Cuomo signs bill prohibiting Airbnb listings in NYC
blog.timesunion.com
blog.timesunion.com
I'd be more interested in knowing how New Yorkers feel about regulating short term apartment rentals than how they feel about sharing.
I don't think I'm guilty of being a broken record if airbnb keeps misusing the word "sharing." Although I understand there can be some ambiguity in the word "sharing", the arrangement "you may rent my apartment out for a week if and only if you pay me $1,000" isn't anywhere close to this zone of ambiguity.
It is commerce. It is unambiguously commerce, it is a pure quid pro quo money for services transaction.
New York has passed legislation regulating commerce - in this case, the conditions under which someone may rent out property for under 30 days. Those laws aren't obsolete just because someone wrote a rails app where you can type in an address and click a "create hotel here" button. Also, commerce doesn't become sharing just because the quid pro quo financial transactions take place over the web.
Around the time when AG Schneiderman first subpoenaed Airbnb's records, Airbnb had a very aggressive advertising campaign in the NYC subway stations. Certain high-traffic stations were plastered with ads proclaiming how "New Yorkers Love Airbnb" and showing "regular New Yorkers" who were using Airbnb.
On my commute each morning, it was interesting to see how those ads would get defaced with graffiti... not just once, but every single day, with new messages in different handwriting. The messages weren't saying anything you wouldn't expect - mostly they were complaints from angry neighbors of people who rented out on Airbnb full-time, or people who had to move because their landlords had decided to turn their apartments into full-time Airbnb rentals[0]. But it was quite amazing to see how persistent the rancor towards Airbnb was. I took some pictures of them, though I wish I'd gotten a true time-lapse of those over the span of the weeks (months?) that the ads were up.
For contrast, advertising campaigns in NYC subways commonly get defaced, but usually over a much longer period of time. And it's rare for it to be in retaliation towards the advertising company - usually it's people drawing beards on women or making off-brand remarks.
[0] Yes, no matter how much Airbnb tries to deny it, this does happen.
Could you post them somewhere? I'd be interested to see those graffitis.
lol, they talk like they are a grass root movement, they fight for nothing but their own bottom line, I hate this insulting "disruptive" marketing speech. There are laws, just because you're an "app" doesn't give you the right to violate them.
> "Move fast and break things" is a saying common in science and engineering industries. In that context, it means that making mistakes is a natural consequence of innovation in a highly competitive and complex environment. In particular, it was adopted by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook (who even went as far as to say that 'breaking things' is a necessary feature of moving 'fast enough').
Breaking the law is a mistake (and a serious one for any business caught). Move fast and break things is more about breaking your own things, not someone else's things :)
What's next ? Breaking your node shop competitors' legs :) ?
Move fast and break things != One can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Wouldn't you want to break their arms? ;)
In a world of APIs, the line between these blurs when things break.
The biggest thing I have learned from running a couple short term rental listings is that people are basically good.
I hosted 68 guests in the last three weeks and every last one of them was nice and respectful and quiet.
Anti short term rental sentiment is based on paranoid hysteria.
I don't live in NYC, but in a neighboring state and bought a three family house with the express intent of living in one unit and renting the others as vacation rentals.
The prospect of nosy, controlling moral scolds shutting down my American dream, is extremely maddening. ' The only externality to my house is that there are cars in the drive way with license plates from a variety of states. Fear of new cars in the driveway should not trump my rights as owner and tax payer on this land.
Luckily in public meetings our town planners have declared their need for vacation rentals. The housing market is weak here and if the town were to shut down vacation rentals, it would put even more pressure on an already cold real estate market.
Edit: parent has editted comment after my reply.
It is sharing my house.
When I first bought the house I inherited a 12 month lease tenant from the previous owner.
When I had that tentant, I didn't feel like this was my house. I couldnt go on the first floor, I had to walk on eggshells around the tenant and her kid.
Now this is my house! My house! I own it, and I let in guests that I screen through airbnb and other sites. They come for a few days, pay 300-600, and I make the beds and greet them and its really nice and I have met some cool people.
So in my case we are talking about turning a three family house into a basically single family house with some guests. That is a use case I dont think is being represented in this conversation.
Its only allowed to be mutli-family because its grandfathered in. Believe me, the town and neighbors would rather it be single-family, because multi-family brings in a lower class of occupant.
And heres the other thing. It was originally a single family house that was converted to multi family. So things change, markets change, demand changes.
Codifying usage in zoning laws and making it immutable might be a luxury affordable for places like NYC, but its not affordable for places with tons of sellers and little buyers, places where foreclosure rates threaten the value of homes with current mortgages.
The occupants of my house go to restaurants, rent kayaks, go to the local attractions. This is a tourist town, and vacation rentals are expanding our reach.
People will stay at a vacation rental that wouldnt stay at a hotel. Because they get a kitchen and a room for the kids. They will stay for a week in the summer. Who wants to stay for a week in a hotel room with four kids?
Vacation rentals are keeping this town alive, and I don't think this is being represented in this debate.
There is near unlimited affordable housing available in this area.
This debate is about a law in NYC. Not your little vacation village where things may be completely different. The Outer Banks aren't going to outlaw short term rentals.
Seriously, if AirBNB were a free market (and it is), what these listings are doing is allowing more people to come into the city and spend their own money on services throughout the city. This is a boon for all businesses in the city. It increases the availability of units and lowers the cost of other hotels throughout the city.
What people are afraid of is that they see all these units available on AirBNB and assume they are empty? They are not, they are being rented out pretty regularly. Which means they are being used and filled, with real live human beings.
If people didn't like empty units in the city, they should be complaining about the high-end units like One57 and 436park that are removing available units for the city and creating high-rise ghost towns.
I don't believe for one second this increases the cost of rental and/or condo units in the city. Since what is really happening is that the units are still full. AirBNB allowed us to see that there was a very real apartment shortage in the city.
I lived in NYC, and even I had to move out because of high rents. But those high rents weren't because of AirBNB. It was due to a lack of smaller units being put on the market.
As the units consolidated from 1bd to 3 or 4bd apartments, the sizes of the apartments grew, and all new buildings were for multi-million dollar residences. The middle class got squeezed.
Now we are blaming AirBNB for the problems. And that is simply not the case.
thanks to airbnb i was able to visit nyc for ~10 where i spent a ton of money between restaurants, coffeeshops, random shopping and broadway shows.
the wife and i were thinking about returning next year but without airbnb (and all the freedom we have thanks to it, like cooking our own meals) i don't think we will. i'm sure i'm not the only one thinking like that.
In one telling, you --- or, the proverbial you, the 10 less-responsible versions of you that exist for every equally-responsible you --- bringing a massive flow of short-term renters to buildings and neighborhoods zoned and coded for long-term tenants, overriding those regulations based entirely on your personal hunch that people are generally better than the democratic process of your municipality has decided they are.
In another telling, you are more or less stating outright that, because after buying a building designed for three families you discovered you don't like letting two other families have long-term leases, you've converted your three-family dwelling into a hotel. Even putting zoning aside, you're like living proof of how Airbnb impacts housing stock.
I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong. I'm saying that you're making a pretty clear case that there is a significant public policy stake in whether or not you should be able to continue doing it it.
I'm not even saying that the zoning concern or the housing stock concern should prevail or are dispositive or anything! I happen to find them compelling, but, whatever. I'm just saying, if I was trying to convince people that the state should mind its own business and let a hundred Airbnbs bloom, this is probably not the thing I would brag about in public.
I'm changing it back. I own it. If for some reason the town tried to stop me from doing short term rentals, I would just convert the house to single family and sell it for twice what I bought it for.
Unless one is opposed to property rights and free markets, I don't see how how one has standing to complain.
Owning property doesn't let you alone change its zoning. If I was your free market property right loving neighbor I would be upset that you're running a hotel in a residential area.
The fact of the matter is that you've been living in a multiple-family dwelling with three residences, only one of which was being rented out. You didn't like the arrangement, and decided to revert it to a single family home, leaving the town with two fewer housing units.
In the process of rennovation, you have been renting it out in the manner of a hotel by layman's standards - but you aren't technically a hotel. Basically, you get to take advantage of a poorly written law.
Property rights only go so far - once you start affecting others, including renting a portion of house for any length of time - you start picking up responsibilities. Free markets? Free markets work well in some areas, some not as well: Others need regulations to various degrees.
And hotels and housing are one of those that somewhat need regulation because we know some folks do bad or stupid stuff to the detriment of others, and what you do as a landlord renting in any capacity affects others.
And you are still renting it out in some fashion. Why should the laws to either hotels/motels/b&b's or laws applying to a landlord not apply? For the most part, such laws are designed to protect a renter and keep minimum standards for cleanliness and other such things. Some rental laws are there because of shortages and prices [1]. Hotels often pay extra taxes. In some areas, a bed and breakfast has looser and different standards, partially because it isn't unheard of to take a family home and turn it into a B&B, with the owners living in a portion.
And truth is that while I'd support someone renting out their place for a week or two once or twice a year without many issues (permit or fees, mostly), once you are regularly doing such, you are either a landlord or a hotel manager and should have such laws governing you. The pushback from those doing this I see as basically folks trying to get out of complying with the law.
[1] Understandably, two units hardly affects the housing market so long as it is an isolated incident, but if or when that trends to multiple folks, it can.
Adhering to the few rules you listed above doesn't mean you follow ALL the same rules as hotels.
(Not implying that in your case you're not zoned correctly or following ALL rules, but certainly many airbnb properties are non-compliant).
These rules have been around for decades. My own buildings were set in 1989 in the original docs. The desire to not have short term rentals as neighbors is something extremely common. Most tenants don't have the ability to effect change the way an owner in a condo building does, so they cannot prevent the unit next door from being AirBnB'ed, so they turn to the government. Whether it should be the law as it is in NYC, probably not, but using the law is more like someone using a hammer to put in a screw, not your characterization of a "hammer looking for a nail."
You're pretending like your experience amongst suburban single family houses is at all applicable to multi-family housing in NYC when it isn't. You don't own a 10-unit building in Brooklyn Heights going all short-term rental, which is the more typical target of this law and what AirBnB is trying to defend.
Where "some" is "68 in 21 days".
A multiple dwelling "is a dwelling which is either rented, leased, let or hired out, to be occupied, or is occupied as the residence or home of three or more families independently of each other."
A Class A is a multiple dwellings "which is occupied, as a rule, for permanent residence purposes. This class shall include tenements, flat houses, maisonette apartments, apartment houses ..."
A Class B is a multiple dwelling "occupied, as a rule transiently, as the more or less temporary abode of individuals or families who are lodged with or without meals".
There are reasons, good and bad, that states and municipalities have regulations about zoning for commercial, residential, mixed, and other use. There can be a discussion about how well they're applied, misapplied or whatever.
Here's my opinion: I think you, and other transient-rental aficionados, have the burden of showing sufficient reason for allowing you and AirBnB to avoid civil and possibly criminal (depending on circumstances) sanction for breaking the laws. You also have the burden of showing why the rules should be changed to permit your activities subsequently.
I've never used Airbnb, but unless there are serious harms to people, where is the harm and why should the law be followed?
The neighbors onto whom AirBNB providers offload their externalities.
This is why my land owning neighbors love me and are happy with the direction the neighborhood is changing into.
Yes, there are bad guests occasionally. But there are also bad tenants occasionally—and the former is a hell of a lot easier to deal with quickly.
I'm not ideologically against regulation, don't get me wrong, but I DO recognize that sometimes 'big hammers' affect big and small scale landlords equally, and that's not fair. And quite frankly if you're disrupted because I'm AirBNBing one of my units, just come down the stairs and knock on my door and we can talk about it.
Joking aside - New York housing laws need to do a better job, whether it's housing code, fines, or anti AirBNB laws, of distinguishing between big and small scale operations.
You can't make subjective judgements about small vs big landlords because frankly, lots of landlords, big or small are scum and can only be managed with a stick.
I don't need to knock on your door -- if you want to be a hotelier, buy a hotel.
A hotel has shared facilities, a check in desk and some other things.
It also does not meet the definition of a bed and breakfast, which by definition serves food.
So by the zoning of my town I am not operating a hotel or a bed and breakfast.
NYC has laws that may seem onerous to you, but they exist as a direct response to problems that have already happened in the past and are already manifesting themselves in the modern AirBnb era. The issues are real, and the company has taken an attitude that the law doesn't apply to them. Fuck them.
Airbnb often implies that they are like Uber/Lyft, fighting some evil hotel lobby. That's also bullshit -- Uber is fighting cartels with strong local regulation at the municipal level. Hotels aren't organized the same way and frankly don't need the regulatory protection that cabs do. To the contrary, my understanding is that Airbnb was the party doing lots of heavy lobbying in Albany.
If they were smart, instead of carrying on like children, they should come up with a co-op hotel model that is compatible with the law, less capital intensive and closer to the spirit of their platform.
Really? What exactly is the compelling problem solved by requiring all short term rentals to have a "check-in" desk? Why shouldn't I be able to rent out my apartment for a few weeks while I go on vacation?
This is straight up protectionism. I wonder how much it cost the hotel industry to buy this legislation.
As an AirBnB host, renter, and apartment building tenant, I do not want a "co-op hotel model." I want to be able to not spend thousands of dollars a month on a space which isn't even being used. It's ridiculous to try to spin this as some helpful regulation.
Seriously? You don't know why you should have someone available in person if the people staying at your hotel have an issue? There's a reason your homeowner's insurance is cheaper than the insurance for a hotel.
If you are truly renting your apartment home while you're away, you're actually fine with doing so with respect to this law. You're probably violating your lease or HOA contract, but that's your problem.
If you're buying or renting apartments to sublet as ersatz hotels, then you have a problem. It's not society's problem to save your from a poor investment choice.
This legislation passed in an environment where the US Attorney is likely tapping the phones of any remaining unindicted political players in Albany. Hotels aren't well organized to begin with, and I doubt they had an opportunity to make huge contributions to influence this. Real estate moguls like reduced housing supply as they get to reap higher rents, so they don't care. (Feel free to link to the board of elections filings if I'm wrong).
The public outcry against Airbnb is strong and consistent, and this law imho is unusually democratic and fair one. Everyone got what they claimed to want. True Airbnb hosts can continue to share their homes. You can continue to rent them. The only party hurt is Airbnb who has been deceptive about their true intentions from day 1 -- so fuck them.
The idea that tenants are able to knock on your door means you shouldn't have to follow this law kind of demonstrates an attitude I've seen with a number of small but not "good" landlords I've had.
In my neighborhood, for example, it's rare for houses to be renovated fully permitted because the entire permitting process is designed around large scale construction projects. There's an entire shadow economy that goes just to paying thousands to architects, expediters, inspectors, licensed pros, etc., in addition to the actual work. That's just one example. The end result is that people don't do it, because they can't afford it unless they have a lot of capital.
Now the law already does this distinction I'm mentioning: for example a three or four family home has to be registered for the rentals to be legal, a two-family doesn't. Also the code is different, and more broadly the Multiple Dwelling Law treats them differently.
Going back to AirBNB, concretely I think a good compromise would be to limit the number of units for rent to one, and take down the ones that have turned rental buildings into hotels. People who own big rental buildings do these things. What's left are co-ops and condos. Co-ops have self-regulating powers to evict people. Condos, which someone here complained upon, are a different story (even if they have house rules with fines, I don't know how that's enforced).
The 'knocking on the door' comment was an attempt to try to separate the large from the small. As for myself I'm always above board and legal, because I'm risk-averse, but my risk-averse nature also means I don't rent to anyone I don't know or trust. Partly because of comments about everyone needing sticks. Ironically I've been on that side, which is why I decided I didn't like being a tenant anymore. I haven't used AirBNB, but plan to do so -legally. I do have a right to feel wronged by the passage of the law, especially when I hear all the anti-AirBNB comments not apply to my situation (eg. 'disruption to the residents').
The state should be fought over laws like this, not negotiated with.
New York State is not doing well, and its combination of nanny state, local government corruption and high taxes is not winning in the market place of governments.
If it wasn't for the inheritance of NYC being the capital of the world, NY state would be in seriously dire straits.
There are numerous incidents of parties run amok, drug use, prostitution etc.
I think you're in a honeymoon period where everything is working great because of thoughtful, well-intentioned early adopters on both sides (the providers and the guests).
I have done a lot of airbnb all over the world - and I love it - but I, as a user and the hosts are obviously very literate, technically adept, relatively wealthy people. It's not surprising that it all works out really nicely - and it does.
That can't last. People will find way to game both airbnb and the users of airbnb and it will be a race of con artists and malcontents all the way to whatever cesspool it is that form the back-story of every law we have on the books. Every law that governs a hotel or a taxi or a restaurant is on the books because some asshole got someone killed (or robbed them blind).
Enjoy it while it lasts!
You need boots on the street, investigating complaints. Who is going to pay for that enforcement?
But who's shoulders this extra enforcement cost? Not AirBNB, right?
The priority should be alleviating the burden of sclerosing bureaucratic regulations, and if AirBnB can do that with a BS narrative about "the sharing economy", more power to them. The same goes with Uber and the taxi medallion system.
This isn't a fair debate where we should weigh the merit of each's side argument. This is a battle where one side will ultimately resort to violence to enforce its decision.
This is one of the biggest abuses of government power there can be, using to it to snuff competition or favor one particular business. It hides behind "regulation" and if that doesn't work there is always "think of the children"
Offtopic: Love utilitydive.com! Very helpful for keeping track of how renewables are making inroads in the utility sector.
And thanks so much about Utility Dive! Always happy to grab a coffee or a drink with a reader if you happen to find yourself in DC.
This seems like it maintains the sharing spirit of something like AirBnB (rent your place out occasionally when you're away) while preventing the problems that come from people essentially running unregulated hotels..
Relaxing the law in the manner you suggest would make it even more difficult to enforce than the law as it stood prior to this addition.
Just like governments demand companies hand over financial information they could demand that AirBnb hands over the list of users and the total stay length.
It can easily handle at most a dozen sharing sites. And it's trivial to prevent landlords from registering multiple accounts i.e. make sure no two landlords advertise the same address.
In a nutshell: 60 days max, fire safety equipment is mandatory, and the building home owner's association (body corporate) need to agree to it.
The city produced a one-pager to spell it out:
https://www.amsterdam.nl/publish/pages/707219/infographic_ho...
I fixed that for you. The thing is, in most cases what is being done with these units was already illegal.
Picking out the one or two unattractive neighborhoods to live in doesn't really do anyone any good.
I'm just saying I don't really feel bad about a unit in Lower Manhattan somewhere being off the market because it's rented to tourists.
Honestly, it wasn't so hard.
Either way, there are many options for moving to the city. This doesn't really make moving to the city significantly more difficult than it has always been.
Given the prevalence of the broker industry I'm not sure that's the case.
Either way -- the city only cares because they're missing out on hotel taxes. I don't think the city actually cares too much about who can afford an apartment in the desirable neighborhoods that have a high volume of AirBnBs.
I paid a broker that I found on Craigslist. No one said renting an apartment in NYC doesn't suck.
> I don't think the city actually cares too much about who can afford an apartment in the desirable neighborhoods that have a high volume of AirBnBs.
As a resident that lives in one of those desirable Brooklyn neighborhoods that has turned into Times Square for European tourists, I actually do think the city is looking out for me.
Now that's an honest argument: "I just don't like tourists". The whole raising-prices-displacing-real-new-yorkers thing is just disingenuous.
I personally disagree with time spent being a metric for who gets to live here and who doesn't but people don't take kindly to that sentiment in the US.
- Rent Control simply doesn't exist if you or a relative you co-habitated for years with under special conditions lived there before then.
- Rent Stabilization for a unit ends the moment the stabilized rent hits within striking distance of market rate or the number of stabilized units in-building drops below a threshold. More units deregulate every year than are added and this is true year over year as well (sole exceptions to the latter being in 2014 & 2015).
1. Couch surfing with friends/family.
2. Youth hostels / YMCA.
3. Renting a terrible apartment cheap, sight-unseen,
breaking the lease early when better options became
available.
4. The Daughters of Divine Charity, et al, run boarding
houses.
5. Rent a place in the outer boroughs, Jersey, Yonkers,
etc, take the train in until you find something
closer.
6. Walk around until you see "room for rent" signs.
7. Check papers, Craiglist for roommates (*actual* room
sharing -- a number of people I know started off
renting a *bed*, not even a bed*room*.)Convenient is not the right description -- high demand is. Who's to say an AirBnB is a worse use of space for, say, a unit in SoHo than a year-round resident?
AirBnB has real issues -- zoning, hotel tax, safety, etc -- but politicians like to use rent cost/resident displacement because it's an easy rallying call.
Was it worth it?
Subletting half a bedroom from a total stranger can be inconvenient and occasionally weird but if you're fresh out of college it's not really that different from the dorm room experience for most people. And it usually costs less than half what an apartment does a month, and is usually month to month or so.
https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20151127/hells-kitchen-clin...
Edit: Nice throwaway. Tell us about your Airbnb unit!
The main problem with this sort of thing is that while it is easy to say that, it isn't actually always an option for folks. This is part of the reason why folks don't always just "move to where jobs are available."
Moving costs money and takes quite an effort. Minimally, for cost you have first month's rent and a deposit, usually equal. Sometimes last month's rent. There are fees for utilities, and sometimes deposits for them if you change companies. Collect boxes: Secure moving vehicles if you don't have something to move large stuff.
Heck, you might not even be able to move for months if the landlord starting allowing it after you signed your lease. Your lease might be against it, but the neighbor's doesn't.
This is truly only a win/win if you have the finances and time to be able to move.
We the "people" who are not the "powerful" are getting pushed further away from the center each year chasing afforadable housing. Pretty soon we'll end up in Jersey or Long Island.
Can a proprietor rent out his property to someone else, and possibly so against the will of the state?
I do think yes, if the state has a say then it's not really the proprietor's property.
The first is that there are a ton of rules about owning property, and (for the most part) nobody thinks that any of those other rules mean that it's not really the owner's property. There are zoning laws, for instance: if I own a house, I can't run a business there. If I own an office building, I can't live there. If I own a three-story building, I probably can't knock it down and replace it with a forty-story building. There's the rule of law: if I run a suspected meth lab in my basement, or harbor a suspected criminal in a spare bedroom, the state gets to barge in. There's taxes: if I don't give the state money merely for the privilege of owning property, it gets to take the property back. There are rent control/stabilization laws: depending on what my property is, I can't charge more than a certain amount to rent it out, even if the tenant is willing to pay. There are certainly political theories under which all of those mean that I don't really own the property, but those aren't the theories we live under. Airbnb shouldn't get an excuse just because we want to start theorizing at that particular point.
The second is that, for most rental property in New York, the state is already involved. There are tax exemption programs, subsidies, city services and infrastructure, and all sorts of things without which the building would not have existed in the first place. The state is more than free to set conditions on buildings where it helped with the construction, even if that condition is "We get to set rules arbitrarily forevermore" - if an owner doesn't want to agree, they're welcome to try building without the state's help.
The standard conception of property in American legal thought is the 'bundle of rights' metaphor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_of_rights
Did you say yes to that particular leading question?
Then why say no to renting it out to that same father for 10 days?
Exactly. The properties are being used for exactly what they were meant to be used for, living space.
Your statement amounts to
"can I run around in my backyard firing my weapons off in random directions? Well then why would you expect them to allow me to live there quietly?"
The father probably wants his children to be able to sleep without interruption at the weekend, but is more likely to clatter up the stairs drunk at 3am during his 10-day business trip.
1. "If the state has a say in renting a property then it's not really the proprietor's property".
2. "If the state has a say in renting a property in a way which has no effect on neighbours then it's not really the proprietor's property"
The person you replied to was arguing against proposition 1. You seem to be arguing in favour of proposition 2. Perhaps you are both correct?
Think you do? Do you have an alodial title for your property?
No? You are a serf who rents the privilege of a roof over your head from the state. The illusion is nice but it's not real.
We use the word "share" in commerce all the time. Time share, shares in a company, profit sharing, etc.
The way the bill of rights is applied to municipal governments isn't clear, but in my opinion this is an overreach.
The 1st refers to the government, not to housing communities to which you willingly moved. Don't like HOAs? Don't live in an HOA community. The government has no hand in this.
> Don't like HOAs? Don't live in an HOA community.
That's becoming harder and harder. Currently 68 million Americans live in some sort of community association [1] and that's constantly rising.
These are essentially hyper-local governments. I can "willingly move" between cities and states and yet city and state governments also can not infringe upon constitutional rights (though they certainly sometimes try).
It doesn't seem like a big stretch to hold HOAs to the same standard when you're talking about putting restrictions on something as fundamental as someone's residence. That isn't to say they aren't allowed to make any rules governing the community.
1. https://www.caionline.org/AboutCommunityAssociations/Pages/S...
Ex: https://www.calhomelaw.org/doc.asp?id=460
You can also say something similar about corporations.
The answer is that the GOVERNMENT enforces its will.
Like the fact that the HOA can lien your house for as little as $100 in dues.
And can then sell your house out from under you.
If you're _really_ unlucky, they'll sell it to a landlord who sits on the board of the HOA, and the board of the HOA will accept the sale for less than half of the market price, with the landlord buying the house being one of the deciding votes...
If you don't want to live by those community rules then it would best to live outside of a community.
The government can do all manner of proscriptions for your residence. For instance, no, you cannot run a brothel from your house. You cannot turn it into a bouncy house park. And you cannot have short-term rentals in an area that the community has decided to use for permanent housing.
It's called "zoning", and collectively we've agreed to the allowed uses of our property. You live in a community of others, and your property lines do not define "The Independent Republic of JJordan", so yeah, the government does have some authority over your use of your property. You might not like it, but you'll be going against the flow. Because, personally, I'd rather not have the house next to me used for short-term rentals "shared" with those that don't give two shits about the community they'll be leaving on Sunday afternoon.
You also don't get to just decide not to follow the rules after the fact. One moved to a community, and directly or indirectly agreed to abide by the community standards. If one decides that's just not really working for them anymore, well, move to a community that has standards more to your liking. There do exist places that will have no problem with you throwing all the loud parties you like, and renting to college students on spring break. Those places are not in SV, however, so good luck in your search for remote work.
That would be OK, but renting for short term should be illegal? If AirBnb residents are noisy and disrespect the laws, call the cops on them. If owners don't pay their due taxes, call IRS on them. It's no reason to make it illegal to rent for short term.
I have used AirBnb in many cities on 4 continents and was always respectful to the locals and even tried my best to follow the specific recycling rules and such.
What I enjoy the most is the organic feeling of being in a real apartment vs being in a hotel room. Hotel rooms all feel the same, wherever you go. What I want is to experience the same perspective as a local, well, at least to attempt to do that, and that is because I appreciate the different cultures.
Banning short term apartment rentals would send a bad message to people who just want to appreciate your culture.
And what happens when that leads to calling the cops every weekend, for a different group of people?
I'll tolerate my neighbour having a loud party on his 25th birthday, or him accidentally banging his suitcase down the stairs at 5.30 when he's catching an early flight. I'll do the same, equally infrequently.
It's simply not fair to have that behaviour every fucking weekend, which was what happened when an apartment in the building was put on AirBnB.
Fortunately, the listing was removed the day after I sent it to the landlord, and the noise has stopped. I highly doubt any tax was paid on the income, which is also wrong.
Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser wrote about this in his Op-Ed, Build Big Bill: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1....
Before you can build a newer, bigger building, you first need to buy a large enough contiguous area from potentially several owners who don't particularly want to move. That adds friction and years of extra work to any new building, which will discourage new construction, lower supply and raise prices regardless of the zoning.
Unless you're proposing that the government begin seizing tracts of land in Manhattan on behalf of high-rise developers?
[1] http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/zoning/zoni...
If AirBnb wants to make housing more affordable in NYC, they should lobby to remove these zoning laws that benefit wealthy landlords such as Donald Trump.
More directly, it's one of the reasons NYC real estate is so valuable in the first place. The way the city has managed density (and parks, open space, and its waterfront) has in general worked out pretty well, over the years. Which has helped the city thrive in ways that its direct competitors (such as Boston and Baltimore) have not.
It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out. We're not talking about someone running a business out of their home, where the zoning laws actually apply.
> I'd rather not have the house next to me used for short-term rentals "shared" with those that don't give two shits about the community they'll be leaving on Sunday afternoon.
How about the ones who let that druggie sister down on her luck move in, she's ok because it's for over 30 days?
This is just whiny bullcrap from someone who wants to be able to control their neighbors.
> You also don't get to just decide not to follow the rules after the fact. One moved to a community, and directly or indirectly agreed to abide by the community standards.
We're not discussing a housing authority here. If you and your neighbors get together and decide the community cannot abide someone allowing another person to use their house for less than ... what 6 months? a year ... you write that into the bylaws, set out the financial penalty, and then you enforce it.
And that's your right.
But when these kinds of things become illegal across an entire state, there's a problem. This law should have never been on the books in its current form to begin with.
Short term rentals are a business, by definition.
We, as citizens, have ascribed them that right. And it is what protects me from having my neighbours run a brothel or smelting plant in their house.
Your definition is wrong.
I honestly do not understand the willful ignorance in this thread. Short term rentals is commerce. Everyone knows it's commerce. When you say you think it isn't (or you don't understand how it could be) you sound like you're denying the earth goes around the sun. This isn't even a particularly nuanced area of permitted use laws (zoning) or the appropriate role of government. You are all basically advocating for elimination of all zoning and/or pretending it doesn't exist as a totally normal type of regulation in the US (and all over the world).
This is where the original poster went off the rails. Just because there's an exchange of money does not mean these laws do, or should, apply.
I think it's silly, but there it is.
That's not what relevant the laws say ("You can't rent your property, period!"). Just that you can't use a residential property as a de-facto hotel.
If you and your neighbors get together and decide the community cannot abide someone allowing another person to use their house for less than ... what 6 months?
30 days. The point is that short-term rentals have a very different character (in terms of impact on neighbors, and impact on property values) than long-term rentals.
This is just whiny bullcrap from someone who wants to be able to control their neighbors.
No, it's just life the big city. Though I agree that whether these issues should be of interest of the state (as opposed to municipalities) is very much open to question. Then again, the Empire State is known to be messed up (and to have lopsided control over) a great many things, in this regard.
I mean, a majority of our forebears thought it should. The original law was passed by a representative democracy. And so was this one. You're one of the (totally guessing) 48% of people that disagree. That's democracy. You have to live with getting out-voted.
Your right to do as you please with your property ends where my property, and interference with my enjoyment of it, begins.
Or do you also think that if you buy some property straddling a river, you can dump waste into it and say "my property, nobody can tell me what to do with it" while making everyone downriver pay for the cleanup of what you did? Because that's the ultimate moral grounding of laws restricting property -- you don't own an isolated island in the middle of nowhere, you own property that's adjacent to and can affect other pieces of property owned by other people who also have rights.
You can't actually own the land around a river, but I get the point you're trying to make regardless.
The point is, if they're causing a ruckus, report them and have it shut down. If they're not, leave it alone. And having multiple different vehicles in the driveway isn't causing a ruckus.
This is basically FUD. What if they do something the neighbors don't like!?! Then deal with it at that time, stop being thought police.
Why do you believe that guests wont give "two shits" about the community. This sounds incredibly xenophobic to me.
Anyways, I was being sarcastic by using the tools of a leftie. (declaring the parent to be a xenophobe)
Or did it do more harm to what is otherwise a legitimate viewpoint and possibly deserving of discussion?
I'm btw sure that many Socialists would actually agree that the statement undoubtably displayed hatred and xenophobia. He did argue against allowing people from the outside to come and live in his community because he by default perceives foreigners as not giving "two shits" about the community. This is obviously not true, you can't just declare that all foreigners want to harm your community.
You may be absolutely correct. The HN Hivemind is frequently wrong.
But please use this as an opportunity for introspection, wherein you centralize the idea that the community of peers with whom you choose to associate, think you are an ass.
edit: Cleary comedy isn't my fortè.
Fire marshals have limited the amount of people you can have in a particular building for more than a hundred years.
I don't know the rationale in this case, but there are very good rationales for government to have more control of your house than you do in some instances. Mandatory fire suppression systems can end up saving not just your apt unit, but your whole neighborhood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_tax
If you own a property and operate it as a hotel while not actually living in it you're violating the zoning laws that every business/hotel operation have to adhere to.
AirBnB's use of the word "sharing" is laughably liberal. By their standard if I'm running a convenience store I'm "sharing" my property with every customer who wanders in.
It's probably good that they do. I may not agree with this particular exercise of authority, but I'd like to be able to do something about it if my neighbor decides to build bombs in his spare room.
Also, I don't see how your point about neighbors is relevant to it. Is it a serious risk where you live? A common occurence, would you say? And how exactly, in constitutional sense, would you be able to do anything about it?
Edit: I just realized I probably misunderstood you. The point about neighbors is meant to be relevant to the notion of the government having a degree of control over your property in general, not the specific question of who's allowed to stay there. Most of my response is no longer relevant with that clarification, so I've removed it.
-- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XIII
It's called "zoning" and it's been around for quite a while. You know, those pesky laws that says someone can't just build, say, a giant slag heap directly behind (and towering above) your house with nothing but rusty wire holding it together.
Which laws (a.k.a. zoning laws) you unequivocally agree to abide by when buying a piece of property, in just about any jurisdiction on the planet.
Where does that argument end? At what point can we just call it what it is: advocacy for disbanding government entirely?
Consumption taxes are a much fairer way of funding the government, IMO. Rich people consume more and pay more in taxes. Those with less consume less and pay less.
There was some house of horrors where a 5 family was converted into an AirBnb ersatz hotel with 30 beds.
This is the same case for companies like Uber and Lyft. You're paying someone to drive you from Point A to Point B. You aren't sharing a ride, it's just a taxi.
Uber and Lyft are not sharing economy, they're taxis. AirBnB is not sharing economy, it's Booking.com meets Craigslist.
This is so duplicitous. AirBnB is a for profit company. They have zero skin in the game in terms of exposure to and responsibility for lowered quality of life, apartment hoarding, rental increase, etc.
disclosure: a "New Yorker" since 1989.
[& p.s. the hotel industry, afaik, has a pretty small footprint in terms of side effects on the average resident. Further, it provides a natural cap on the tourist flux in the city, which is a certain plus in my opinion.]
Do you have anything substantial to add to this conversation, green account?
That doesn't change because someone lands on a specific side of the argument and feels they have to make an argument about whether or not the hotel industry is actually powerful. None of that is required in order to understand what the article was saying. And indeed, it actively takes away from it by doing shit like spawning this particular tangent.
Even if it was, does it make Airbnb wrong? Should people not be able to freely make living arrangements with whom they choose for arbitrary amounts of time?
Isn't that exactly how the word has always been used? For example, in timeshare which, while not a flattering comparison, definitely predates Airbnb.
EDIT: Oh, I see a similar comment has been stomped into the ground for some reason already.
I live in NY, and I'd say a majority of New Yorkers feel the exact opposite. Nice truthyness, there.
Put in that context, the legislation seems pretty well-aimed at its goal of creating more affordable housing in the city.
If you are renting an entire apartment out on AirBnB full time, you are deciding to run an unregulated hotel rather than rent a traditional long-term lease. The city doesn't like that.
“In typical fashion, Albany back-room dealing rewarded a special interest — the price-gouging hotel industry — and ignored the voices of tens of thousands of New Yorkers,” Airbnb spokesman Peter Schottenfels said in a statement. “A majority of New Yorkers have embraced home sharing, and we will continue to fight for a smart policy solution that works for the the people, not the powerful."
Just fancy that.
At the cost of higher temporary housing costs for people that want to visit. Addressing supply by ripping supply from a different market is a bandaid.
This benefits hotels much more than low income people.
Because it is. There is precious little new space for residential buildings in New York. How does people renting out apartments on AirBnB create a "sustainable balance of work, living, and entertainment areas"?
That's not such a bad thing. The market has demonstrated that hotels and similar will be built until supply mostly meets the demand.
No one will build affordable housing when they can build expensive housing instead.
Its the same problem SF has. I completely agree.
This problem is due to restrictions on supply. Consider the statement, "No one will build affordable cars when they can build expensive cars instead"
1. Limits on the height of new buildings
2. Limits on the ability to demolish or extend existing buildings
3. Limits on the minimum size of new apartments
4. Limits on the number of people who can live in an apartment
Actually I think what we're seeing is precisely that this is not happening. If that were the case, hotel rooms in NYC would not cost 2-3x what they do in the suburbs. The price is high because short term rentals are scarce.
By what metric?
Another possible metric is comparing the benefit to some versus the benefits to others.
The need for rent control at all, as well as the surely depressingly long lines for any waiting list / lottery for rent controlled units, points to a market that has already failed to serve the needs of the community.
Compounding that, the fact that AirBnB or any similar offering is able to so successfully compete with hotels in the area signals that one or more aspects of the hotels is dramatically out of alignment with what the competition that is being eliminated can offer. It /may/ be price, but factored in to that should be the security and piece of mind that a more established name brand and reputation has; possibly the hotels (like Taxis) are doing a poor job upholding a quality brand name, or those that do charge far more than they should if competition were actually a factor for them.
Still, it'd be nice of one of the many people who downvoted my comment in the past few minutes can explain why I wasn't "allowed" to ask that question.
Visitors vote with the money they spend in New York.
But that's obviously not politically feasible now, is it?
You're implying this is a bad thing. A city's first responsibility is towards its residents, everyone else comes after their needs and wants are catered to.
Anyone staying in your city is a resident while they are there.
As you acknowledge, there are things in between renting out an apartment full-time, and renting out a spare bedroom. E.g. renting your apartment for a weekend when you travel. This makes it possible for many people to afford to live in NYC.
Sure, but how does a lawmaker regulate and enforce "it's OK to rent out a spare room, or rent out an apartment while you travel, but it's not okay to only use the apartment as a hotel?"
What if someone travels 90% of the time - that's darn close to just running it as a hotel. Should there be some numerical limit? 50% of nights? How does the city check and enforce that? What if someone has a significant other or family member they can always stay with and are always willing to rent their apartment if someone is willing to rent it from them? Is that OK?
A strict "you must be present in the abode and renting a spare room" rule is over-broad, but trying to make and enforce a more narrowly tailored rule seems very difficult in implementation. With this rule, you can just check each ad - an ad will be allowed or disallowed on its face.
If you allow for occasional renting-while-traveling, you need rules for how much "traveling" is OK and you need a more complex system to monitor whether an ad is legal. Is it a legal occasionally-rented-whiled-"traveling" space or illegal because it is a too-often-occasionally-rented space?
That is to say "I think that this issue shouldn't be regulated" or "I disagree with this law." And it's fine to think either of those.
But if you decide that you don't want these unregulated-essentially-hotels existing (which the lawmakers apparently decided), how to craft that into law that is practical to monitor and enforce?
The legislation does a good job of creating a clear rule that can be implemented by scanning the advertisements. More complex rules that sometimes allow renters to use the whole apartment would suffer from more complex monitoring requirements.
http://www.investopedia.com/university/economics/economics3....
Say there would normally be 1 million apartments for rent.
Now AirBNB comes. Some get used as hotels. Now you have 900k apartments for rent, and 100k hotels.
The price of the apartments go up. In fact a very small change in supply could lead to a fairly massive price hike.
Sure, there might be a big spike in supply on airbnb-banishment-day, but then those apartments get rented and we're back to approximately the place we started, as far as long-term rents go, only without airbnb the tourists and property owners are worse off.
Of course, if you're talking about ways that New York City makes housing capital less efficient, you're going to have a list some five miles long, so it's really just adding insult to injury, but one can still gripe about it.
1. less legal units on AirBnB + same demand for renting units = higher price for units on AirBnB
2. illegal units on AirBnB coupled with 1. means passing through the rental risk to the consumer
1. There's regulation preventing landlords from raising rents too fast; often capping it at a much slower rate than the market itself is increasing
2. Once a tenant leaves, the landlord is free to increase the rent a lot more to catch up with the market
3. Therefore, if someone is Airbnb-ing an apartment they have lease on and living somewhere else, this decreases supply and causes other apartments to go up more in step (2) to make up for it
Maybe this is wrong? If so, can someone correct me?
The scenario you're describing is possible, kind of, maybe. Usually rent controlled apartments also have pretty strict laws about subletting, to prevent this exact kind of thing (and this is all legislation that predates airbnb).
This will inhibit mobility and hurt newcomers to the city, especially in the young technology/creative classes. But what sort of politician would actually care, as long as they're not politically active in our jurisdiction yet, am I right?
I successfully moved to a number of different cities with neither money nor job prospects. It involved using the ancient human rituals of "using a telephone", "riding the bus", "speaking with other persons" and "walking around".
In the process I had to deal with some minor inconveniences and sometimes things didn't go exactly the way I wanted. The horror!
Can't you just understand: what you're advocating is pretty much legal torture of high-income Americans on a site about Web 2.0 startups?!?!? /s
But that doesn't mean that an unrestricted free-for-all is the only possible alternative.
I agree that it limits mobility but the law also protects residents from constant, disruptive behavior from serial short-term renters.
I have never lived near a serial short-term rental, but I imagine I would dislike it if I lived next door to one.
Subletting is generally legal in NYC and lease provisions banning it aren't allowed in most cases. What isn't allowed is subletting for more than you are paying in rent. If the host was charging more than his rent it was already illegal to perform the sublet and it is now illegal to advertise the illegal sublet.
If he is charging the same amount or less than it continues to be legal to both perform the sublet and advertise the legal sublet on platforms like AirBnB.
1) $400 down the drain for the resident
2) allocative inefficiency of an empty apartment that could otherwise satisfy demand for short-term housing
Hotels are the winners in this situation.
If having hotel taxes and regulations are otherwise a good thing, why should hotel bookings be exempt if they are made through AirBnB?
If, instead of building a hotel, somebody rents several units in a building and turns them into perpetual AirBnBs, is that fair? What if they are also rent controlled units that the person is turning an additional profit on?
And of course, there are legitimate reasons why you might not want the unit next to yours to be a de-facto hotel. (Having lived next to one, it can be a little frustrating, since every night is party night if you're on vacation!)
This is incorrect. If a user on Airbnb requests a stay that qualifies for a Transient Occupancy Tax, Airbnb collects the tax on the transaction and remits it to the City of San Francisco.
I lived in a Manhattan rental building with a fair amount of AirBNB activity going on -- on any given weekend it seemed like at least one unit on my floor was being rented out. Many of the younger guests were completely obnoxious and disrespectful to common areas. This is an extreme example, but someone even urinated in the stairwell once. And this was a "luxury" building with a well-above-average rental cost.
Of course, renting out your place on AirBNB was against the terms of the lease, but it seemed like the management company never enforced this... which makes sense when you consider how hard/expensive it is to prove, and then evict someone, especially when they're a tenant who pays exorbitant rent on time.
How is it fair if you let your druggie sibling come live in the house with you for the entirety of your lease?
It's a completely bullshit excuse, if the neighbor creates a problem, deal with it. If they don't, then don't.
Telling the neighbor what they can and cannot do because you don't like it is not going to be fun when they're allowed to do the same back to you.
Every NYC lease I've ever signed had a clause forbidding long-term guest stays. Besides, that's a persistent problem, easy and perfectly reasonable to report to management and have them deal with it.
In contrast, occasional AirBNB'ing (a few weekends a year per unit, say) is a lot harder to track down. There were 15 units on my floor, and maybe 4 or 5 of them would occasionally do AirBNB rentals. It's not like there was just one unit doing this constantly, which would have been a lot easier to report.
I also have to mention, you've now posted 3 different comments mentioning this hypothetical "druggie sibling" scenario. I've personally never encountered that situation, despite living in 7 different apartment buildings in 3 major east coast cities over the past 13 years. I have, however, repeatedly encountered disrespectful AirBNB tenants in multiple buildings. I don't really think these situations are even remotely comparable. There's no web site trying to profit from letting "druggie siblings" live with people, nor is there any major wave of this occurring.
> Telling the neighbor what they can and cannot do because you don't like it is not going to be fun when they're allowed to do the same back to you.
Well, since I never rented my place on AirBNB, never had long-term guests, and never otherwise broke major lease provisions... I don't really have anything to worry about there do I?
That's a red herring, you can add the sibling as an occupant, the point remains.
> I've personally never encountered that situation
Well the reasonable conclusion is that people must not allow family to come live with them if they have druggie problems... /sarcasm
Or a reasonable person might think the point is that the neighbor has no right to insist that a family member cannot come and stay in the house.
You keep doing this so I'm going to end this conversation with you. When you decide to stop throwing out red herrings let me know and perhaps we can continue.
Sure you can add family to the lease in NYC. I never said otherwise. But if your sibling is repeatedly violating the provisions of the lease, and being a nuisance to the other tenants in the building, you can both be evicted. A landlord would rather vacate a problem tenant than have multiple non-renewals due to the nuisance.
I mentioned that I've never personally encountered this situation because I sincerely doubt this is a common scenario here in NYC. Apartments are quite small in Manhattan. Most people have enough sense not to allow a sibling with a drug problem to live in their already-cramped living space long-term.
Regardless, I still don't see how any of this is comparable to transient AirBNB renters being disruptive to one's neighbors. In reponse to GP's claim that this law is only helping hotels, I provided a personal example of whole-unit AirBNB renters negatively impacting my quality of life, in violation of the lease and now in violation of the law as well. You're responding with hypotheticals about a completely different scenario (long-term guests and/or adding people to leases).
Do you personally get to vet all your neighbors? No you don't, and the results in pretty much no difference in how things typically play out. If anything, anyone who runs a respectable AirBnB has more information to go on rather than a simple question of will they pay rent.
This has nothing to do with vetting neighbors. In a rental building, if you have a permanent neighbor who is a nuisance and is violating their lease, this is easier to resolve. For starters, you know their name, where they live, and the owner/manager of their unit.
And what's to stop the landlord from putting that apartment on Airbnb permanently?
Put in that context, the legislation seems pretty well-aimed at its goal of keeping up demand for hotels at the expense of average people getting to recoup a bit of their enormous rent expenditure.
Any sources to research this claim? I'm of the impression the majority of available properties are people who make a living of renting out properties like a hotel.
It's the people who want to pass sweeping laws that penalize everyone, instead of something more targeted, who are obligated to provide sources and research.
Here we are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property, and you can't rent it out if you choose?
So do you own it, or not? If I own it, I want to do what I want with it.
How is that well-targeted? What compelling public purpose is served by preventing people from renting out their apartment while they're on vacation?
> Put in that context, the legislation seems pretty well-aimed at its goal of creating more affordable housing in the city.
I really disagree. You can't just ignore supply and demand—the affordability crisis in most popular cities is a testament to how terrible of a policy doing so is.
There are tourists who want to visit NYC and people who want to have short-term sublets. They're not just going to disappear—they're going to drive up the market price for hotels, which will induce the construction of more hotels (and thereby removing "affordable" housing from the market). The worst part is that hotels are vastly less efficient per-foot than AirBNB at fulfilling the needs of many short-term renters. So hotels will end up removing more capacity from the affordable housing market than AirBnB ever did.
Having only recently become able to afford my own apartment, it appears to me that this legislation is, at its core, designed for the purpose of renter protection. Housing prices are literally insane in metropolitan areas across America. (LA here). Illegal sublets are already endemic, and were I to own property, or even have a year long lease, the ROI from AirBnBs/subletting would definitely be enticing. I won't assert I'm a moral paragon, but there are many landlords less scrupulous than I am.
The problem is that, with AirBnB and sublets come ever increasing rent, eventually pricing huge numbers of people out, which drives down productivity and growth. Uninhibited illegal sublets/hotels create a weird bubble at the very bottom of the housing market, which serves to exert upward pressure on prices across the board, since if one room is now worth $800-$1000/month, a studio apt jumps from $1100 to $1300, and so on and so forth.
AirBnB aside, the cities with the highest housing prices, and the highest recent increases in housing prices, also have the highest economic growth by far.
In theory, people like service workers will be driven out, the local economy will suffer, yadda yadda yadda. In practice, that has never happened. In San Francisco area, for example, rents have more than doubled in the past five years, the economy has boomed, thousands of new jobs were created, and there are still enough service workers, restaurant workers, municipal employees, etc. to do the jobs that need to be done. If you look at the most expensive cities worldwide, e.g. London, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, etc., you will find similar situations.
If you want to argue for affordable housing on the basis that it is a social good, that's fine. But there is no evidence that high housing prices have driven down productivity and growth.
This is one of the "affordable housing is a social good" arguments. That's fine, but it's not the kind of argument I was responding to.
I'm with you that it's a bad thing.
"That which is not seen" and all that...
I already addressed this in my original post. It seems obvious that the displacement of workers would hurt the economy. However, it does not seem to actually happen -- the cities with the highest housing prices have the highest growth of any cities in the world.
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. High housing prices don't seem to hurt the economy. Quality of life arguments, whether they are right or wrong, are totally unrelated to that proposition.
As productivity went up over the last 40 years, we should've reduced the work week. [1] We didn't. And now we have corporations with trillions of dollars of cash they can't or won't invest [2], and tens of millions of workers who continue to slave away 40 hours a week.
As odbol_'s sibling comment states, most of HN's demographic doesn't see this despair or care.
[1] https://thecurrentmoment.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/product...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/why-are-corporati...
And the disappearing middle class:
http://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/484941939/a-portrait-of-americ...
Well, only if you don't look at, say, the field of economics:
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/06/nimbyism-is-a-huge-dr...
The loss is not to the area. It's to the people who could have gone there, but can't due to housing prices.
Since we are talking about the productivity and economic growth of the area, rather than the salaries and quality of life of people who aren't in the area, how is this relevant?
No, no there are not.
School districts in SF and Oakland are short dozens of teachers -- imagine having sixty classrooms on the first day of school where there is no teacher. (e.g. http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Bay-Area-school-dist... from last year)
The BART closes at midnight. :)
Someone will always fill the gap though so I suppose my argument doesn't hold much either. If enough service workers leave big cities for cheaper living and shorter commutes these heavily populated areas will have to start paying more to incentivize people to work in downtown areas. So essentially its a supply and demand problem like any other.
Perhaps there is no argument here at all and it just sucks for some people who are less financially well off.
AirBnB chose to keep the money hose pouring instead. They implicitly encouraged owners to operate in a way that violated the spirit of moderate, sensible couch sharing.
This is well deserved.
Gee, thanks. Notice -- no mention of violation of NYC law in the response.
I don't mean that I support NYC's blanket regulation, but any condo owner would have known the situation before they bought the unit. If they desired a income property they could have purchased elsewhere.
You basically are multiplying the overhead by 4x.
So if the sharing economy is REALLY about sharing, there's no problem!
I get the gist of the law and wholeheartedly support it. I just wish there were a way for it to be a bit more targeted (say, a days/year stipulation).
Also when you are living in Manhattan, you do not want to have someone different in the place down the hall or above you every day. These people staying short term have no onus to respect neighbors. Airbnb knows that professional illegal sub-letters are the bulk of their business and is not stopping it. Renting a ski cabin out weekly is a lot different than renting out an apartment in the most densely populated city in the USA.
Tell an&b tenants they are not wanted and to state that in their reviews
Take all their street parking spaces
Call the police nightly to say strangers are in neighbors house and she is away
Eventually the city council ruled against the homeowner due to zoning (not a business)
The situation was very ugly.
Perhaps there should be an an&b companion list where potential an&b renters can see if the property is "friendly neutral or hostile" I would have used that
To be clear: I'd support density limits for AirBnBs without an outright ban and am totally fine with people renting out extra rooms on a short or long term basis. Unrestrained short term rentals seem to clearly drive up the price of property and end up benefiting mostly those who already have the means to own a place to live.
So basically the city/state failed to respond to AirBnB illegal activities in short period of time hence letting them thrive and built a multi-billion dollar business.
Would that be a key to successful startup? Same thing happened with Uber. So is there any other branch of industry one can try to disturb that would violate local/state laws but such violation would take decent amount of time to stop you in reasonable time before you are "worth" billions? (okay, other than selling drugs which most of us and Ulbritch know will put you in jail for a long time).
> In typical fashion, Albany back-room dealing rewarded a special interest — the price-gouging hotel industry
Wow, that's pretty strong allegations. Does he have any proof of such illegal activity? If so, did AirBnB did anything to report it? In all seriousness, I frankly doubt there is such a big monopoly so that its impossible to open your own hotel and compete price-wise with others.
> and ignored the voices of tens of thousands of New Yorkers Okay well I can find millions or criminals locked in jails saying it should be fine to kill people - is that a good enough reasoning?
They also claim Cuomo action infringe on 4th amendment. Can someone stretch it hard enough for me to actually see it Peter's way??
Should a particular building be used for housing or rentals?
I know I don't know the exact answer, but the reality is that politicians don't either. These questions are better solved by pricing, the mechanism that actually directs resources to their most valued ends rather than political edict (which as we all know is influenced heavily by whoever is able to grease the most politicians).
Politicians can't react accurately and quickly to rapidly changing supply and demand. The market has an actual signal that does this rapidly and provides incentive to do so.
Anything that disrupts this is just another example of corrupt government benefiting their contributors to the detriment of real prosperity.
I'm also in favor of zoning for residential and business, that makes sense. But there's a big difference between someone operating a high foot-traffic business out of their home, and seeing an occasional stranger walk into a residence every other day or so.
If there are no specific rules that a localized community has agreed on, then Airbnb should be fair game. Why should the municipal government make the rules?
> '“In typical fashion, Albany back-room dealing rewarded a special interest — the price-gouging hotel industry — and ignored the voices of tens of thousands of New Yorkers,” said Josh Meltzer, head of the company’s New York public policy.'
> 'New York City is the company’s largest market in the United States. The city’s hosts generated about $1 billion in revenue last year, and the company took a cut of that amount in fees.'
From this article, AirBnB wasted millions of dollars lobbying to go against the will of the people. Amazing.
The quote is wrong. New Yorkers value their safety. They don't want transients in their buildings. There are children, there are elderly, there are women. Perhaps AirBnB should have hired someone who lives in a NYC apartment. They would have explained the importance of safety to the AirBnB executives.
It seems impossible that executives of AirBnB do not understand that safety in apartment buildings is important. Perhaps their vision is blurred by the fees they make on the $1 billion in annual revenues.
If Airbnb really has the public support they claim then it should be easy to change the law. The reality is a lot (likely vast majority) of New Yorkers really don't want the status quo to change. The politicians know this and hence why they took this path.
My cousin does cleaning and management of vacation rentals in the Catskills, in parts of New York that used to be vibrant but are now extremely economically depressed and taxed exorbitantly.
Forbid vacation rentals that violate noise ordinances, don't cast generalization blankets and act out of prejudice.
AirBnB makes the market more efficient by increasing the supply of housing that otherwise wouldn't be available and provides more alternatives to signing a lease and wading through scams on Craigslist.
If NYC is serious about providing affordable housing, then this would at best be a temporary band-aid patch while they actually tackle the real problem - building more affordable housing. Of course the government isn't actually interested in solving the problem, so blaming AirBnB is more convenient.
But when it comes to a short-term rental versus a hotel, are we going to shed a tear for the hotel rooms not rented out that cost 300+ a night?
The city had 8M residents in 2000, it has 8.5 today. AirBNB's impact on affordability is grossly exaggerated, given the host of other factors that lead to a high demand to live in New York City: the economy and quality of life being a main one.
If anything, the law should apply to people who do this on large scale. I find it frustrating that New York housing regulations, from the DOB regulations, procedure and housing code, to laws like these, sweep the little guy in with laws and threats of fines when the 'popular discourse' criticizes big landlords and large operations.
Without going into any detail, sometimes it's just easier to rent to friends and family or leave units vacant than it is to deal with some of the BS regulations that cost you as a landlord. One example is that tenant protections can cost you, a landlord, 6-9 months of unpaid rent legally if you have a professional con (which some tenants know how to be, milking a system while they await to be evicted). As another example, 2008 and esp. 2014 housing code requires sprinkler systems in buildings with three units and above. If you have a building that is large enough to have more than two units, you're better off keeping only two units because it'll be cost-prohibitive. That's one less apartment to help fix the undersupply. And the city makes this expensive by forcing you to use architects, contractors, plumbers, expediters and then getting all the various inspections; meanwhile you're subject to the same requirements as a big developer with large staff. So you're out 100K, what do you do? You either go the illegal route, or you have a 'storage area', or a 'recreation area'.
I'm not really thrilled about this decision. I honestly feel the real winner here is the hotel industry. We'll continue to face the pain of a lack of supply and a high demand.
And after all, the most noble goal in life is to make markets more efficient.
I think this is a pretty good compromise all things considered - I've gotten very tired of people spending 72 hours in the apartment across the hallway from me and generally being nuisances the entire time.
Unfortunately, this just sounds like NYC is making it more difficult for visitors to come check out the city, which is regrettable at best.
Hopefully this bill does not also apply to long-term Airbnb rentals also.
I've only had positive experiences with Airbnb (so far at least). I rent the entire home so things like temperature control aren't an issue, and in the two instances where 1) a host was unavailable to check me in on arrival, and 2) a host needed to end a contract early, Airbnb went out of their way to rectify the situation (calling the tenant every 10 minutes until they responded for #1, and offering equal-cost-per-night lodging at a hotel of my choice for both #1 and #2). I would never expect a landlord to go through that, honestly.
FWIW, I'm located in the NL but I've also stayed at Airbnbs in the US and Canada, and have the next 7 months of Airbnb rentals (3 months per place) already booked.
I would definitely (honestly, not being facetious here) be interested in what rental rights I'm missing out on by renting through Airbnb, and how realistic it is that I'd actually need them outside of something crazy happening (I have insurance for most of those cases).
I think the danger is exaggerated but otherwise, I tend to agree that Airbnb is perfectly happy to profit off of tenants who break agreements set by their city or community organization and play innocent about the legality. And now, in my city at least, units that are owned and operated purely as short-term rentals which in addition to making it less affordable for people who actively want to purchase a place, also disrupt residents. One condo building for example is pretty much known as a Airbnb hotel as residents often see visitors clogging the lobby with luggage and/or endure loud parties. There's something to be said when residents are delighted when Airbnb'ers have a crap experience so that they stop coming to the building.
There are children, there are elderly. The executives and the VC firms that fund them show absolutely no respect for New Yorkers who value our safety.
> "Cuomo’s signature underscores a concern from companies that operate within the “sharing economy” that New York remains unreceptive to newer technologies that threaten some within certain industries, such as the hospitality and taxi industries."
This quote from the article is false. We highly value Uber/Lyft/Gett. New Yorkers love high technology: we have the only 24/367 Apple Store in the nation. We have a 24 hour Best Buy. Same Day Delivery from a number of different vendors. ClassPass, MealPal, MoviePass, CUPS, the list is a long one and some of these firms were first started in NYC.
What seems clear to New Yorkers is that AirBnB executives do not value safety.
The people AirBnB is referring to are simply those who want to rent their places out for additional money.
I think AirBnB could care less about the safety of children, elderly, women, and others. I have seen no acknowledgement that people living in apartment buildings value their safety.
I don't think my safety is in any way threatened by allowing my neighbors to rent out their apartment while they're on vacation.
> I think AirBnB could care less about the safety of children, elderly, women, and others.
Well, I'm very happy to hear that you, living in NYC, do not feel threatened by transients. I wasn't referring to myself but children, elderly, and women.
If if physically able men don't feel threatened, there are others that should be protected from harm from transients.
EDIT: I see by your other comments that you don't even live in NYC! You are complaining about hotel rates > $60. Those of us that live here in NYC value the safety of protecting children, elderly neighbors, women, and our property from transients.
For short term stays, go to Union City NJ which is just across from the Lincoln Tunnel (42nd St). A simple priceline search shows $60 per day.
Please show sensitivity to others that value their safety and those of their neighbors.
This talk of "transients" is preposterous and, frankly, dubious. What do you think "transients" are? Roving bands of criminals?
Your comment is the most pathetic example of "think of the children" I have ever seen. Do you have any examples of material harm being done to children by Airbnb guests?
As someone in NYC then, you know that Union City, NJ is very close to Times Square by transit and has low-cost hotel rooms, so I don't understand your complaint. Transit-wise these hotels are much closer to Times Square than many places parts of NYC.
I don't know anyone that wants transients in their buildings and the threat to children, women, and children is a real one. Let people go to Union City, NJ and get their hotel rooms.
Once again, I'd like to see you provide any evidence of actual harm caused to children by Airbnb guests.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/transient noun (1st def): a person or thing that is transient, especially a temporary guest, boarder, laborer, or the like.
They are transients and one of the reason for doormen is to create a protected environment. We don't have that with transients. Is there a reason why they can't go to Union City, NJ and use a proper hotel/motel?
Honestly, the only people I know of in NYC that are for this are those that want to rent out their apartment, room, etc. on AirBnB which can risk the safety of their neighbors, esp. the vulnerable ones.
> evidence of actual harm caused to children....
I said children, elderly, women. These are all vulnerable populations. There is also the chance of theft once someone is beyond the doorman or is inside the building.
I am honestly baffled why anyone would want transients in their apartment buildings unless they were making money from the transients.
Incidentally, this crazy idea that AirBnB is trying to sell that is the unions and the hotel industry that only want these regulations seem to leave out inexpensive hotels that in places like Union City, NJ are very convenient to Times Square and are very inexpensive. These hotels are in a convenient location and they are inexpensive and available.
Additionally, some of the people who have been caught AirBnBing are original members of the coop, so no vetting was required 30+ years ago.
Interestingly, instances of Airbnbing went down significantly after all residents were sent reminders that they could lose their proprietary leases if they were caught running hotels out of their respective apartments.
Look, if you come into a highly regulated and highly personal market as AirBnb did in NYC, you simply can't be surprised at the reaction by politicians, if you are then you are incredibly naive.
Sure, people travel and need to rent rooms once in a while. People like to rent while they're young and mobile, but the two use cases need very serious and separate delineation from each other. Airbnb is pushing them more into "overlap" territory. Airbnb's expansion into "subletting" was the kicker.
So, long story made short: it's an interesting economics problem I've been working on solving in my spare time, as a very long and iterated side project with Ecosteader (ecosteader.com). Some of the details emerging need a better format for communication; however, the most clear thing to come from my research is that people need to _own_, and they need to be able to transact with each other directly. Middlemen (Airbnb is the middleman here) taking significant commissions is part of the problem.
But the middlemen problem has sort of an obvious solution: to tax rental income so aggressively that it's just not an appealing source of investment to people who invest in rentals. Use the tax generated from over-inflated rents to build properties for sale, and/or figure out a way to use that money to grant-deed land on which people can build. This last option seems the more fun opportunity to me, and is what I originally had in mind building an eco- site.
The homesteading movement needs to come back, adapted a bit for the 21st century.
Mine would still be just fine.
Maybe? That's one possible way it can play out. NYC really tries to protect the landlord's interests rather than the tents. NYC would be a different place if normal people (who aren't millionaires) actually owned their places.
Free market could drive prices even higher than they are today. I don't know.
Isn't there a point where the quantity of astroturfing becomes counter-productive?
As far as I know, the Multiple Dwelling Law applies limits to 3 and 4-family homes, limiting specifically rentals that are less than 30 days.
Now, it seems that one and two-family homes are excluded?
It seems highly suspect that this could cause a decrease in units on the market that is anywhere close to affecting the housing problems in NYC.
Whenever I see a politician throw out the word "senior" and "quiet enjoyment" I smell a rat. The more obvious answer is the hotels don't like this kind of competition (staying in an Airbnb is infinitely better than a Hotel) and have bribed these politicians.
Wasn't Andrew Cuomo in the center of all the mortgage scandal stuff years back? Can this guy just go away?
Here's how it works. We in NYC send all our tax dollars upstate, and then as a favor, they make all the laws for us.
I grew up in this town, and it used to be vibrant and vital and full of young families. It has gotten older, as the younger generation has not been able to afford to take on the homes of their parents, as the job market is not strong.
I bought a waterfront three family house, a house that used to be one owner, and one or two tenants on the other floors.
I renovated the house, and furnished the other floors. It took me all summer, doing the work myself. I have been renting the other two floors out on airbnb and other sites. I love it.
I feel like I have reclaimed my house from other tenants. I own the whole house, yes I let in guests for a few days on the other floors, but they leave, and I can go back into the floors when they are not booked.
I can have a change of scenery, and I get income from this whole thing.
I love this. I don't want to rent to long term tenants. Its a house, but divided into apartments for each floor. I want to control it. I like taking guests but I dont want to sell a floor for a year.
It books well on these sites because its waterfront and in a tourist area. Its a lot of work. A lot of work. I have to scrub showers and toilets and make beds, and I only get a few hours in between guests many days. But the money is good and its a form of early retirment for me.
I don't see any externalities to the neighbors, in fact the neighbors are better off living next to a vacation rental than a multi family house.
In a multi family investment propery the incentives are all about putting in as little money as possible. In a vacation rental its all about making it look as nice as possible.
The extra margin of the vacation rental makes all the difference. Now I care about reviews, so now I want the outside to be professionally landscaped. Now I want the lawn to be perfectly manicured. I want the siding to be nice cedar shingles, I want it to look perfect.
Because people rate your house on the basis of whether or not its nicer than their house at home. If its nicer, they give you 5 star reviews and that helps your listing SEO, if its less nice than their house they give you 4 stars and that hurts your listing.
So if I lived in this neighborhood, I would want to live next to a vacation rental. It is a higher class of occupant. Instead of working class tenants that can afford 1000 a month, you get professionals that can put 1000 on a credit card 4 months ahead of time for their kids graduation weekend.
So its a form of gentrification. But its also a service to the community. In the spring, summer and fall months where demand is high I am doing short term vacation rentals. But in the winter months I am opening up a fully furnished place to people who may be between houses.
The working class renters have plenty of options in the less desirable, more inland parts of town. And those options will stay because the only reason I can get decent occupancy rates are because the house is waterfront and in a tourist area.
And at the end of the day this is my house! I want to be able to do what I want to do with it, and I like having short term guests. I like meeting all of these people. Its like international travel without having to go anywhere.
So I raise my middle finger to Cuomo and his lackeys, I support homeowners rights. The battle cry is My House! My House!
Punish people for bad behavior, not for uses you don't like. And maybe in a city where everyone is packed in like tuna in a can its impossible but one size fits all law is unjust.
There are plenty of communities in upstate new york where vacation rentals are completely appropriate. My cousin does cleaning and management for vacation rentals in upstate NY, and Cuomo just fucked her, a working class person running her own business in an economically depressed region.
So Fuck you Cuomo, fuck you.
What I am saying are the laws in NY are too strict and strangling growth.
I thought the law only prohibited hotel-like stuff.
For example, the City had to request the State to lower the speed limit on City streets to 25 mph from 30 mph last year.
Thanks Cuomo, you just made me have to cough up double the price for a shitty hotel.
NYC is tough and expensive in many ways. Seems like they are trying to tackle affordable housing and consequently may also need to look at affordable hotel stays. I remember when I used to do field work in NYC, often for days at a time, and I would drive every day from Philadelphia, my home at the time. Awake at 4am and out the door to avoid getting stuck in traffic and then back down to Philadelphia at 7pm.
Some people prefer AirBnB so they can feel like they live in the cities they're visiting, this certainly sucks for them.
This didn't used to be the case, so you can thank Airbnb in part for finding a reasonably priced hotel room.
But hotels in NYC are insanely expensive. Please tell me where I can find a hotel for <$60 a night that is not infested with bedbugs/rats/cockroaches/smoke.
Further: two very common kinds of contract we're talking about are with the state itself.
The first and most obvious is zoning, wherein the state promises to reserve some piece of land for a specific use, and private entities purchase that land with the expectation that it will only be used that way. It's for this reason that you can't build a hotel anywhere you want.
The second implied contract we have with the state are the codes and regulations governing residences. Long before Airbnb, residency codes had tenancy requirements.
Finally, the law itself has something to say about people who enter into contracts in bad faith, deliberately misrepresenting their intentions or circumstances in order to obtain concessions: we tend to call that "fraud".
Those rentals were already illegal under state law. You are aware of this fact, yes?
If it is too expensive you have the option of staying somewhere outside of Manhattan. If not you have to just pay the price of visiting an expensive city and not put the burden on the residents.
Residents get to decide on these matters through elections. Visitors do not get a say.
Do you think that is unreasonable?
Would you have the same argument if it were just friends inviting friends over every week? If not, why does the money make it different?
Anecdotally, my building has had multiple apartments used as "airbnb hotels" over the couple of years that I've lived there, and it's been a fairly consistent source of annoyance. People coming in extremely late at night and not having a clue how to unlock the apartment while causing tons of noise, knocking on my door for assistance, etc.
I am 100% for this regulation - NYC is already an extremely expensive place to live, people renting or buying apartments with the purpose of listing them on airbnb only makes it worse.
These are all symptoms that proliferate in dense cities and college towns even without AirBnB. I live in the downtown of a small city, and can't escape late night noise either. But you don't think there's a technological solution to the problem that AirBnB passively enables this?
What if, say, the city had an app that allowed you to report incidents, and then they could investigate and penalize based on reports of bad actors (as current law enforcement works, minus the app) rather than throw out the baby with the bathwater?
There's a difference between that and somebody in the hallway in front of my apartment door for 30 minutes loudly carrying a conversation while someone tried to walk them through opening the door at 3am. Or, worse, someone knocking on my door late at night asking to crawl in through my fire escape because they locked themselves out, and having no idea who the super is.
The building owner of my apartment actually just swapped keys for the door of the apartment building with key fobs to cut down on people making copies and using them to Airbnb their apartment, because she doesn't want people renting their apartments.
It isn't throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why should taxpayer dollars be spent investigating many cases of these when it is already illegal to advertise illegal rentals. It is much more effective to stop the advertising and payment scheme for these illegal rentals first.
AirBnB can prevent the throwing the baby out with the bathwater if they simply restricted the amount of time and places that can be rented out. But they know they are making a large amount of money from professional illegal hoteliers with many listings that are exclusively used for rentals. They are the ones that got greedy and got the heavy handed response.
Tragic. Guess we'll just have to settle for being the greatest city in the history of world civilization.
This is what people are talking about when they refer to "common sense" regulation or regulation to "protect consumers"; they mean taking economic and social autonomy away from people. Even if a given bill doesn't cost much when amortized over tens of millions of people, they cost a lot to society as a whole, and they start to add up. I don't care what your political theory about regulation is; it is extremely apparent from comparing Airbnbs to hotels that, at least in this area, regulations have made society worse, not better. I hope Airbnb beats this.
The "little guy" earns minimum wage and can barely afford to keep their own apartment, let alone rent out a spare one when they're travelling regularly between two cities. All AirBnB does is raise the "little guy"'s rent when the other apartments in their building become short-term hotels for tourists.
Because we have a young child, we prefer our own apartment, rather than staying with the grandparents, nor would the three of us be able to stay in "someone's spare room".
This new bill is absolutely terrible for us, because it limits us to staying in expensive hotels, for a month!
EDIT: There's no mention of 30+ days limit anywhere in the article as far I can tell.
Or should I go on craigslist? FWIW, Craigslist is an absolute non-starter - even though there were publicized incidents with AirBnB guests trashing the place, or hosts being shady, the Verified ID system on AirBnB does ensure some amount of traceability in case of incidents or fraud.
> Existing New York state law bars most urban apartment-dwellers from renting out their units for less than 30 days if they are not present.
It appears this new law is relating to the advertising of such rentals - presumably as a way to more effectively clamp down on those that were already illegal.
The 30-day aspect is related to tenant protections that kick in after 30 days. It's not a random choice of timeframe.
It adds a fine of up to $7500 if a host is caught listing their unit for less than 30 days, among other things.