Airbnb refuses to hand over users' data
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
An acquaintance, living in a building whose management was very tolerant of the short-term rental of its units, recently saw a double-digit rent increase. The owner believed, probably correctly, that he was better off leasing his apartment to a series of short-term stayers versus a long-term tenant. Ignoring rental and regulatory volatility, this makes sense.
Point is, the gripes are real. They are also the kinds of social disagreements politics is designed to deal with. Blowing past that will probably backfire, particularly in New York.
A judge will decide it but he will probably get the info on all the people that have rented their places for under 30 days.
It's getting tiring where the USG at all levels is so busy farking over the freedoms of citizens while being utterly incompetent, wasteful and useless on so many other fronts.
It seems that denouncing the government is the only truly patriotic action one can now take.
Their business model continues to work worldwide, no matter where they are located...
I can understand the gripe with the rents increasing, but AirBnb is only one enabler, this kind of thing was possible before using Craigslist, it's just it was more hassle involved. If the hosts believe AirBnb violated their trust and gave away their information, they will must move onto The Next Best Thing(tm).
"What New York State's Illegal Hotels Law Means for Travelers"
According to the WSJ[1] the investigation is looking strictly at "people who might be trying to skirt New York's laws by renting out multiple units or obtaining their primary residence through Airbnb for extended periods"
It seems like this can be accomplished without a whole-hog dump of every NYC-area landlord. Why not have AirBnb dump this data, with a neutral third party auditing?
One thing that doesn't smell right though:
> "Airbnb has about 15,000 hosts—or people who share their living space—spread out among New York City's five boroughs, with 87% of them renting out the homes that they live in."
I call shenanigans on this. I've done searches throughout NYC as a curiosity exercise last time this topic came up. "Whole apartment" listings vastly outnumber "room in apartment" or "shared room" listings. The notion that the vast majority of Airbnb landlords are present, or renting out parts of their existing homes, does not seem to bear out in reality.
[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230444140457912...
I wonder if the AG will threaten AirBnB with abetting crime of conspiracy, or some other BS in order to coerce complince....
So, yeah, court order, the charge will be with tax evasion if they really want to get rough.
Nothing noble about that.
Regulations also aren't free. As we've added to housing regulation, compliance costs have risen, and like any other industry high regulatory compliance costs discourage competition from small businesses. Regulations also ensnare unintended targets, especially when they've been iteratively built upon over decades or centuries. Like code, it is difficult to predict the full behavior of a piece of legislation over a vast and complex economy.
This puts us in a tricky balancing act. We need regulation because we've observed the many, many ways an unregulated market tends to fuck over its own customers. We also need to limit regulation in order to preserve competition and avoid people getting screwed by the law even when they aren't the intended targets of said laws.
There are, of course, malicious actors within the system on both sides. Those who seek to add regulations that have little to no public benefit, to further their own interests, and those who seek to remove necessary regulation to further theirs. The incumbent hotel industry tend to represent the former, and AirBnb represents the latter. Neither are working in the interests of the public, though they would both claim to be.
You've bought AirBnb's bullshit propaganda instead of Starwood Hotels' bullshit propaganda. Whoopee.
Both sides, if permitted the full extent of their desired regulations (or lack thereof) would be disastrous for the public and consumers. We, as the public, need to reign them both in, letting either side "win" would be silly and shitty.
If I'm on the other side of the planet for a few weeks, I still live in my home in Washington, although I am not present at that time.
Sadly, AirBnb doesn't have an API I can poke at to make it more scientific - but I went through a bunch of listings in NYC a few days ago, and nearly all of the "whole apartment" listings are professional operations that operate year-round, not ad hoc arrangements (i.e., "I'm out of town, take my place").
One easy way to tell is to take a peek at the property's calendar. I'm pretty sure regular bookings for months at a time suggests it's not exactly someone renting out their primary residence.
Are residents splitting space with visitors, or splitting time?
A common practice is that if you get a visitor from AirBnB, the resident goes and crashes at a friend's place for the duration of the stay.
(Heh, imagine if the resident used AirBnB to find a cramped accommodation for the duration! Full liquidity in the housing msrket!)
Everywhere you look at the Uber debate, the story is told as members of the community standing up to the old guard – but the airbnb story right now feels like an insurgent brand standing up to the authorities.
With Uber, the story always resembles this: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/10/dc-city-council-shelves-ube...
If you want change, you need to make people realize that there is a problem with the current system... and ignoring the laws, and then working to get them changed after the problem has been realized (a la Uber) seems to be a lot more effective.
You can't get people excited to change something they don't know/care about!
I see it as mission critical because it would be too easy for landlords to take that information and use it against people.
Well they could've done themselves a favor by not illegally subletting their rental. I don't mind the concept of Airbnb but it's laughable that proponents glaze over the fact that rental agreements often prohibit subletting yet Airbnb users still rent their space anyway.
The rules probably date back to when such arrangments were often quite sketchy and informal, whereas the Airbnb era adds traceable payments/stay-records, sticky reputations linked to real-world identities, and a commercial-entity's own "guarantee" against harms. So would the board consider waiving those rules under certain situations? It seems the option to rent out property in some cases will protect or improve the property's value... which I presume is one of the major goals of the condo board.
"No one has expressed any desire to change the policy" - not even the people who've been fined? (Were they renters subletting, or owners flaunting the rules?)
Note especially this heartwarming section: "You acknowledge and agree that you and Airbnb are each waiving the right to a trial by jury or to participate as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class action or representative proceeding. Further, unless both you and Airbnb otherwise agree in writing, the arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims, and may not otherwise preside over any form of any class or representative proceeding."
What could possibly go wrong?
Some violations of the Multiple Dwelling Law are misdemeanors while others are civil penalties. But in so far as NYC is concerned, AirBnB is facilitating and profiting from illegal acts.
http://gawker.com/5853754/the-seedy-spammy-past-of-airbnbs-c...
When you rent out a space there are laws designed to protect the renter, and many leases have clauses prohibiting subletting. Odds are many of these laws/contracts are being broken, so what do you expect?
Because it's an internet start-up you're allowed to break the law?
Well yes, that's what they're saying. "Internet is different" is the very principle Amazon invoked to not collect sales tax for years. (I'm not saying I agree.)
Well, to be fair, in Amazon's case it legally was different.
No, its not; Amazon sought to have legal rulings that had been applied to remote selling (by mail and telephone order) applied to remote selling by internet in exactly the same way that they had been applied to other means of remote selling.
It was exactly the opposite of "Internet is different."
I'm only sorry that the AG didn't go after AirBnB earlier.
AirBnB otoh is aligned with a small minority of owners against the larger number of renters pissed off that their already high rents are exploding. The pols are taking these actions because voters are upset. AirBnB are on the wrong side of the divide. This may thus end badly for them in NY. Other cities will copy NY, and so this is a fundamental challenge to their core value prop.
That is not how I would summarize the law. It prohibits residents of most buildings from renting for under 30 days. The exclusions are mainly around existing buildings that would violate the law, without Airbnb style rentals, namely university-owned buildings that are used for short-term rentals in the summer and older buildings that are apartment/hotel mixes.
Business wise they should to do this, yes, but that still doesn't mean it's an easy "they sort of have to" situation.
The law in question was pretty much created to stop Airbnb-style short-term rentals.
I'm not a proponent of AirBnB's business model, but I can understand their attempt a refusal.
225,000 New Yorkers have signed up to Airbnb.
I would like to side with Chesky if he gives up his data and New Yorkers spruce of their apartments...
That statement makes no sense. Every single household can be rented out, it's only a question of price.
Probably best to tell this AG to go piss up a rope privately and dispense with useless press releases like this.
Apartment buildings may have different codes depending on their height (you can't build a 10 story wooden building for instance), there's codes which regulate exits, access, max occupancy, etc... Single family homes have different code to follow because the expectation is that only 1 family will be living in it, versus an office tower or hotel with thousands...
A relevant example - not every basement is suitable as a living suite, but many are rented out anyway, which is against the law (there are certain codes which much be followed to ensure a rental suite is legal). This would apply to AirBnB as well. Traditional bed and breakfast places have rules to follow as well, business regulations, building code, etc...
Since you mention it, I suspect that an "official" hotel room has to be built and maintained to a much higher standard than someone's house or apartment. Width of exits, sprinkler systems, etc.
As an interesting counterpoint here, it's legal to let someone crash on your couch, but the second you ask a dollar from them for the space, everything changes. That doesn't necessarily make sense to me.
People that do AirBNB in NYC aren't doing it at the same recurrence rate as 'having someone crash on the couch.' Either AirBNB hosts are trying to control the tone on hackernews or people are seriously oblivious to reality.
The person who paid you to sleep on your couch is just some person with cash. Especially if you are not around, they're much less likely to feel socially obligated to treat the place like their own.
[1] http://thevillager.com/villager_199/astouristfillillegal.htm...
There's much more money in the tech industry.
It's about protecting consumers...