Hotel CEO celebrates higher prices in NYC after anti-Airbnb law passes
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
They knew landlords were running whole buildings in nyc as pseudo hotels, and they did little until now. [1]
They knew individuals were renting whole apartments 100% of the time, and did nothing.[2]
They refused to give data to the attorney general, and instead, mounted an AD campaign.[3]
Only after they were harshly penalized, did they promise to clamp down on the actual abuses.[4]
So they willingly let their customers break the law, because nyc is their biggest market, and well, now want to play the victim.
The spirit of AirBnB and the "sharing" economy is to share under utilized housing. Not to create illegal hotels.
[1] http://gothamist.com/2014/10/16/airbnb_illegal_rapacious.php
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-07/wooing-go...
[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-refuses-to-give-user-d... [4]http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/technology/airbnb-proposes...
Not terribly smart use of money, either, compared to growing markets where the brand is actually viewed favorably.
FWIW, my parents rent out an extra building on their property using AirBnB. They're retired and they view it as their job now, but I see it more like a hobby. The amount of work they have to put in to make around $30k/yr is substantial and they'd almost certainly do better renting to a full-time tenant and getting part-time jobs. But they're in a location that doesn't have a housing shortage. It's only because people can make a lot more money that they rent on AirBnB.
Companies that take their customer's privacy seriously should be lauded, not condemned.
You can claim "users rights" all you want, but knowing people are using your service to break laws, and just refusing compliance, well gets you to exactly the position they are in.
[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023034803045795759...
That wouldn't convince me that Google should turn over thousands of user records without a fight.
It's important that prosecutors have some sort of burden or proof before obtaining personal information, not after. I hope all companies push back on such requests, even when it's not in their financial interest to do so.
Google is an index of the web, and allows folks to search that index.
Google has a process to remove search results that would links to sites that host copyright material.
We're not talking about protecting a political activist. We're talking about illegal rentals.
But regardless, if an attorney general asked The Pirate Bay or Mega for all personally identifying user data, I imagine people would be singing a different tune. Or, similarly, if an attorney general asked Google for everyone who had searched for "piratebay" or "mega".
> The legal strike comes just days after AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky tried to appease state lawmakers by agreeing that its users should collect the normal hotel occupancy tax and promising to work with pols to root out bad hosts.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/state-airbnb-articl...
The appropriate summary is: AG specifically wants information about people who actually owe hotel occupancy taxes. They aren't trolling for every AirBnB user.
The difference compared to your hypothetical examples is that merely visiting the sites doesn't necessarily constitute illegal behavior. Searching for "mega" in and of itself is not an illegal activity, just like how searching for "marijuana" is not illegal (especially now that certain states have legalized recreational use). The true analogy is asking the torrent trackers to release IP information for connections pertaining to a specific torrent.
Whatever negligible externalities are introduced by Airbnb, they are vastly outweighed by positive effects like making travel more affordable and busting up the hotel oligopoly.
I felt compelled to point how ridiculous this is. There are tons of lodging options. You can see for yourself with a casual search on any price comparison site.
I travel quite a bit for work, and I've stayed at 30+ hotels over the last 2 years. All of them, with the exception of a couple independents in NYC, were owned by Marriott or IHG.
AirBnB didn't want to solve this problem, so NY solved it without AirBnB's help. It's a predictable outcome, and one that AirBnB was hurtling towards once they stood in the path of any other solution.
But eBay profits from people selling stolen goods.
A telco profits when people conspire to commit crimes via email or phone.
A pharmaceutical company profits when an addict buys drugs under a fake prescription.
But the companies aren't specifically commit a crime just because those things happened and the company received income from it.
Companies are expected to do take reasonable steps to limit those sorts of activities, and to appropriately assist law enforcement when they seek to investigate or curb such occurrences.
Surely if there were landlords renting out entire apartment buildings then the sequential addresses would show up in AirBnB's data as mystreet 1a, mystreet 1b, mystreet 1c and so on? It must have been pretty obvious to the point that a routine check against illegal activity should have carried out.
Depends on whether the activity they're engaging is legal or not.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/25/11116426/airbnb-report-dat...
While this certainly goes against the spirit of Airbnb and probably against their terms and conditions, if there is demand for this kind of short rentals, why wouldn't they be allowed?
(Not directly replying to your comment, just opening up a related discussion)
EDIT: linkregister's comment addresses the issue https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800412
There is demand for a lot of things in a lot of areas, but it isn't allowed because it would be for the benefit of a select few at the cost of the many. Casinos, bars, hotels -- any kind of business, really, aren't allowed everywhere even though there may be demand for those services from people who don't actually have to live in that area.
Exactly.
AirBnB shows total disrespect.
I am sympathetic to those who want clean, low-cost places to stay when visiting NYC. According to Priceline there are $60 hotels/motels in Union City, NJ 15 mins away by transit from Times Square.
There are no deals in NYC. You always get what you pay for.
Apple Maps states the driving distance is 4 miles.
I don't understand why business 159 would take longer on weekends to travel 4 miles.
A monthly subway and bus pass is about $4 per day. I'd consider that a great deal. Getting around as quickly in other cities would cost far more than $4 per day.
Also there are fruit and vegetable stands all over the city with very good deals such as $1 fir 4 bananas.
In Chinatown there are great deals on fish as well as fruits and vegetables.
B&H Photo is a huge electronics, computer and photo store with great deals.
Also there are many museums people can go to for free on certain days.
Truthfully there are many deals in NYC.
There are no hotels in Union C ity from where you ambiguously picked your travel route. Where is your 60 dollar motel located?
Incidentally, some buildings don't permit pets, for example.
Why is it so hard to understand that we don't want transients in our buildings?
If you want to get rid of zoning, you can mount a political campaign to do so. Or you can move to Houston.
However, until that happens, you don't get to opt out.
There're externalities with Airbnb that neighbors end up paying for.
People are free to take Uber and it does not threaten the safety of New Yorkers. In fact, it has been helpful to help reduce taxi-like vehicle fares in NYC for New Yorkers. AirBnB does not benefit New Yorkers except those who rent out their apartments.
Some of those people will buy more expensive food and drink if their lodging is cheaper, but almost everyone buys something locally.
Most New Yorkers could care less that people are using AirBnB to save money. We do care about transients being in our apartment buildings.
People who are visitors to any city or country should show respect to those who live there.
It's obvious you don't like AirBnB's prior operations in NYC; I can respect that. I started out commenting how AirBnB can in fact benefit a New Yorker other than those who directly rent out their apartments on the site.
- Makes visiting the city cheaper
- Increases tourism
- Enriches land-owners
Bad things:
- Skirts consumer protection laws
- Makes it harder for law-abiding hotels to survive in that situation
- Reduces inventory of rental units on the market, driving up local prices in an already expensive place
- People in a "hotel room" are more likely to misbehave than someone that actually intends to live somewhere
It's not wrong just because it's illegal, it's wrong because it causes various problems in the city and for the people that live there.
Just take a look at dealership laws. Do you really think those laws are there to protect consumers? Or do they merely protect the incumbents which helped push for the laws?
And now we're forced to buy used cars from sleazy middlemen because they have a legislated monopoly. Good thing those laws are there to protect us!
As for that market niche, I assume you mean affordable hotels. A Priceline search yields $60 per night hotels/motels in Union City, NJ. Union City is about 15 mins by transit from Times Square.
I live in NYC and nobody I know of wants transients in the buildings. One of the functions of doormen is to keep strangers out. AirBnB is like a "back door" to allow these people into the building.
People should instead use affordable hotels $60 per night according to Priceline in Union City, NJ 15 mins by transit from Times Square.
The reason most people aren't murdered is because nobody wants to murder them.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/feb/...
Violent crime happens to random victims.
For every death there are many cases of violent crime including rape, property crime. It is a big city.
> If you're really worried about safety, lobby for an end to the drug war, improved mental health services, and policies that decrease income inequality.
Banks should not use vaults to protect their money. Instead they should lobby....
Just as banks want to protect money in their care, we value our lives. In an idea world, banks wouldn't need vaults and we need not lock our front doors. But this is not an ideal world.
One friend in Italy negotiated to have the owner eventually just lease their unit for which they had a long-term AirBnB thing going.
Interesting to see where this all goes in time.
In Croatia, almost all and every airbnb listing is from/for a professional apartment which is renting 100% of the time. I used it like that and have been satisfied. I just presumed it's like that all over the world. It started out as a living space surplus 'sharing', but it grew into pro apartment renting.
The place in Boulder was a rental property before AirBnB existed, and actually had a license, the place in Denver appeared to be built specifically for renting on AirBnB (as were both of its immediate neighbors).
You're asking the wrong question. You should ask why AirBnB posed such an existential risk to hotels in the first place.
I had an Airbnb spawn across the mews behind my building they have a pretty large open balcony and there were parties literally every night during the summer here in London, they stopped only fairly recently when the season changed and I'm expecting the hell to resume when we get closer to the holiday season.
Across the street on the front of my building there is a pretty nice hotel (actually there are a few of them on the street and around it) and they are quiet because the hotel staff keeps the guests behaved. After 10 PM you'll see the porter or the front desk telling guests to be quiet even if they are talking on their phone a tad too loud while having a smoke.
And as far as calling the cops goes, this doesn't work, noise complaints especially on the weekend are pretty low priority I'm hardly the only one bothered by it and it's pretty futile.
Before that there were about 3-4 weeks of an Airbnb in my actual building, it's a small mid 19th century building with only 6 flats and there were tons of complaints including loss of mail and packages so the trust that owns the building had a vote and banned short term rental.
None of the other owners/residents were consulted or told about the Airbnb, so the first thing I knew was a group of Germans at my door asking me questions about their stay, and whether I could give them a bottle of olive oil. Fortunately for them I was bemused enough to help them out rather than to think "well no, I've been at work all day, and nobody's paying me to be your concierge".
Then there was a family who stood in the communal, enclosed hallway and smoked every night. And the group who partied until 3am all week; and people who slammed the main door rather than closing it gently (it's old and a bit fragile).
I can't blame the visitors, because they were here for a cheap holiday and knew no better. And the people who rented out their flat are really nice (I'm otherwise on good terms with them). So it's hard to blame anyone but Airbnb and their business model.
This isn't what I signed up for when I bought my home; I want to live among a community of neighbours, not in a cheap hotel run for the benefit of others.
It's fair to blame them, though. We all know Airbnbs are rented out by real people in residential buildings, with real neighbors. It's basic etiquette to treat the apartment as if it were your own and respect the people around you, no matter how much you're paying for it (and Airbnbs aren't always that much cheaper than hotels). I've stayed at a few Airbnbs and that has always been my #1 concern.
Guests being assholes is an issue that's certainly hard to deal with, but it doesn't sound impossibly hard. Maybe if Airbnb had a program to approach the representatives for each building an Airbnb is rented out at, giving them a way to be informed about guests and leave feedback for them... perhaps include some form of shared compensation with the host, at a smaller %. I can see buildings being pro-Airbnb if there's a fair system behind it.
That would take effort, most hosts won't do it and Airbnb won't do it because they would be told to go and lick a power socket by most buildings.
Having a revolving door in a small building without a porter isn't nice, noise, loss of security and theft can be a real problem.
The building getting 1% (per falt) out of the stay is really honestly nothing say you have some really nice flat to rent and you rent it for 600 a week, do you think anyone would accept this nonsense for the price of a coffee and a muffin at Starbucks?
Even if they manage to have 100% tenancy it will mean that each flat will see about 300GBP, sure no one will throw away 300GBP but this is likely less than 1 week of rent for most decent locations in London this isn't what is going to make the difference.
Zoning laws and regulations exist for a reason, sure you can have a building with a bad tenant but this is a single point issue which can be resolved through the police, council or the building trust.
And while not to sound too obnoxious when you are paying a premium for the location and accommodation you expect a certain demographic whether it's young professionals or more established families it doesn't matter, you don't expect 7 drunk dutch girls partying all day and all night that is for sure.
Sure 10 or even 5 years ago I might have liked it, but not now, I don't think it's unreasonable to not want to live in what effectively can become a hostel come summer just because people can now pay for the upgrade to first class with Airbnb.
I also don't think it's unreasonable to think that people should not be allowed to effectively build purposely built party flats with a huge bar in the living room and a balcony which was turned from a picnic table and a few benches into a dance floor just so they can ask for double the price while advertising it on ABNB or w/e.
You can have an otherwise good relationship with someone while still holding them responsible for something they did.
Hotel room prices are related but aren't a strict function of the niceness/care of a hotel room. I've paid hundreds for a crap hole in a great touristy location (and with no crowd control as you describe it).
Since AirBNB so many times matches prices of hotels in busy spots, people rent on Air because it has less rules and regulations. - hey let's throw an all booze/drugs loud music party.. where? at Cesars'. Are you insane you want to get us arrested and banned for life?? Versus: hey let's rent on AirBNB and have a reckless party, I mean what bad can happen to us?
Too bad AirBNB was busy writing complaints to Cuomo and basically threaten him with lawsuits based it baselessly on 2nd Amendment violations, instead of re-working their "behavior guidelines" for rentees.
If you document it and complain to the council you can get them shut down.
e.g. http://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/property-news/kensington-a...
You can find out who to contact here:
https://www.gov.uk/report-noise-pollution-to-council
Also, if you got organised with a few other residents you would have a lot more sway and probably be able to get councillors involved. It depends on how much effort you're willing to put in.
The outcome is to further sclerotize and limit the rental market. Now students cannot effectively sublet their apartments on Craigslist while out on summer break or study abroad, for a summer intern working at a company in the city. Now a couple can't rent out their apartment for the week while they go to Disneyworld.
To some degree I have fallen for the populist message in this article; the hoteliers are clearly reaping the most benefits from this legislation. However, in the long term, everyone in the city is harmed by unnecessarily restrictive laws.
The outcome is going to be a drive of this activity underground, as we have seen in alcohol prohibition and the formerly wild west of off-meter (or "gypsy") cabs in NYC. At least with Airbnb, there was a rating system and an escalation/authentication path.
Airbnb's failure was twofold: that of not spending as much capital and time as Uber/Lyft in changing the minds of lawmakers; and failing to address the targets of the legislation: serial short-term landlords. If Airbnb had addressed this issue, the hoteliers would not have had an argument for the public benefit.
Incorrect. Sublets of 30 days or more are still legal, as they have been forever, and in fact are highly protected under NYC rent law, which requires landlords to allow sublets.
So your narrative is fiction. The law, which existed before the founding of Airbnb, and subsequent flaunting thereof, prohibits short term transient rentals. The only recent change is the prohibition on actively soliciting this illegal activity, not the already-illegal activity itself, thus making enforcement easier.
We can have a healthy debate about the short term sublet laws. Many NYC residents, myself included, will support the ban on transient rentals and improvised hotel arrangements, because it has severe negative externalities to other residents of the buildings in question, negatively affects the rental market, and violates community principles of land use and zoning.
Others, perhaps including yourself, will take the opposite view. And via democracy, following that debate, the law against short term subletting can be amended or retained. Needless to say if you're promulgating these views from San Francisco your preferences on the matter will be disregarded.
The only thing that's happened here is that the other strategy, the Silicon Valley end-around of just breaking the law and seeing what happened, has proven to be an ineffective means of changing policy. Good.
> The only thing that's happened here is that the other strategy, the Silicon Valley end-around of just breaking the law and seeing what happened, has proven to be an ineffective means of changing policy. Good.
I think the outcome is a bit more nuanced than that. The lesson to be learned in this situation is that Airbnb provided terrible curation of its service while being instrumental in renters breaking the law. I don't think it's universally a bad idea to break laws one doesn't agree with, especially if they carried no significant consequences for all stakeholders involved.
Because Airbnb failed at its curation, the state of New York added teeth to the existing law. I still maintain that the primary use case for Airbnb, the sporadic rental, is a useful one for both guests and owners. The Airbnb rentals I've used in the past were mutually beneficial. Maybe I'm an outlier because I used the rental for non-malicious purposes.
> the state of New York added teeth to the existing law
> It basically invalidates Airbnb's business model
The rentals that AirBnB was listing that are illegal now were illegal before. The business model was predicated on that the fines were less than the cost of doing business illegally that AirBnB facilitated.
As I understand it, it shifted the scales to making fines more expensive, but that AirBnB in NYC was not necessarily a valid business model before the adding of teeth.
Am I missing something here?
The risk / reward of fines isn't AirBnB's model, but rather the calculation of the people and landlords offering rentals and their business model.
Indeed. But it's not nearly as good for Airbnb's business model.
A system like this would vastly limit Airbnb's market: it would make it so landlords could easily tell when people were Airbnbing their apartments out, and thus would vastly shrink Airbnb's market.
I like Airbnb a lot. I use it when I travel, my friends use it when they visit me in NYC. But I am happy about this law because Airbnb chose short term profit over long term sustainability. The zoning laws that support hotels are there for a reason. And there was room for innovation there, but Airbnb has not been successful in traversing the space between the economic inefficiency and the zoning issues.
None of this even touches on the macro issue that Airbnb demonstrably increases rent prices.
Lol okay.
Those two things are very much related. It's all well and good to propose an exquisitely tailored law that only forbids exactly what is socially negative and nothing else, but if it is totally unenforceable as a practical matter then what good is it?
"At least with Airbnb, there was a rating system and an escalation/authentication path."
That's great for AirBnB's customers -- both guests and owners (or leasors), but did nothing at all for the rest of us living in NYC.
All other things being equal, I'd be happy with lower hotel prices in NYC. That's good for tourism, which is good for NYC. But I sure as heck don't want to trade off not being able to rent an apartment and be assured that the apartment next door isn't an unregistered hotel room used by a rotating cast of drunk tourists every weekend. If those are my choices, I'm voting for higher hotel prices every time.
Just an observation, I don't really have much of an opinion either way. I currently live next to a couple resory rentals and depending on the people it can be between "not noticeable" and "Holy crap, I wish those drunk idiots would shut up and go to bed". Since there are multiple issues on all sides, they might need some zoning for "short-stay resort" dwellings, so people can choose to live in a possible party place or not. Might also give renters some piece of mind, ala the A ratings restaurants have to post.
Airbnb is no longer a thing where you rent your house during your yearly family vacation; people invest in properties specifically for short term rents.
This increases the revenue from the property considerably driving up the prices further and in many places you see them buying up properties that no one would be willing to live there for more than a few days.
At least in London it's not uncommon to see 1 bed/studios that don't meet regulations e.g. no white appliances, no kitchen, smaller than the minium size being pretty much dedicated to Airbnbesque type renting. These flats are often purposely developed from larger properties to be split up as much as possible while still technically being classified as an apartment.
This puts even more stress on both the rent and buy prices in a city which is already driven beyond any reason this isn't a bubble anymore this is some goddamn superdimensional membrane manifold.
Why rent a flat to some one for 300GPB a week when you can get 600+ from Airbnbers that won't complain that there isn't a dryer and a washing machine, a dishwasher that the heating isn't good and the shower is moldy.
And they can be held accountable for the behavior of their guests and their effect on their neighbors. That is a big deal.
White goods don't have to be white, but it is still the most common colour.
White Goods are called that because they tended to have a white finish usually white formica, small appliances are sometimes still called "brown goods" because early electronics like radio's TV's etc either used wood or bakelite and had commonly a brown(ish) finish.
Sure, a worst case long term neighbor can be worse, but the average case long term renter is more desirable to most people.
I am willingly living next to resort rentals, I knew it when I moved in. Having it foisted on mw would not be the same. And yes, people can generally do what they want within the confines of their property, it's the shared space or spilling in to neighbor's space that is an issue.
Anyway, constructive criticism, how to prevent such self-destruction? Boarding schools for ghetto children, to avoid prolonged contact with negative examples and behavior?
Obviously, these solutions are not very palatable to most people. If you want solutions which aren't severe human-rights violations, there really aren't any, except subtle, long-term things such as maybe taking control of popular media and using it to slowly indoctrinate the population into "desirable" behaviors and values.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations
Boarding schools would have to be voluntarily.
I don't know how you reach people like that. It isn't the majority of them also. Is it mental illness? Addiction? I don't know. Often they come from a long line of people who behave the exact same way. Cops around here jokingly profile on last name, "Oh, your Franks son? We'll be keeping an eye on you" and to be honest I can't really blame them.
The best solution I have is simply provide a better ladder of opportunity for everyone. If people feel that they can advance in the world, they might actually attempt to do so.
As a NYC resident, we don't want transients living in our buildings. There are safety issues for children, the elderly, an women, as well as potential theft. Many buildings are doormen to keep transients out.
There are $60 hotel rooms in Union City, NJ (according to Priceline) which is about 15 minutes by transit away from Times Square, the center of tourism in NYC. These Union City hotel rooms are closer to Times Square than a number of NYC hotels.
"I want my kids to be safe" isn't automatically a bad argument.
- The ability to rent out their home when they go away for a long weekend or take a couple weeks of vacation somewhere, most likely financing a good portion of their rent or vacation.
- Affordable ways for family to visit, especially nearby to where they live (e.g. When my family comes into town to see their grandchildren, there aren't even really any hotels nearby, let alone affordable ones. AirBnB was a good, affordable way for them to be nearby when they visit, since like most people in NYC, we don't have a guest bedroom).
What many renters would really celebrate, would be an end to many of the restrictions on building that are enriching the owners of the properties at the expense of renters. Much of NYC suffers from height restrictions, historical building laws, and an expensive process to build anything new (and neighbors who will do anything to make sure their properties don't have new competition that might lower prices).
They never had it. Rentals under 30 days have always been illegal in NYC.
> Affordable ways for family to visit, especially nearby to where they live...
Out of town friends and family aren't renters. I'd love it if my neighbours would subsidize my out-of-country family's travel, too, but for some reason, this doesn't seem to be their top priority.
> What many renters would really celebrate...
Yes, they would celebrate that very much. In the meantime, every little bit helps.
* I didn't lose the ability to rent my apartment out - that was always against the rules/law. My LL just put in new electronic locks in on my building to make sure it was significantly harder to lend apartments in the building out on Airbnb.
* As far as affordable places for family, I've always dissuaded them from renting from a largely unregulated market where quality can be difficult to determine in advance and the pitfalls of renting something unsavory could be bedbugs or worse. I live in a neighborhood well served by fairly affordable hotels nearby (in Manhattan!) which can be price competitive with Airbnb, and significantly more regulated.
I view this as a positive - this law did not change anyone's ability to rent out a bedroom in an apartment or house that they are also staying in, and stays over 30 days are still legal. It feels like a win/win to me.
Can you explain this part? What do the electronic locks do to discourage lending?
This makes it fairly trivial to lock a single fob out, and there are timestamps that can be corroborated with the camera in the building lobby, to see who was using the fob to get into the building.
Of course, cursory Googling when they were handed out shows that it's not that difficult to clone the model of key they handed out, but it's still a big 'win' over everyone having the same key.
See this news story for an example of this type of lock in action: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/airbnb-guest-...
What am I missing here?
I just tested. I know I'm over my WaPo limit, but I could pull up the article from Google, since I hadn't gone to it before.
It's not much different than when an executive politician stonewalls on prison reform. Willie Horton happened 30 years ago and he still hangs like a specter over the justice system. What about the thousands of released prisoners we never hear about because, if we haven't heard about them, they probably went on to live normal, non-imprisoned lives, as criminal justice reform intended.
Maybe they compete with franchises that solely license a brand?
The market is short term rental property, not property management services. Supply chain is how one obtains inventory of product to sell into a market, it does not define what the market is. Owning and managing real estate that can be resold as a short term rental is just one supply chain solution to sell into the market. AirBnB uses a different one.
Who is doing so much partying? Where did these people come from? Where do they normally party before AirBnb?
However, guest reviews cannot be updated, so I can see how learning about problems days later may allow bad guests to dodge the bullet.
The hypocrisy in this situation is mind blowing. Thanks to Citizen's United, corporates are protected and allowed unlimited money for lobbying as “Freedom of Speech”. But when the individual wants to advertise a room in their private home, the government censors that speech?
This is just another example of how our Democracy has been hijacked by lobbyists. Neither Clinton, nor Trump, not even Bernie Sanders could cleanse this rot from our democracy. The only way I see for us to take it back is with a Constitutional Amendment ending this legalized bribery. The group that's making the most progress towards this goal is Wolf-PAC. You can read more about it and help with the cause here:
Actual home sharing, that is, renting an extra room in your residence, is still allowed. This legislation doesn't touch that.
The target of this legislation is people who were creating businesses by buying condos purely to permanently rent on Airbnb.
Perhaps that's true, but AirBnB made a point to not share the data so people could figure that out.
In addition, while the number of rental properties is probably dominated by individuals, the number of days rented is probably dominated by the professional AirBnB hosts.
"Renting out an entire apartment for less than 30 days has been illegal under New York law for the last six years, but the rules were not enforced until very recently (Renting out a single room is legal)."
So what if you rented out one bedroom of an apartment on Airbnb and the living room and kitchen were public areas? Public because your spouse rented out the bathroom for the first 15 days of each moth for a dollar and let's say one of your parents rented it our for the remaining days of that month.
You divulge this to each Airbnb guest but tell them, "don't worry, the other occupant doesn't have plans to stop by during your stay and if they are not on premise in the room they reserved, you are free to make short term usage of it." The wink and nod will be implied.
In Los Angeles (and most other U.S. cities) you can find a place that is pretty nice around $120 a night. In NYC you are talking about at least twice that.
That's a big reason why whole industries have left the city over the last 30 years. It's an awesome place for sure, but has a high cost and hassle factor.
Doesn't that mean the Hotel CEO should've been able to raise prices anyway, regardless of AirBnB?
Regarding the regulation, it's well-meaning but poorly designed, broadly punishing anyone who wants to sublet their whole apartment for <30 days. I subletted my room multiple times at my last NYC apartment while I was on vacation. It was nice to make side income on a room that would've been vacant anyways, while allowing tourists (one of which became a good friend of mine) to visit NYC without paying the outrageous hotel prices here (yesterday I was looking for a hotel for the same night, the cheapest I could find would've cost $350, most were going for $450+).
I get it, we want to punish landlords who turn apartments into illegal hotels. Then why don't we simply target landlords renting out apartments that aren't their primary residences instead of painting broad strokes and making it illegal for me to make some extra income off of my vacant room while I'm on vacation, or sublet a place for 10 days while I look for a more permanent accomodation? These regulations are lazy and inefficient, causing unnecessary negative distortions to the market.
But before I come off as sounding really pro AirBnB, AirBnB has absolutely terrible customer service and a pretty steep fee (6-12% for the guest, 3% for the host), and thus I'm really hoping a competitor will step in to break this monopoly and force them to get their act together.
A couple months ago after my lease ended I decided to try living on AirBnB full-time, switching apartments every month. It worked out for the first two stays, but three days ago I ended up in a disgusting apartment with no internet connection and a different room that I had booked for 30 days.
Immediately I contacted AirBnB, and since then I've wasted an extraordinary amount of time over the phone/email with them trying to get them to simply cancel my reservation and refund me for the time I won't be staying there. After over 24 hours of this, they closed my case and offered me a $100 refund, telling me I'd need to accept this measly offer within 24-hours or get nothing (I paid over $1,600 for the reservation). Had to keep calling and eventually was able to escalate it to a supervisor, but right now three days after my initial contact with AirBnB, the reservation has been cancelled but there's still no word regarding any refund.
TLDR: This regulation is too broad and not targeted enough, but AirBnB has terrible customer service so it's hard for me to feel sorry for them and I wouldn't recommend them for long-term stays.
But when arguing from a principled position that views freedom as the highest value one can possess it is very hard to come up with a consistent and valid argument why private persons should not be allowed to rent out their property in the same way that "legal" hotels do.
Safety regulations are often cited but why shouldn't a place be good enough for a guest while it is good enough for local people living there? And why should a guest not be able to decide for him or herself if it's acceptable to stay there? (with Airbnb you'll actually get a much nicer place for the same money, especially in NY "legal" hotel owners got away with charging $250 for flea infested 2 star s* holes due to low competition)
Then there's the argument that properties rented out at Airbnb are generally advertised as great for parties. This is not true, anyone who has used this platform will know that these people offering their place go to great lengths to ensure that their guests wont do that. And even if they did, there are ways for neighbours to get reparations for damages, both from the guests (the law of the land applies to them too!) and the person renting out the place.
To me all of this sounds like politicians who are in the pocket of a certain industry ruling in favour of the same industry. This is similar to what is happening to Uber.
One thing is for sure: By suppressing competition in this way the government effectively creates an Aristocracy where everything is rigged against the average person.
Another angle to look at this issue: If you can't use your property in a way that doesn't harm anyone, like renting it to someone, is it then still _your_ property?