NY Attorney General hits AirBnB with subpoena for user data
m.nydailynews.com
m.nydailynews.com
http://www.followthemoney.org/database/StateGlance/candidate...
At number 4 with 1.58% of total campaign moneys, East 103rd Street Realty. Parent corporation: Glenwood Real Estate Corp.
http://www.glenwoodnyc.com/properties/
"Luxury Apartment Rentals in New York City"
Obviously the fact that people are renting their apartments is not something that buildings are capable of managing for themselves and has become a matter of great importance to the entire state of New York.
This is ALL about collecting taxes and ensuring private profits in clear and simple form of corruption out of incompetence and fear of actually having to compete. Maybe prices need to come down or service needs to improve so I may want to stay at a hotel that can provide what an AirBnB can't?
Imagine that. American companies actually having to compete instead of rigging systems that ensure "success".
* I think prosecuting tax evasion is one reason. It's hotel tax actually and not income tax, but tax evasion is tax evasion. However, I don't see why AirBnB host should play by different rules than a b&b-style guest house.
* Same applies for zoning restrictions. We can debate if the current restrictions are sensible or not, but that's the playground and the rules and we all play by the same rules.
* Hotels are cesspools. Yes, some are. Even chain hotels are. I don't know about NY hotels but I've seen quite a few and they range from "great in all regards" to "glad I'm far away". All in all most hove been acceptable. B&B rentals are on the same scale. At least with hotels there's a place I can report violations to.
I fail to see any reason or moral right that AirBnB host should not have to register as a B&B place, not pay the applicable fees and not adhere to the applicable rules. They're totally free to do that and then advertise on AirBnB. However, the implied reason a lot of hosts don't do that is because their landlord won't allow them to sublet the apartment - but that's a totally different problem. I fail to see any moral right that your landlord has to allow sublets. It's also none of the states business.
There's a lot wrong with governments and corruption and often they're incompetent and played by interested parties, but I think it's wrong to always assume that as the primary cause for government action.
Maybe some should, those that actually run "B&B" type outfits, but a lot of airbnb places are not like that, rather it's an individual renting out his own apartment (or a room therein) just to make ends meet. I doubt any such person will go through the process of registering as something which he/she is not.
The question of landlords/subleasing rights is an interesting one. Even as a libertarian I harbor doubts about complicated rental contracts (of any sort, including for example e-books).
If you call it the "business" of the State to enforce contracts, clearly the State has a valid interest in restricting what those contracts can consist of. For example, a contract which suborns murder or slavery should obviously not be enforced by the State.
It's a valid libertarian position to say when you rent something to someone, you transfer ownership for a period of time, and ownership gives one the right to do as they please with the property. When it comes time to return said property, should it be returned damaged, then the original owner can claim damage of property. Nowadays, rental contracts are obscenely weighted in the landlords favor .. including wording that controls your personal life (must notify the landlord if anyone is staying overnight etc). It's usually just not the landlords business, and actually quite creepy if you ask me.
IMHO a person renting out a part of their living space for short term stays, be it a room or multiple rooms, falls in the same category as a B&B place - whatever you call that category doesn't matter. The motivations they do that for don't matter. The rules and restrictions actually do depend on the number of guests you take in and so should be registration process. But if the registration process is the major obstacle, then why doesn't AirBnB work with the authorities to make that easier for small scale subletting.
The contracts between the landlord and the person renting the apartment are just that: a contract both parties willingly agreed to. The state does not enforce the contract in any way, but provides the legal framework and acts as an arbiter of sorts. It also needs to enforce any arbitration since the state holds the monopoly on physical force. It also restricts the type of contracts that are allowed - no murder contracts obviously :)
I also think that the landlord should be able to restrict certain usages of his property - he does have a vested interest in keeping the value of his property high in the long term, which goes beyond a single rental term. So he might have an interest in the no short-term subletting clause because the other people living in the apartment complained, exposing him to the risk of a fine. OTOH I totally agree the within reasonable bounds, the person renting the flat should be free to use it as she/he sees fit.
Under this system, it is hoped that authorities will also consider what is best for society, not just the letter of the law, as not doing so would risk wasting resources. For example, you won't see prosecutors enforcing Sodomy laws, because they know such actions won't hold up in Court. Unfortunately, the balance has recently been tilted towards "law is the law" thinking.
The reason for this is that the cost to those being prosecuted is so high it constitutes a punishment in and of itself. Since the prosecutors as individuals are not on the hook for the costs of investigating, bringing and defending charges, their only incentives are their own political and career ambitions.
I believe it is one of the great political and legal challenges of our time to reverse this trend, perhaps you think otherwise.
* One issue here is widespread tax evasion. There's no way we can have a debate about tax evasion by just stating "that law should be changed, I'm not paying those taxes." And AirBnB was clearly aware of that issue, yet they chose not to do anything about it. Their FAQ even state that you have to comply with local rules and restrictions and now those that didn't have a problem.
* It's not like AirBnB is having this problem only in New York or in the USA - the same debate has sprung up in Paris, Munich, Hamburg and Berlin, indicating that the problem is more widespread and not a problem with common law.
* Registering as some kind of "I'm renting out rooms to short-term visitors" might or might not be a good thing for society. It certainly ties in with the above point - anyone registered would have to pay. However, this is a city regulation, it's not part of the common law system. The city could change the regulation if the majority deemed it appropriate though. Until then, this is not "opt-out" without consequences. You can either comply or bear the consequences if you want to challenge the law in court. Otherwise I could just argue that any regulation is not in the best interest for society and opt out. I, as an individual don't get to make that decision.
> The reason for this is that the cost to those being prosecuted is so high it constitutes a punishment in and of itself.
But that's not the issue at stake here. This is certainly a massive problem of the american law enforcement. I don't know how to solve that though, but that issue is reaching much further than AirBnBs feud with the New York GA. See patent trolls etc. that all leverage that property of the system to their interest.
> I believe it is one of the great political and legal challenges of our time to reverse this trend, perhaps you think otherwise.
I totally agree here, but I don't think that "ignoring any law I personally deem unjust or senseless" is the way to go.
The governments gotta get it's money somehow, and I'd rather them tax visitor housing and the housing would pass those costs down to the tourists than for taxes for everyday New Yorkers be raised.
We should be having that debate rather than shooting first and asking questions later.
I understand that solving the problem is partially out of scope for AirBnB but so far they've been taking the easy route by ignoring and denying the problem. Reminds me of the mess über had at its hand when complaining about the taxi regulations in stockholm.
We may not like the exact formulation of those laws. We may consider them overly broad or intrusive. We may feel they should have distinguished between abusive profiteers and average, well-intentioned citizens who only rarely rent out their apartments. These are reasonable positions, and I can see their merit. We probably should have that debate. And amendments to the existing laws probably should be given a fair shot in the legislature.
But until then, it's entirely appropriate to enforce the laws that were duly passed many years ago. One could argue that the government should exercise some discretion, and enforce the laws only against those operators who are actually causing a problem. Well, according to the unnamed source in the government, that's exactly what they're doing. You may choose to believe that source or not. But until we hear about the government coming down hard on a legit, small-time user, I'm prepared to give the government the benefit of the doubt on this one.
I realize that in practice this happens, but we set a dangerous precedent when we allow the Attorney General to decide what should and should not be prosecuted. In theory, the Attorney General prosecutes all perceived violations of the law[0], and it's up to the justice system to, well, decide of the law is just.
[0] And I don't think anybody's debating that this violates the law; the debate is whether or not the law is just.
What? No. The AG is a political office. Prosecutorial discretion is used all the time because there are lots of anachronistic and over-broad laws on the books, and because there are lots of lawbreakers that are not politically expedient to prosecute.
This investigation is clearly political, but not in the shadowy anti-competitive way implied above. Property owners are the most important constituency for state and local governments. To a great extent, those governments exist to protect the interests of property owners. An AG pursuing a pro-owner position is hardly to be considered the result of political corruption.
Tell me more about how the concerns of the majority overrule the rights of the minority.
I'm not sure the snark is necessary or even make sense. The 'minority' shouldn't expect a right to illegally rent out their living spaces. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.
Do you see how easy it is to misrepresent someone's argument? We can do this all day but it would be a more productive discussion if we apply the Principle of Charity to each others' comments.
It would be more accurate to say: The broad economic interests of property owners in general outweigh the narrower economic interests of people who would like to offer short-term accommodations.
I am just trying to understand the situation. I don't see what is the difference between me being in the apartment vs somebody else being there. About taxation, we already pay income taxes. The property owner already pays property taxes. If people who rent out their apartments don't disclose said rent money in their income tax, yes I'd say it is scummy that people are getting out of paying taxes when my income tax gets reported/deducted at the source.
They probably should get hit with a huge fine for tax avoidance.
Humor me for a second. If short-term renters were quiet and non-aggressive, would you still have a problem with that? How does the hotel tax on short-term renting solve anything? Can people be loud and obnoxious because they have paid the hotel tax?
There's a big difference: The landlord has researched and approved you, but not your guests. The landlord probably did a criminal background check on you, and quite possibly a search in a tenant database. They're not just concerned about deadbeats who don't pay their rent. They're also concerned about damage to the apartment, disturbance to other tenants, criminal activity, etc.
> If short-term renters were quiet and non-aggressive, would you still have a problem with that?
If you could guarantee that short-term renters wouldn't cause a problem, then that would be fine with me. (I am a landlord.) But how could you possibly guarantee that?
> Can people be loud and obnoxious because they have paid the hotel tax?
In that case, the building is officially a hotel. Which means all its occupants signed up for what hotel stays potentially entail, such as loud neighbors. Likewise, the local government approved the plan to put a hotel there, knowing full well the potential problems.
In an apartment building, none of this is true. The people living there didn't sign up for hotel living. Nor did the local government determine that transient occupants would be acceptable for the neighborhood.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/nyregion/charitys-fired-ch...
You have to read the story three times -- for some reason the NYT didn't want to be clear. But the upshot is that an embezzler was using a nonprofit to recycle state grants into political contributions. His wife works for the Speaker of the State Assembly.
Any investigation of her? Or the Speaker? Prosecutorial discretion doesn't seem super interested.
There are real reasons to regulate rental activity like AirBnB's. It would be nice if we could believe the regulatory apparatus was interested in protecting ordinary citizens' rights in their ordinary residences. Seems like a stretch.
... and this isn't equivalent to a monarchy, how?
Among the more interesting questions in law are these: "Should every minor indiscretion be punished? If not, why not? If so, who decides? What side effects can be expected if it ever becomes possible to punish every instance of lawbreaking?"
We've hobbled our society with so many laws that their volume alone, never mind their scope, makes it impossible for any of us to call ourselves law-abiding citizens. What makes the question especially interesting and topical is that we're moving into an epoch of universal surveillance. The cops will see and know everything you do, and so will your neighbors, because they wouldn't have it any other way. Consequently we will have to rethink our prior habit of making as many laws as possible on the grounds that we're making them to control "those other people."
The time when we can dodge the Should every indiscretion be punished? question, or remain safely detached from it, is over. The archaic hotel laws, along with the arbitrary taxes that go with them, may be a good place for those of us who would like to steer society toward legislative minimalism to make our stand. (Yeah, yeah, I know, why don't I move to Somalia, etc., etc.) Good luck to AirBnB in what will probably be a very difficult fight against powerful incumbent interests.
Seriously: Large bodies of law evolved because there's always some idiot that tries to take advantage of a loophole in law. Because we as a society needed to codify property rules, no-murder and rule of law, all those pesky little amenities you'd be lacking in Somalia.
If we could all agree on "don't do things you don't want to be done onto you" and "be reasonable" then we wouldn't need like 90% of todays laws. But zoning regulations were at some point created because people just didn't want to have a party crowd of tourist on their pavement. I know, I've been living on one of the to-go places in Berlin for two years. It's just annoying that people can't be at least a little decent - I've had my share of loud spanish, english, german discussions on the pavement, drunk people en masse in the supermarket and alcohol induced puke on the porch, enough of having to keep my dog from chewing on the tenth used condom.
So I'm quite happy that there's no hotel where I live now and that none of my neighbors is trying to run a hotel-like establishment on AirBnB. And I'd prefer it to stay this way. (no, moving away is not an option - I already moved away once). And basically this all falls back to "if people would just behave at least a little, there'd be no problem."
I strongly doubt that the parents theory applies for a couple of reasons:
* The donation is the 4th largest, but still only 1.58%. That's a bit - but there are more donations in the same ballpark. The largest donation is just shy of tenfold that amount. We're talking 40k USD here. It might move the AG a little in the desired direction, but I doubt "vastly more likely" applies here.
* The company donating isn't even in the same market. AirBnB and Glenwood Real Estate Corp. are not competitors.
* AirBnB is having the same troubles in other cities. NY is just further ahead in the hardball game.
* This has been unfolding for quite a while. I'm rather surprised it took so long.
All in all, I think your and the OPs conspiracy theory doesn't apply here. I think it's just a standard case of a startup trying to revolutionize a market that they've deemed "ripe for disruption" and on the way bulldozering their way over laws and regulations. And now they've just hit a wall that won't budge so easily. The sad part of the affair is that most of the fallout will hit the AirBnB hosts who are legally on the hook, but that's something both sides, AirBnB and the AG have willingly taken into account.
Seriously, your naked aspersion doesn't even make sense in this context. AirBnB isn't competing with luxury apartment rentals. To the extent that a luxury apartment rental company might be interested in the issue, it's because they're worried about the impact on them if their tenants or the tenants of neighboring buildings start treating their properties as hotels through AirBnB. That concern is a totally valid one as a property owner.
> AirBnB isn't competing with luxury apartment rentals.
Have you seen some of the houses listed on AirBnB? There are some that ask like $3000 per night. Luxury apartment rentals have all the right reasons to be worried here.
That seems to me to be more of a competitor to luxury hotel rentals. Luxury apartment buildings don't rent per night (and many don't rent on terms shorter than say six months or even a year). Indeed, one of the things renters of luxury apartments look for is a lack of short-term or hotel rentals.
To the extent apartment buildings are in competition with AirBnB, it's from people leasing out their condos for 6-12+ months. Can you even do that on AirBnB?
I doubt that. AirBnB is in the "give me an apartment for a short-term stay" market while luxury apartment rentals are more in the "I'd like to rent an apartment for living" market. Judging from a quick lock on the website, Glenwood Real Estate Corp doesn't want to go in the short-term rental market either.
I stated the facts as they were and didn't embellish it at all (I could have easily written 'his fourth largest contributor is a Luxury Apartment Rentals Company!') because I'm not trying to suggest that he is some how 'in the pocket' of Glenwood. I didn't even go down the list of campaign contributors to see whether there were others (which I'm sure there are, and just looking quickly the next donor on the Real Estate list is East 46th Realty which is also owned by Glenwood).
What I'm trying to suggest is that like all of America's politicians, he is under the influence of lobbyists and the reason he is taking this issue seriously is because people with money have put it on his radar.
The luxury apartment rentals market is under threat from Airbnb. I'm just about to do a 3 month rental in NYC and some of the apartments available are amazing (often costing thousands of dollars per night - clearly out of my price range but not for others). If the luxury rental companies are worried about other people in the building using AirBnB, that suggests that the same apartments they are leasing are available on AirBnB. I can't think of a scenario where lost profits isn't a huge issue for these guys.
I get what you're saying, and I agree that in any event the state always wants to help property owners who pay most of the taxes. But I think a measure as broad reaching as this is something that is designed primarily to intimidate users of the platform. If the state were serious about the tax collection aspect it would just force AirBnB to calculate and collect the hotels tax, not seize data and selectively prosecute its users. People aren't going to run through the laws in their head and question what the State is trying to achieve. They are just going to get scared when they hear the State is seizing AirBnB data and stop using AirBnB.
I'm not suggesting that this is some kind of grand conspiracy, I'm suggesting that it is just business as usual in the USA.
Why is an elected prosecutor worse than one appointed by an elected executive? There seems to be great concern about elected officials being corrupted but there aren't a lot of great alternatives.
Why is the Attorney General an elected official anyway? You would think members of the judiciary would be either elected from amongst themselves or appointed by the executive, but direct election seems to open the door to a raft of opportunities to pander to your campaign contributors' interests. And this is not even considering the load of indirect kickbacks that candidates could be getting - club memberships, admission to selective schools for their children, spots on company boards, etc.
But I'm interested in the broader point you're advocating for... Why do you care if AirBnB pays the taxes instead of you? Unless you think the renters are going to suddenly start paying more (unlikely), you're taking it on the chin at some point, either in the form of reduced income for you when AirBnB starts taking a cut, or in the form of reduced demand when AirBnB raises prices across the board and guest demand is decreased.
The issue at question is a tiny (% wise) hotel tax. In my view AirBnB is not resisting this tax for its own sake, but rather because it risks classifying hosts as hotel operators.
AirBnB is a wonderful service, and yes it has flaws, but NYC is caving to the demands of political interests who know how to play the lobbying game.
Now multiply that reality across the entirety of the AirBnB hosts in NYC, and you have a recipe for a financial nightmare.
But why is that a risk, or a negative? I'd be interested to know what obligations hotel operators have. If it's putting in fire extinguishers and ensuring emergency fire exit access, then, well, sign them up.
The fact is this would kill AirBnB. It would make it too expensive to operate as a small host. Someone renting out their apartment to make ends meet, and very often in the process making lifelong friends with those who stay, should not in any sense be considered a hotel. It's a totally different experience for both the host and the guest.
I stayed at one of the earliest AirBnB spots, literally a "tree house" high in the santa cruz mountains in the host's backyard. It was advertised as such on the site, and was an amazing experience. We chatted for hours with the host, who told us all sorts of stories, including that a replica of her treehouse now sits at the offices of AirBnB. How is that in any way a hotel?
I have no idea about AirBnB's numbers but it would be interesting to see which is more popular and if they could sustainably eliminate the "whole apartment/house" faux-hotel segment they've created without going under.
Should it be substandard, or not what I anticipated from the listing, I expect to be able to report the condition via a review on AirBnB. I don't expect a refund should I decide to stay there, unless it's specified in the host's policy on the website.
I don't expect it to always be spic and span, but if a particular place is, I'd be happy to leave a positive review. I don't expect there to be a new bar of (crappy) soap in the shower. But that's only the negative.
I don't expect the host to spend hours talking about the local area, or even giving me a tour. Sometimes that happens on AirBnB, quite often in fact, even when I rent the whole place. It's never happened at a hotel, though I expect there's a concierge service which can arrange such an experience, except a professional one at a price.
It's just a different experience, and frankly, I will never stay at a hotel again (unless AirBnB is banned or has no availability from a particular area). Yes, I'm taking a risk of a messy place, or bad host, but a risk that's mitigated not by some governmental regulation (which rarely ensures quality), but rather by the AirBnB community which I've come to trust a lot more anyway.
I do agree that AirBnB has been generally superior to hotel-hunting and that the review system is powerful. And I completely agree that as a guest AirBnB is superior to regulated short-term rentals, especially in the places where the host goes above-and-beyond to be available and/or provide local tips and flavor.
I certainly wouldn't advocate that AirBnB get rid of whole-apartment rentals because they're not a good guest experience - much to the contrary it's always been great for me. But I think AirBnB are going to be up against the wall soon legally, at least in major metropolis areas, and eliminating the hotel-style whole-apartment rentals could be one solution.
It isn't. But how is your treehouse replica in Santa Cruz in any way representative of what AirBnb offers in New York?
There is a clear line already established in NYC- if you stay with someone, it's fine and legal. If you stay in their empty apartment it is not. So your example is covered.
Do you think all hotels rooms have two exits? Of course not. The issue is whether the floor and the building have sufficient emergency exits.
And that's where it will get complicated. A hotel owns the entire building and can ensure that stuff - someone owning one apartment in the building can't really make any modifications if they are needed.
A question to ask yourself: does it make sense to require hotels to adhere to these safety regulations but not apartment buildings?
Which it is, without landlord permission. Which, pretty clearly, most people are not obtaining.
It might. It might be reasonable to assume more familiarity with fire exit locations in an apartment building than in a hotel.
A small quibble: The various taxes on hotel charges in New York add up to almost 15%. If AirBnB has 15,000 people renting rooms, we could easily be talking about millions of dollars here.
However, users data. I don't know, there is a thin line between enforcing the law and not respecting citizens freedom and privacy.
The housing argument, instead, is just ludicrous. Let's put all the hotels in the city out in the suburbs then.
Which means that this is the State's hitlist of tax avoiders.
This is tax enforcement pure and simple, and doesn't seem to be a privacy issue. I've never heard of a reasonable defence against not paying tax being "that's my business and not yours", tax enforcement always wins.
Think on the consequences of this.
By the way, in the AirBnB case, you can always have police pretending to rent flats to get the tax offenders. This would protect privacy and scare offenders.
This is despite bank secrecy laws (which only apply in case of tax evasion, but not - fraud).
A big reason is simpleness of the tax declaration, transparency and - overall fairness of the tax code. Even though it's a rather progressive system.
It's a matter of incentives for the individuals, not culture.
Do inform yourself a bit on the topic. It's way more complex than you think.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/world/europe/italy-tries-t...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/world/europe/italys-new-to...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230375390457745...
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
There are people that do not pay taxes, but they are compensated by those who pay. The net effect is actually that the tax burden vs GDP in Italy is higher than in places like, say, Germany.
The reason Italy has a high public debt is not tax evasion, is excessive public spending. The reason many business are failing is not tax evasion, is a crazy tax law that kills many to reward few. That is why many Italian hate taxes, because they are unjust.
You wanted to say "some people", since a third of the people don't pay them (see the Uif research published in 2012). It's a huge number.
Do inform yourself a bit on the topic. It's way more easier than you think.
At least I've seen in a documentary where Italians tell they choose not to pay taxes. If there is a law to pay taxes and people can choose not to pay taxes, then some sort of enforcement has to be done. Especially because Italy's finances are in ruins and as an EU citizen I think it is Italians' responsibility to step up first, not EUs.
Hotels in cities have to obey laws about fire risk and hygiene and noise and etc etc. They have accountable people to take responsibility for their guests.
That could be true for many AirBnB hosts, but there appears to be some who just don't care about the neighbours.
Well I just don't think that's so.
A tremendous number of technically illegal things are routinely ignored, downplayed, or considered low priorities for enforcement. Everybody goes a little over the speed limit; everybody jaywalks; genteel, expensive drug-dealing and prostitution are common enough; domestic violence and abuse in all its permutations is unpunished more often than not; and so on ad nauseam.
Law enforcement is always selective enforcement. There just aren't enough executive resources to do anything else.
The problem with this analysis is that a State also creates these laws and can change them.
I did a Airbnb stay in Rome last year...the gov't there has been trying to better enforce its tax laws, even to a comedic degree (you, the customer, can get in trouble for walking out of a gelato shop without a receipt). My host made very sure I signed the right paperwork after my stay...and I'm guessing as long as the state gets its share, it has less incentive to crack down on it.
For one thing, making this determination jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction is much harder than simply looking up the hotel tax rate. For another, if Airbnb is representing a host as a "hotel" by charging the tax, they might be liable if that host turns out to not follow any of what must be dozens of legal requirements, again, all of which are going to vary greatly by jurisdiction.
(obviously the other issues about whether it's even legal to rent out in the first place is another matter)
It was denied as a violation of privacy.
"State is concerned about hotel occupancy taxes and possible evictions by greedy building owners."
Greedy is a value judgment with big negative connotations.
Yes. Very normal. It's a tabloid.
"Greedy State is concerned about hotel occupancy taxes and possible evictions by building owners."
The headline is indeed making a value judgement that the State is noble in going after money, but that building owners are not when they want money.
But it also reveals, and people should realize how much of our society is actually a facade. This is not liberty or freedom, for you to do with with your apartment or home how you wish. Next thing you know the government is going to subpoena Craigslist to hunt down sales taxes for the banged up table you sold?
This is subversion, perversion, and corruption of public resources and policy to ensure private profits and gains because corporations really don't compete in America, they simply rig a system that makes is look like competition. Our economy is fraud, just like that Western Town at Disney World is a fraud.
Next up, you have to have a tracking device in your car to make sure you pay your taxes for being a DD and they buy your food and soda in exchange.
But dont make it about liberty and freedom , that's totally relative.There is no such thing as absolute "liberty" or "freedom" ,some places are just more free than others and trust me you are lucky enough to live where you live.
This is not subversion ,this is how the system works. And you'll go with the flow eventually.
Thanks, guys.
As it stands, AirBnB is clearly illegal in many lucrative markets. Houses are not hotels, nor are they priced as hotels. You can buy a house, or rent one, for less than it would cost to buy a hotel, precisely because you're not allowed to use it as a hotel. So buy at that low price under one set of regulations and then demand to run a hotel under a different set of regulations, at a huge personal profit and damage to your neighbors.
It's an abstraction.
Or do you contend that "society" is exactly equal to the few dozen men who authored the US constitution? That simply doesn't make sense.
You may want to consider the fact that this applies to "corporations" as well. They're legal fictions. They can't be prosecuted, because they can't break laws, because they can't act. Only individuals can break laws and face prosecution, because only individuals can actually _do_ things.
You seem to have problems with the idea of abstraction. Learn some maths perhaps? It's worth it. You're working on an abstaction right now, as someone has already kindly pointed out.
I also recommend that you Google "theories of collective action", it's an interesting set of ideas which have had much intellectual currency for a long time, and still do.
It is not the case that people are rational actors thinking and acting alone. To understand the world we sense, there has to be collaboration and sensemaking together. Corporations embody the values of the leaders and or founders and shareholders, and are held together byt the rituals and practices of the people there every day.
What are Thanksgiving and Labor Day, if not embodiments of American society?
It is impossible to harm a legal fiction because it is a fiction. It is indeed possible to harm humans and that, of course, must be avoided.
I know that a lot of people on this site think that if you add the words 'on the internet' you should be exempt from all regulation and taxation, but that's just not how the world works.
I hope that the people who've been profiting from the lack of enforcement are forced to play on a level playing field.
Disclaimer: my experience with NYC AirBNBs have been incredibly negative, including people listing with fake names, revealing that they'd given fake addresses at the last minute (when it was already too late to change plans), showing deceptive photos, and giving false descriptions.
Airbnb ratings is the worst part. You can't trust them at all. That makes using Airbnb like playing Russian roulette. There's no negative feedback on the shittiest places.
Guess what? That no show host still has perfect ratings...
Can I ask why you used AirBNB for something so far outside the "normal" zone that it's pitched for? Why not just do a craigslist search for longterm sublets?
I've stayed at Airbnb places in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn area about ten times now over the past couple years and my experience has been satisfactory every time. And I've stayed in the entire range of Airbnb, from very nice places where I'm basically a roommate for a month and eating meals with my host, etc, to places where I rarely see the owner and it is obvious they don't live there but just rent it out, to an old loft that was subdivided into small rooms and being rented out to four different Airbnb guests at once. The subdivided loft one was probably the most illegal one I ever stayed in because it certainly wasn't up to code but it was still very cool and the other guests were polite and quiet.
The only time I've ever had a bad experience with AirBNB was once when staying at a place in San Francisco which turned out to be very dirty due to the owner being out of country and just having his next door neighbor give the keys to short term renters.
The rating system also makes it so that taking any action would probably result in an open flame war so that I'd probably get rejected by future landlords.
I call bullshit on this. Leaving a bad review on a host is not going to get you rejected by future landlords unless those landlords are also running dumps and they don't want to get bad reviews, and in that case you probably don't want to stay there anyway.
The key is to find places that have lots of reviews and read them. If you see anything amiss don't stay there. If you stick to well reviewed places you will have a great experience.
If you choose to break new ground and try completely new unreviewed places (which I have done from time to time) it is more of a gamble. You can also get some great experiences that way as well, because in general newer, unreviewed places don't charge as much so as to attract people, while the older very well reviewed and run places will charge nearly double in most cases compared to brand new places. Basically, you get what you pay for, as with many other things in life.
I've done this, I'm rather risk-averse with it comes to AirBnbs, and I've still run into bad places. I've had two bad experiences in this regard:
- One was a nice apartment, but I found out the landlord (the word "host" is both disingenuous and inaccurate for AirBnb and I despise the attempt at newspeak) lived full time in the room I was renting. She was old and clearly needed the supplemental income, and I displaced her onto the couch.
This was not made at all clear beforehand, and her place had many positive reviews. I did not sign up to displace an elderly person from her own bed, nor did I sign up to deny someone their only source of badly needed income. I suspect a lot of the positive reviews came from this. There was nothing otherwise wrong with the apartment.
- In the other one the bedroom was nice, at a good location, but the landlord had a dog that pissed and shat all over the common areas. Her place also had no shortage of good reviews (over a dozen at the time IIRC). In this case also it was clear she needed the supplemental income, and she was so damn apologetic about it and spent so much time trying to clean up after the dog that it was hard to write a negative review. I suspect, again, that this is why the place was so positively rated.
AirBnb's system is far from foolproof. In both cases I abstained from reviewing the places - a move I'm still unsure about. One thing I am sure about is that I resent being put in a position where I have such profound influence on someone's (badly needed) livelihood.
But yeah I agree that its not easy to leave a bad review sometimes. Usually there is a way you can word it that isn't mean or bad, but which lets future potential guests know what to expect.
Sure, and I did actually go back afterwards to see if I was just too thick to read between the lines. Couldn't find anything definitive, maybe some oblique hints.
Either way though, judiciously worded faux-reviews seem like they make the problem worse, not better. It forces the system into a state where only the power users know WTF is actually going on, and for everyone else the information is pure noise. You spend less time reading what's on the page and more time reading what isn't.
Funnily enough, this reminds me of the rental market in NYC, where it's all between-the-lines parsing and the system has invented a whole 'nother vocabulary to avoid saying what's what (see: "flex" 2-bedrooms).
This is one of the fundamental problems. I have no compunctions about leaving a hotel a bad review, because I know that they can afford it in the short run, and that as a stimulus mechanism for them to correct themselves, it's likely to work. In this case though, I don't think these landlords could afford a bad review, and they are not in a position where a bad review is a correcting mechanism - it's more likely to sink them entirely instead.
The thing is Airbnb originates from the couch surfing and hostel ecosystem which has considerably less controls and reviews but also a guest base who in general are willing to put up with less than savory conditions. Airbnb kind of tames that wild west of couch surfing by providing a review system and a more legitimate system of paying and getting paid. But it doesn't reach the full legitimacy of a corporate hotel.
Some of my friends ask me whether or not they should try Airbnb, and based on their personalities I will sometimes tell them no, because I know some of my friends just can't deal with it and need a real hotel. Others are more adventurous and I'll tell them to go for it.
For that subset of people who would be willing to try couch surfing on staying in a hostel Airbnb is like a luxury service and has all the key benefits of meeting interesting people and living like a local when traveling. But for people who wouldn't dare try couch surfing and find hostels unsavory then Airbnb is kind of on the edge. They might like it because it is a step above couch surfing and hostels, but most of the time they won't like Airbnb either.
The difference between reviewing them and reviewing an AirBnb isn't how faceless they are, it's how much they can afford it, and how much they can actually use the review as an impetus to improve. That review does no good if it simply means the business folds.
> "The thing is Airbnb originates from the couch surfing and hostel ecosystem"
Ehhhh... I'm not sure if I buy that line of argument. Couchsurfing.org originates from the couch surfing and hostel ecosystems, where the focus is on experience with the host/guests instead of a plainly quid pro quo exchange. AirBnb has no real focus on this experiential exchange and instead has always been very firmly in the "make money on your place" camp.
AirBnb likes to portray themselves as being related to the populist communities of couch surfing and hostels, but I don't see any evidence that they were ever in that space. They certainly aren't now. I was initially an ardent supporter of AirBnb, but their persistently dishonest PR positioning has really turned me off lately; that includes their persistent and annoying efforts at positioning themselves as some sort of populist revolution.
When's the last time AirBnb ever marketed themselves as "find a place, meet cool hosts, go adventuring with your hosts/fellow guests"? Because that's a fundamentally core part of the hosteling and couch surfing ethos. AFAIK this has never been an AirBnb angle.
In fact, if you look at the featured properties (curated by AirBnb themselves) you will see a dramatic dominance in luxury properties, not cute little bungalows where you're likely to hang out with a cool host. The descriptions are also always strictly about the property, not the host, and the photographs are also strictly of the property, not the host.
The host is a small-print detail in the AirBnb model, which makes it almost entirely antithetical to hosteling or couch surfing.
To me the property focused listings are a way for Airbnb to attract people who are too nervous to try the real couch surfing community by making Airbnb appear more like a property first hotel system. You can't blame them for this, because the subset of people who are willing to try this kind of thing if it was purely host based would be quite a bit smaller.
But the problem is that Airbnb obviously isn't a normal hotel system, and so some people who go into the experience expecting a hotel experience can be turned off by it when it doesn't meet their expectations.
On the other hand people like me who enjoy the chance to meet new people enjoy the social aspect but also like the slightly added safety of the reviews, pictures, and the payment system. Of course it depends on the host, but I've had some amazing experiences with hosts during some Airbnb stays: going to rock concerts, restaurants and bars, eating meals that they've cooked, and of course just talking to them and learning about their lives. My favorite experience was getting to stay with a couple who were aerialists for Cirque du Soleil, and months later returning to NYC to see an amazing opening performance by their own troupe of performers.
So to me Airbnb seems on the surface to be property based like you said, but underneath has a strong host ecosystem like couchsurfing.org The problem is that Airbnb is using properties to attract guests instead of the host experience. Of course this attracts people who are more demanding about the property and when the property falls short people are naturally unsatisfied.
AirBnb has always been angling to be a hotel (or at least Bed & Breakfast) replacement.
Unfortunately AirBnb doesn't have an API, so I did the best thing I could: searched for rooms vs. whole-apartments in a way that would actually give me counts.
In and around Greenwich Village, NYC: 634 whole-apartment listings, 132 private rooms in apartments, 6 shared rooms.
On the Upper East Side: 126, 13, 2
In Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn: 146, 50, 2
In Park Slope, Brooklyn: 559, 196, 5
In Astoria, Queens: 107, 111, 7
Moving away from NYC to SF...
In the Castro: 238, 129, 3
In North Beach: 176, 67, 9
In SOMA: 421, 197, 63
Or another state entirely...
In Capitol Hill, Seattle: 130, 55, 9
In Belltown, Seattle: 96, 16, 6
All of the searches were performed with the default filters, with the additional filters being only geographic bounds and type of listing. Now, I've got experience with all of the neighborhoods listed here, and they're all places where locals actually live. We're not exclusively at, say, Times Square.
I realize you've had good experiences with AirBnb, but I've argued, and still maintain in light of this data, that AirBnb is on the surface property-based, and is also beneath property-based. There seems to be a subcommunity dedicated to the more Couchsurfing type of experiences, but the data is stacked against them. AirBnb likes to borrow and quote heavily from this subcommunity in an effort to appear more populist and grassroots, but in reality the vast majority of listings on AirBnb are dedicated rental properties, not situations where the host is even present.
The reviews were mostly positive, except for one negative that did result in a flame war. I'm not sure what changed, but I heard from another one of the tenants that AirBNB was going to send a representative to check the place out after a number of complaints, but it sounds like the guy never came.
But if you leave a review complaining about real issues like no towels, dirty sheets or bathroom then that's not going to hurt your chances with good hosts. Believe me I've left a bad review based on an Airbnb place being dirty, and I've left a neutrally toned review that complained about some minor issues like a slightly dangerous ladder leading up to the loft bed at once place I stayed at, and I don't have any issues getting great Airbnb places.
It generally works really well, and in many cities all over the planet.
I trust you provided feedback against your bad host?
It isn't feedback against bad hosts, it is the amount of work that it takes to _not_ get a bad host which isn't comparable to weeding out bad hotels.
This is about landlords who don't want individuals to make money subletting their apartments. The old rich guys in Westchester who own all the housing in the Bronx.
There are a lot of people who are stuck living next to illegal,
untaxed hotels because one of their neighbors AirBNBs their place full time.
AirBNB is a crapshoot - I did it one time it was amazing... since all parties involved were responsible.
NYC may need to be subject to special consumer protection rules, pay taxes etc. in order to make this work.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky cautions that the government
is over-reaching in its demand for data.
The city has embraced rent control as a way of foisting the cost of "affordable" housing on landlords. As a result, apartments constrained to below-market rents receive below-market maintenance. Now illegal subletters seek to capture the benefit of this market distortion.
But maybe you're right - the way to fix this problem of deteriorating housing is for the government to become more involved in micromanaging the illegal subletting.
Wrong about why we are still saddled with these laws. The dirty little secret is that owners of condos and coops in the city know that by constraining the supply of housing in the city, their properties appreciate in value.
There are much worse problems constraining housing supply like how NY is zoned (though Bloomberg did a lot to change this). Zoning that controls the Floor-Area Ratio in many neighborhoods keeps old 4-story tenement buildings from being knocked down in favor of denser housing.
Worse still are minimum parking requirements where landlords are forced to build or provide parking to tenants when it's just not possible. Sunnyside, Queens is the perfect example of this problem.
My only point was that while rich people everywhere use zoning to constrain housing and make their own properties more valuable through public policy, in NYC the rent stabilization and control laws have similar effects while masquerading as enlightened social policy.
Obviously there's still a need for these programs but people have extreme reactions either way based on their politics.
What I will say is that rent control, aside from the affordable rents, gave me huge opportunities as far as what schools I could go to and socially. If I had to live in other areas for low-income folks growing up, there's a good chance I wouldn't have come as far as I have.
This is not the issue.
There are very, very few rent-controlled apartments left in NYC. Almost nobody who works in the tech industry here has one, because it requires having lived in the same apartment since the 1970s. If you have one, though, you could easily be paying 5% of market rent.
Rent stabilization is a very different set of laws altogether, and these apartments are also vanishing slowly.
As for true rent control, landlords would love it if their rent-controlled tenants were to sublet their apartment on AirBNB. That would allow the landlord to kick the tenant out and charge market rent - 20 times more - for the apartment.
You are right to make the technical distinction between NYC's "rent control" and "rent stabilization", but both have the same negative consequences for housing maintenance and creation.
According to [1], in 2011 about 47% of NYC housing units were rent-regulated.
[1] http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/HVS_Rent_Stabiliz...
People subletting their apartments aren't subletting rent-controlled apartments, by and large. This doesn't apply in other cities, but in NYC, any listings you see on AirBnb are almost certainly for unregulated apartments.
> According to [1], in 2011 about 47% of NYC housing units were rent-regulated.
73% of those (34% of total apartments) are pre-1947, which are regulated, but most of those are under a separate provision, which means they aren't subject to the same restrictions as what we're talking about here.
My point is, rent-controlled apartments are being subletted. The situation in my building is not a fringe case. Craigslist and word of mouth illegal subletting is common. AirBnB is not the only name in the illegal subletting game in NYC, but they are the only name in luxury illegal sublets.
If they are rent-controlled, even if they are paying their rent, he can evict them with no problem.
The relevant government agencies have a moderate amount of information line, but I'd recommend calling them instead. I've done this before; they're very friendly and helpful if you call them on the phone. I'd recommend giving them a call and asking for advice on the eviction process:
http://www.nyshcr.org/rent/ http://www.housingnyc.com/html/about/about.html
I grew up in a rent-controlled apartment in midtown manhattan that my mom has lived in since the 70s (you have to have lived in the apartment since before the end of 1971, actually).
However, it's not true that you could easily be paying 5% of market rent. My mom is paying about 50% of market rent and here's why:
Every 2 years the landlord is allowed to increase the rent by up to 7.5%, not exceeding the maximum base rent. Housing votes to increase the maximum base rents and ends up voting in favor of it maybe 3 times a decade or so.
However, if the landlord makes capital improvements to the building, they're allowed to increase the rent and in buildings in good areas with rent controlled tenants, they often do. Capital improvements let them raise the rent a lot more than that 7.5%.
My mom paid $318/mo for her apartment in 1984. If housing had voted to increase the maximum base rent every single time and the landlord increased the rent 7.5% every two years she would be paying $875. But this hasn't happened. Even so, she pays nearly double this amount because of capital improvements made to the building over the years.
They've even fucked her over and increased her rent based on capital improvements to the apartment she made herself out of pocket (updated wiring, renovated bathroom, etc).
As someone who used to work at a tax certiorari firm, I can tell you there's just as much fucking over between the landlords and city/state tax money. Landlords are making money for not doing a whole lot except owning land. New York landlords make a killing. I've seen their returns. There are landlords who leave large portions of or entire buildings vacant _on purpose_.
If you really want to go down that rabbit hole, we can talk about how land ownership and the tax structure is a massive wealth extraction from the lower classes.
Don't give me that bullshit argument.
So when you have problems with your wiring that your landlord refuses to fix (that are required to be fixed by housing regs) you have two options: a) complain and wait months/years for action or b) fix it yourself out of pocket.
You choose option b and then the landlord raises your rent. You don't think that's getting fucked over? You think tenants should put up with shitty (below required) conditions just because the rent is cheap (as regulated by law)?
Wow.
Both sets of laws will (in theory) lose effect if the city drops below 90% occupancy for a year.
Owners can not rent less than 30 days unless they are present. In addition, I do not know of a single condominium building that allows AirBnb style rentals -- most at this point have modified their rules/by-laws to explicitly forbid it so as not to leave any room for interpretation open.
I am President of my condo board and we both have this language in our rules as well as have a hefty fine for violating them. The minimum allowed rental is 12 months and includes a full background and financial check. Unit owners with common amenities do _not_ want short-term rentals in their buildings and can prevent them legally.
>I hope that the people who've been profiting from the lack of enforcement are forced to play on a level playing field.
If only there were a level playing field. I think the rebellion from the regulatory structure is a reaction to the unfairness of it. Hotel reg's, Taxi reg's, these systems unfairly favor established players and established business models.
One of the price differences between AirBnB and other establishments is that often AirBnB-Host don't factor in taxes just because they consider themselves exempt. Why should tax avoidance be tolerated? What's unfair about cracking down on those that cheat?
Nobody would argue against sanitation in principle, but I have never seen a health inspector at a hotel. OTOH, I have seen some nasty hotel rooms.
> I also fail to see that adherence to health and fire code unfairly favors established players - quite to the contrary, those not adhering to the standards take an unfair advantage.
Indeed, they do: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Four...
I didn't say that AirBnB should be exempt from all regulation. I opined that the existing regulations are unfair, and that may be a reason that some entities want to disrupt that space. I would hope that some compromise can be reached that is effective at protecting people (unlike the current system), and isn't prohibitively expensive or onerous, or doesn't limit competition from non-traditional entities.
Yeah dude, you're right, it's this point you made up that no one is upset about that people are ACTUALLY upset about...?
Oh, I see, because your experience has been negative you should definitely make up a strawman and beat it to death for no good reason. We all know that projecting views on everyone on an entire site is a super healthy and productive way to make a point.
I'm upset about the lack of taxation and regulation. I care about it in the AirBnb context, I also care about it in the Lyft and Sidecar context. These are all cases where we have a massive provisioning of services, in a context where caveat emptor is not actually practical, in industries where vendor-side abuse has been historically endemic.
We regulated the slum-hotels of the 20s and 30s out of existence. We regulated gypsy cabs (mostly) out of existence. I personally still recall living in a time where unregulated cabs would hold passengers for ransom by driving them to the middle of nowhere. Thankfully I no longer live in such a time or place.
I'm concerned that in our obsession with "move fast and break things" we're doing a lot of the latter. Some of these regulations are powered by vested interests. Some of it is historical and represent hard-learned lessons. The tech industry's collective attitude towards them seems to be "all laws are archaic and outdated, ignore all laws that don't benefit us". I for one don't believe in this for one second.
It turns out there are real reasons why hotels are regulated, why banking is regulated, why cabs are regulated, why meat-packing is regulated (still waiting for a internet-based meat-packing startup - Mechanical Turk meets Tyson Foods! Just slice the side of beef we send you, in your kitchen, then pack it back into the cooler with the pre-addressed label...), and so on.
The reason always is: because the business has been PROVEN TO FUCK PEOPLE OVER WHEN UNREGULATED.
(Longer answer: there's a systemic power problem between the provider and user of these businesses. Tourists have no power to avoid being fucked over, for example. Meat with E. Coli looks the same as meat without.)
But the 20-year-olds have grown up in a world where the business does not fuck people over (because it is regulated) and so they do not see any reason why it might require regulation.
And the VCs, the only adults in the equation, don't act the part of grownups because they're hoping the regulators are slow enough for a lot of profits to be extracted before shutdown occurs.
landlords will end up posting offers on Airbnb directly ,that's what will happen "en masse" in the future.
And You'll need to pay the Airbnb premium to rent anything.
After all , if i'm a landlord and ask for 2000$ a month for normal tenants , i can just go on Airbnb and ask for 200 or more an night , so i only need to rent it for 10 days a month for it to be profitable...
Landlords arent stupid we'll eventually end up in that situation on a large scale.
AirBnB will be a thing that landlords do. Property management companies are against it because it automates them out of existence. For landlords, it will be an unprecedented boon. Eventually people will be bragging about buying a 1 year lease on property like they once bragged about buying property.
This terrifies me, because I think that it will be a fairly irreversible phase change that solves the massive vacancy rate problem that we've had since the property bubble inflated. It's like German work sharing applied to housing (the vacancy rate will be spread more evenly across rental properties over time.)