Hotel concierge Stringer
The hotel industry is living rent free inside city Controller Scott Stringer’s head. There’s nothing wrong with politicians having allies, including business and union partners. But the confederation between Stringer and the hotel industry — whose enemy No. 1 is sharing site Airbnb — is looking like a deeply unseemly arrangement.
One about which Stringer seems unwilling to come clean. Witness their too-close-for-thehigh-school-prom dance over the last few days.
Step one: Stringer’s office last week released an official report, developed by its budget division, concluding Airbnb was responsible for 9% of citywide rent increases between 2009 and 2016. In some neighborhoods popular with tourists, it asserted, the numbers were far higher.
It was the hotel industry’s dream — a collection of ready-made talking points it could use to wallop a competitor.
Except: The company Stringer got the info from, AirDNA, says he mangled their data and used it without permission.
And: The methodology, conflating correlation and causation, was dubious at best. An NYU study last year relying on Airbnb data already found an impact on New York City rent via taking apartments offline “likely to be minimal.”
Step two: Even as the hotel lobby packaged his report’s findings into an anti-Airbnb ad, Stringer joined other elected officials for a kabuki theater, industry-hosted Airbnb bashfest.
In a robocall earlier this week, Stringer, speaking as city controller, invited New Yorkers to take part in a telephone “town hall.”
“Learn more about what we can do to stop Airbnb and make New York City more affordable,” heard the people who picked up their ringing phones. Stringer went on to tout “a new study by my office” finding that “New Yorkers paid an additional $616 million in rent because New York apartments are being used as tourist rentals on Airbnb.”
The hotel industry wrote the script, after previewing Stringer’s report. They hosted the town hall, at which Stringer and two others blamed Airbnb for everything from higher rents to gentrification, leaving out only global warming.
Step three: The hotel industry released a six-figure TV and internet ad campaign bashing Airbnb, citing Stringer’s report — and, of course, prominently featuring his name.
Despite evidence that he ordered up a hit job, then coordinated its release with a mutually beneficial hotel industry offensive, Stringer would have us believe the whole thing is a coincidence. How stupid does he think New Yorkers are? Airbnb is hardly squeaky clean. It lets users post thousands of listings for entire apartments even though most are illegal under New York laws banning short-term rentals.
But two wrongs don’t make a right. The controller has committed a double violation of the voters’ trust, producing shoddy research and then shilling for special interests ever eager to scratch his back.
Maybe Stringer, who plainly wants to be elected mayor in 2021, has learned nothing from the influence-peddling schemes that got Bill de Blasio in scalding water. Or maybe he’s learned too much.