is obviously "out" in the current era of the Internet and platforms. The travel purposes and rental needs of tenants are becoming increasingly diversified and personalized. The short-term rental market has also developed rapidly with the rise of the domestic short-term rental economy, and the transaction volume is soaring. In this case, "viewing houses", signing contracts, payments and other rental behaviors are carried out online, which is efficient, convenient and necessary. But no matter what, the body can't rest online, and "real people" always have to live in "real houses". "Photo-cheating houses" frequently appear on the platform, and tenants look for houses like opening "blind boxes". If this happens more often, the convenience of online transactions will be greatly reduced or even not worth the loss. How to stop this "chaos"? There are only two ways: online and offline.

Solving online problems online is a straightforward idea and is very necessary in practice. For example, the improvement of the entry rules, transaction page settings, and relevant review rules of relevant platforms can greatly curb the proliferation of "photo fraud". In addition, as the "Several Provisions on Regulating the Management of Short-term Rentals in Shanghai" issued in 2021, it is specifically clarified that landlords should register the names and other information of the occupants through the "One-stop Service" platform. Such online control measures are also very effective. However, the actual effect of the relevant rules still seems to be unable to reassure people: First, is it enough for the rules to control the online space? Second, the effective implementation of any online rules obviously requires offline efforts.

Today, with the increasing popularity of e-government, online services, and online supervision, people tend to pay too much attention to online, but in addition to "efficiency", it is by no means "outdated" to pay more attention to safety and do more "offline work" to manage chaos. Take the short-term rental market or even the housing rental market as an example. If we want to curb the chaos of "photo fraud", if the governance power is not extended to offline and the on-site "copying" is not done, it will be difficult to find out whether it is a fraud or not.

In the management of the rental market, there are two main types of problems that need to be clarified by "offline efforts": one is the housing conditions. According to reports, the living sanitation and safety of some short-term rentals are worrying. Some are renovated and decorated by residents themselves, with uneven quality; some are "string rooms" and "partition rooms" decorated by "second landlords" with low-cost and low-quality materials, and the formaldehyde exceeds the standard and endangers the health of tenants. In theory, renting a house is a purely civil act, and if there is a problem, the parties can defend their rights by themselves. However, there are more and more such cases, and after rising to the "phenomenon level", it is quite necessary for the relevant law enforcement departments to solve the problem in advance through on-site spot checks. The second is the housing rental situation. According to the "Commodity Housing Rental Management Measures" promulgated by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development in 2010, housing rentals should be registered and filed with the relevant departments, and the identity certificates of both parties to the rental and other materials must be submitted. But in the short-term rental market with short rental periods and frequent tenant changes, how is this regulation implemented? It makes people feel uncertain. Taking the aforementioned "Several Provisions on Regulating the Management of Short-term Rental of Houses in the City" as an example, it reiterates that landlords are not allowed to provide short-term rental services to unidentified persons. It can be seen that in practice, the phenomenon of non-registration and irregular registration exists. What is the proportion of irregularities? This is certainly not a task that can be accomplished through "online efforts" such as online verification.

In fact, it is not just in the short-term rental sector. For a large number of online problems and chaos, tracing the source and managing them cannot be done by "online efforts" alone. Transactions can be done online, but management must be done both online and offline, especially the solid "offline efforts".