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Comment by jim_h | Hacker News Reader

FUD. I'll summarize for you below. I call it FUD since the author never provides any sources or anything to actually back up what he writes.

"don’t want to be burned alive by faulty wiring"

"lack of fire exits or basic electrical safety"

"hell of noise and violence and shady goings"

"don’t want to be robbed, or scammed or murdered"

"credit card and not have that card cloned"

"drug-addled European backpackers armed with camping stoves"

"used by gangsters and slum lords to drive families from their apartments"

"fleece tourists into spending their vacations under unsafe roofs"

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You're skipping the one very good and valid point he makes in the article, which is that the bill actually has an exemption which pretty much permits services like AirBnB to exist, if not thrive. Basically, short term rentals are acceptable as long as the owner is present... this means less competition for your average AirBnB user.

Given this exemption, it makes me question why exactly AirBnB was so up in arms about this, especially with their rhetoric being centered on protecting the little guy. That being said, I love the service, though if I had more cash I'd take a hotel every time.

Also this: "absent owners can lend their rooms, but are banned from taking money".

This means people that go on vacation cannot take in renters.

(Sorry, your point was a bit lost in all the FUD that was in that article.)

but apartment swaps are allowed

I think the chances of people doing an apartment 'swap' for their out of town/country vacation is pretty slim.

2 people going in the exact opposite direction and wanting to living in the other person's home. Seems slim chance to me unless those people knew each other in advance.

add - bluesmoon, learn something everyday. Though I think not all everybody wants to open their own apt for swap and instead would rather rent someone's for a week or 2.

It actually happens fairly often on couchsurfing. Couple A from New York wants to spend July in San Francisco and swaps with Couple B from San Francisco who wants to spend July in New York. I've seen it happen with entire families too.

Less likely to work internationally, but domestically, it happens. It's the key exchange that's the hard part, but the safest is to leave the key with a neighbour and then call them from the other side to give them the okay.

There are companies, like homeexchange, that have been in businesses for decades doing exactly that. Swapping, vacation rental, subletting have all been around far longer than sites like airbnb. Even craigslist has had a home swapping section for as long as I can remember.

Swapping homes is far more common than renting a room for a week. It's more common outside the US sites like gumtree, leboncoin, etc. have been doing this for years

Automatic upvote for having come up with that username before reading this article's title.

In one of the past AirBnB articles about NYC the author mentioned that many landlords owning multiple apartments are making money on their vacant apartments by renting them on AirBnB. Maybe a bulk of AirBnB revenue comes from these operators who are doing hotel rentals on scale?

I don't remember any particular public comment from AirBnB. Speaking generally, I think any business would react negatively to having a powerful competitor convince the government to rule a segment of their business illegal. After all, all it takes is a quick amendment to the law later to eliminate "the loophole being abused by vagrants, drunks, and foreigners" and suddenly you're guilty of Felony Interference With Business Model.

One's marketing and PR posture does not necessarily mirror the totality of one's business. If I was planting an article in the New York Times, it would focus on a poor Hispanic girl learning at a NYC school which has a number who loves school now rather than on a middle class white boy learning at a suburban Illinois school which has a name who got a candied apple at the Halloween party last year. Two true stories, but the one which pays the rent is not the one that gives NYT reporters weak knees.

it makes me question why exactly AirBnB was so up in arms about this

Well, one obvious problem is that losing a big subset of your business is always bad.

But another problem, which I just found, is that these fine points of the law, if they exist, are nowhere to be seen on the web. All the immediately obvious Google hits paraphrase the law as "AirBnB and Craigslist short-term rentals now illegal in NYC". So that's a first-order marketing problem.

It also adds fuel to the FUD fire, as we are seeing right here in the linked article. Suddenly every AirBnB host is being accused of running a flea-infested, credit-card-scamming, fire-hazard rat trap. That's a second-order marketing problem, but it could prove even worse than the first-order one: The law only applies in NYC, but FUD can spread everywhere.

Finally, there are the legal problems. This law gives the cops, and whoever tips off the cops, a lever with which to hassle AirBnB guests and hosts alike. Just because you're ultimately going to be found innocent doesn't mean that being hassled by the cops is a barrel of fun. If it happens to any extent it's bound to hurt the reputation of services like AirBnB, especially among foreign travelers, who are probably damn scared of American police as it is.

And, of course, to prevent a raft of lawsuits AirBnB must now carefully educate its NYC hosts about the law, and pay a lawyer to draft an airtight agreement for the hosts to sign to indicate that they understand the law, and defend any lawsuits that spring up when people get busted in NYC and blame AirBnB anyway despite all those precautions...

That part had me puzzled - does 'owner' include renters?

This does seem to alleviate any legitamate concerns about the bill, as long as renters count as owners (ie, if I have a free room in my apartment, I can put it on AirBnB)

If its only _owners_, though, its quite draconian, as most NYC building owners don't live in their buildings.

Notice how this 'valid point' has nothing to do with all the other 'safety' red herring nonsense. Forcing the owner to be present cripples the opportunity to sublet, which is exactly what the hotels want.

Ok, he's probably being hyperbolic.

All the same. There's a reason that hotels have to be licensed, and it's because people occasionally die if they're not.

Do you consider the board of health restaurant inspections to be a bad idea?

"There's a reason that hotels have to be licensed, and it's because people occasionally die if they're not."

Show us something that backs up your statement. People die all the time. Even from things that are heavily regulated and licensed.

So, do you think the board of health should no longer inspect restaurants?

(So, are you avoiding backing up your statement?)

I never said that or implied that.

We are talking about places to stay, not restaurants(food). Don't change the topic.

They're actually so similar that they're regulated under the same branch of law called "hospitality law."

Since this law doesn't apply to my apartment and everybody's apartment, are we living in unsafe conditions?

If someone were to visit and stay in your apartment for a few days, then somehow it becomes unsafe?

There are a bunch of laws regarding how your landlord can act, in fact, and they're extremely restrictive on the landlord.

Stop with the black/white nonsense, everybody in this whole thread agrees that it shouldn't be a big deal to sublet for a couple months or have a house guest. That's qualitatively different from running an unlicensed hotel.

"everybody in this whole thread agrees.." I didn't get that memo and I am unanimous in that.

I was never arguing what to call 'short term rentals' or whatever you want to call it. I am questioning why it's unsafe and why the FUD (in the article) and where is the proof.

If you have lots of friends and you let them visit often, does your apartment become unsafe? Or is it really when you start charging them money that it becomes unsafe? (I am NOT referring to trying to cram all your friends into your apartment and having a wild party. I mean 1-4 friends visiting at a time.)

So let them require BnB's to be registered and inspected. If I start a single-room restaurant, where people can join me at the dinner table each night (and yes, those exist: a few have been popping up in some European countries lately), it wouldn't be outlawed either, would it? I'm sure hardly any owner would mind paying $100 a year and allow random inspections (which usually means they'd get inspected once every two years or so...).

That's a fine idea, but it's hardly "less government".

Such an idea probably won't happen because of the aformentioned hotel lobbyists, though.

OK... "some dreadful, some absolute flea-pit shit holes by the side of highways in Dallas" - so "flea-pit shit holes" are safer than an apartment complex that has 100 other people living there daily? Oh, and his parents own hotels. It's pretty ironic for him to complain about a service which complained about legislation that is hurting their business (which involves them lessening the hotel industries profitability, phew)...

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