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keepper

I love AirBnB, and have used them many times. But in the case of NYC, AirBnB brought this wholly on themselves.

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...

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Ditto from the ground. Airbnb's political acumen, especially in comparison with Uber's, is abysmal. They clam up when authorities ask questions, piss off powerful constituents (e.g. prosecutors by launching ad campaigns against them and investors and early employees by blocking share transfers), and then routinely overplay their "popular support" card. If this is their ground game elsewhere, expect more backlash to follow.

I showed up in SF last year to find airbnb had ads criticizing local tax laws all around town. Disgusting. They are the heart and soul of why SF sucks to live in.

Not terribly smart use of money, either, compared to growing markets where the brand is actually viewed favorably.

Housing shortage is what makes prices high. AirBnB is not why prices are high or why there is a housing shortage.

At least in NYC AirBnB is indeed why it is much, much harder to rent an apartment at the low/middle end of the market. Couples who move in together don't free up an apt - they rent it on AirBnB. To say nothing of landlords who don't replace tenants in order to do the same.

This means their rent is too low, right? If they can make money by being a middleman, it means people are willing to pay more than what the landlord priced the apartment at. (I bet in NYC the brokers are to blame for this; they make the cost of moving very high.)

No - it means you can charge more to rent by the week than by the year, because tourists are willing to part with more money as part of the experience of visiting a place. It makes little sense to peg residential rent to what the tourist market will bear.

This sort of comparison isn't apt. The benefit to the city for improved tourism is more than outweighed by the jobs unfulfilled by workers who couldn't find a place to move into the city.

But they can only do that because there is an existing housing shortage. You can say that AirBnB exacerbates and existing housing shortage, but it doesn't create one in the first place since the financial incentives aren't there to get creative in the ways you're describing. And reactions to crowded housing markets don't help either. For example, rent control can become such a nightmare for a landlord that making an equivalent amount of rent through AirBnB can be very attractive despite how much more work it is to rent out that way.

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.

I disagree. Pre-AirBnB there was an affordable hotel shortage in NYC. Now there is something like an affordable housing shortage. The root cause is a tool - AirBnB - that has enabled (triggered?) a massive increase in tourism by making it financially advantageous to take housing stock off the market.

> They refused to give data to the attorney general, and instead, mounted an AD campaign.

Companies that take their customer's privacy seriously should be lauded, not condemned.

What about companies who's sole source of business is illegal activity? Ones that produce negative externalities they don't have to pay for? Do we applaud them, too?

We're not talking about protecting a political activist. We're talking about illegal rentals.

This seems to be the meaningless complaint du jour right now. If you don't like a business or product, just accuse it of introducing negative externalities. No evidence needed!

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.

>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.

Most hotels in the US are owned by a small number of huge companies. Check out a few slides into https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/casnu/marriott-organizatio...

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.

Not even the attorney general claimed that Airbnb's sole source of business is illegal activity.

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 site has 225,000 users in the city, but only data from those who rent out their place is being sought, according to sources. That would affect only about 15,000 of New Yorkers.

> 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.

That's a very easy way to put it. By their own admission, they knew their users were breaking the law ( attorney general claimed 50%, airbnb claimed 15% ).[1]

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...

I bet 15% of Google users have used the service to break some sort of law. In fact, I bet it's much higher ("piratebay","where to buy pot","offshoring","visit Cuba")

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.

The difference is that you're not directly breaking the law using Google when you visit a torrent site, and there are ways to remove certain information from Google, like Chilling Effect. However, on Airbnb users were directly using the platform the flout or break the law, which is why they're in trouble.

well said - Also they are aiding and abetting in breaking the law which should mean they are equally punishable and should be.

Sure. But if it's illegal to rent an apartment short term, and you post an ad to rent an apartment short term with reviews of people who did rent an apartment short term in the past, that burden of proof is met.

In the US, performing a search query is not against the law.

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.

Only they provided data. But they didn't spend much time anonymising it, instead removing commercial offers in a single Röhm-putsch, falsifying it for any independent analysis:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/25/11116426/airbnb-report-dat...

Companies that take their customer's privacy seriously should be lauded, not condemned.

Depends on whether the activity they're engaging is legal or not.

But companies that earns a substantial portion of the revenue from their users' illegal practices either need to actively participate in the investigation and enforcement of those laws, or expect that new laws will be created to work around them.

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.

If a company profits from illegal activity, isn't that also illegal?

It depends. If they do it knowingly, then usually yes.

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.

eBay can't check the source of a 2nd hand item to discern if it is stolen.

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.

>They knew individuals were renting whole apartments 100% of the time, and did nothing.

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

they are in many places just not nyc. if you are against that, and i agree your point has merits, try to change the law. don't actively work to break the law.

To be fair, they're 'just' following the Uber playbook of breaking the law in the most public way possible with the hope of changing the law in their favour

No, not really, because AirBnB puts transients in apartment buildings that threaten the safety of people who live there. AirBnB seems to have little regard for the safety of New Yorkers: there are children, the elderly, and women who should be able to feel safe and be safe in their own apartment buildings. Many, many buildings have doormen in NYC have doormen who keep transients out.

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.

To the extent that AirBnB increases tourism to an area, or reduces the cost of lodging, leaving a propensity for tourists to spend more locally (and have the same total cost of their stay), the local merchant community benefits.

Well, if this is the goal, then the merchants could advertise the low-cost hotels in Union City, NJ ($60 Priceline) 15 mins from Times Square. This way the merchants benefit without the harms to NYC residents. Of course, the businessmen hotel/motel owners in Union City benefit as well. Win-win-win (NYC merchant, NYC resident, Union City merchant).

If I'm a deli, pub, pizza, or dinner place in Manhattan, I benefit WAY less from someone staying in another state than I do from someone staying in my neighborhood.

Union City, NJ is 4 miles from Times Square (Apple Maps). People live there are far beyond and commute to NYC every day for work. While technically another state, it is much closer to Times Square than much, if not most, of NYC.

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.

4 miles and crossing a river is a pretty long walk for pizza, beer, or dinner. I doubt you'll find a pizza place in Times Square who wants to advertise for people to go stay in New Jersey in hopes that that advertising will be net profitable for them.

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.

That's the logic used to lobby for allowing cruise ships to dock in your port, but the reality is it's the high-end visitors who spend money. The kind who stay in a nice hotel.

Most everyone who stays in a city away from home buys food and drink.

Some of those people will buy more expensive food and drink if their lodging is cheaper, but almost everyone buys something locally.

Reduced rental stock + disruptive transient population introduced in residential areas. No-one wants to live next to a AirBnB. End of discussion. We've been over this a million times here, you're not opening up the discussion.

> No-one wants to live next to a AirBnB. End of discussion.

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.

Yeah but then you're in Times fucking Square!

The idea that you should have a right to dictate what your neighbors can and cannot not do in their own homes is not uncontroversial, and a slippery slope.

The idea that the city doesn't have a right to dictate exactly that is nonsensical. Pretending that we have suddenly jumped from an anarchist free-for-all city environment with no such concept as zoning to this brand new day of regulations on what a building can be used for is really making it harder to have a sensible conversation about the topic.

These are not self-standing houses. They are apartments that are part of an apartment building which has a doorman or a locked door to keep transients out.

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?

It's called zoning, and people have accepted it.

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.

Yeah? Ok, well I'm going to open up a bar next to your home in the suburbs. See the problem?

Can I have a trash landfill on my property?

There're externalities with Airbnb that neighbors end up paying for.

I do not know where you got the 15 min idea from, but this is just not correct. It's about 35 on a weekday and closer to 1 hour during weekends when public transit is slow.

There are no deals in NYC. You always get what you pay for.

Apple maps using bus 159 from Union City NJ to the Port Authority Bus Terminal which is at 8th Avenue and 42nd St. Times Square is At 7th Avenue and 42nd St. is 16 minutes. I don't know where you get 35 minutes.

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.

Price is as combination of supply and demand. In NYC, the demand is high. If something is cheap, then there is something wrong with it. People often think they are smart buying something cheap here, but the price is alwats fair (be careful with that Chinatown fish).

There are no hotels in Union C ity from where you ambiguously picked your travel route. Where is your 60 dollar motel located?

> if there is demand for this kind of short rentals, why wouldn't they be allowed?

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.

"Think of my backyard" is slightly less compelling than "think of the children"

Just because "think of the children" is an overused argument, doesn't mean we should stop caring about children entirely to avoid that phrasing. Same goes for the "not in my backyard" complaints.

It also doesn't mean that saying it makes a compelling argument.

Exactly. The market is filling a niche here and it seems the only response is that "it's wrong because the rules say it's wrong".

No, the response is that we don't want transients in our apartment buildings. NYC is a very large, dangerous city. Many, many buildings have doormen who keep transients out and help to protect the safety of children, the elderly, and women.

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.

NYC is very large, and on the whole very very safe. It is in fact the safest city in America. The real problem with permanent whole apartment rentals is that is puts a strain on the limited housing supply. Its easier to regulate against non-conventional use than to rewrite zoning to allow more affordable housing to be built. So, that's the regulation we get.

NYC has a homicide rate 3 times per-capita of that of London. There is a lot of violent crime and there is also property crime.

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.

Heaps of people in NYC live in buildings without a doorman without being viciously murdered.

I assume people intent on murder are happy enough to take out someone blocking their path. I've never lived in a doorman building, but I'm pretty sure they don't wear bullet proof vests and carry guns.

The reason most people aren't murdered is because nobody wants to murder them.

1 in 5 women are raped or experience attempted rape according to CDC

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/feb/...

Violent crime happens to random victims.

The comment I was replying to used the expression "viciously murdered".

In NYC buildings without a doorman have locked outer doors were people are buzzed in once they have spoken to the person they want to visit over the intercom.

I've lived in buildings like that in NYC, those buzzers aren't stopping anyone.

The fact that people have to be buzzed in serves as a deterrent.

People hang out in front of the door, usually with some sort of sob story about how all their keys melted or something. Then you have to decide between "do I want to be a dick to someone who is probably my neighbor" or "do I want to let in the murderer". Fortunately I've invented the third option, "looks like it's time to go get some coffee".

Yeah, because NYC has a rate of just over 3 per 100,000 and London's is just over 1.1. Both are insanely low. A rate of 1.1 is pretty typical across Western Europe, but the rate in L.A. is 6.3, 5.3 in SF so its kind of relative. For the US, New York is very safe. 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.

8.5 million/100K * 3 is > 250 homicides in NYC every year.

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.

Good things:

- 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.

If it's not wrong for being illegal, I wouldn't argue that law abiding hotels especially deserve to stay in business.

Yeah. It's like the argument "because it's against the law, it's fundamentally bad."

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!

So, in other words, you don't understand why we have zoning laws, so you think they should be wiped off of the books.

Because the lasting effects of unchecked tourism are never positive.

Thank you for sharing. I viewed this as "How did the hotel lobby beat the AirBnB lobby given that AirBnB hosts have so many more voters?" I still view it as a shame, but it's a little more complicated.

I'd view it as apartment renters and (especially) non-AirBnB host condo/co-op owners have even more voters than AirBnB hosts.

Are the renters locals or out of towners? My (uninformed) impression was that AirBnB is more out of towners than long term locals. (I know a lot of folks who used it for business trips)

The intent of my comment (which wasn't worded well) is that non-AirBnBing long-term residents or would-be residents (whether renting or owning) outnumber the hosters.

I've seen a couple examples of folks doing 3-6 month AirBnB renting instead of looking for and dealing with the apartment market.

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.

I can't speak for NYC, but Vancouver is looking to ban AirBnB due in part to the displacing effect it has on long term locals. In an ultra-low vacancy rental market, every AirBnB unit takes a badly-needed apartment out of the rental pool.

They ran a pro campaign claiming rentals were being turned I into hotels

Which they were.

Yeah. I had my place on there and one guest was surprised that I actually lived in my apartment.

For every Airbnb host voting for them, there are potentially dozens of neighbors who want them to stop hosting.

>The spirit of AirBnB and the "sharing" economy is to share under utilized housing.

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.

All of the AirBnBs I've stayed in were like this (New York(upstate-ish), and Colorado (Denver & Boulder)).

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).

So, the complaint has merit then.

Almost all of these things benefited me as a consumer and allowed normal people to get an income flow.

You're asking the wrong question. You should ask why AirBnB posed such an existential risk to hotels in the first place.

They pose a risk to hotels because hotels have to obey the law while these guys think they do not.

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