Airbnb of confusion
Hot on the heels of city Controller Scott Stringer dubiously finding that shortterm apartment rentals on Airbnb hike rents by hundreds of millions of dollars, the City Council races to crack down on home-sharing as a scourge, without a moment’s thought about the ordinary New Yorkers who will get screwed in the bargain.
Hotel unions have them on a short leash, having put the maximum $2,750 contribution into each of the campaign funds of most Council members. They now dutifully work to snuff out competition rather than listen to thousands of constituents who are trying to responsibly open their homes to the world, and — horror of horrors! — make a little extra cash on the side.
Oh, but do tell us more about how hard you’re working to fight the affordability crisis, dear local elected representatives.
A bill in the works would require all New York City short-term apartment renters to register with the city’s agency charged with cracking down on illegal hotels. It would then be equipped to snuff out most of them, in letter-of-the-law compliance with state law banning advertising full-home rentals of less than 30 days.
Speaker Corey Johnson — whose bid for leadership the Hotel Trades Council backed — says he’s gunning for “unscrupulous landlords renting out affordable housing units as illegal hotels.”
But that’s half the picture. The majority of fullapartment Airbnbs are offered for less than 60 days each year, according to listings data compiled by the watchdog Inside Airbnb. These are hosted by the likes of educators and actors who find themselves out of town now and then and want to earn a little extra to cover costs. Or couples living in separate apartments who now and then shack up in one place to rent out the other.
Why should the City Council and state law, while rightly targeting true illegal hotels, begrudge them?
Airbnb hasn’t helped its cause by too closely guarding information about rentals listed on its platform. It should release detailed information to help the city craft smart solutions. And stop pretending that everyone who rents on the site is legit — a flip side of the City Council’s conflation of ordinary Janes and Joes with illegal hotel operators.
The sketch of a solution to the standoff is easy enough to see. The City Council must stand down, and stop threatening to bring down tons of bricks on de minimis short-term renters. At the same time, Airbnb must start making some distinctions of its own.
Register all short-term rental units to make sure they comply with safety codes. Cap the number of days hosts can offer their home to make it economically impossible to run an apartment as a hotel business, but possible to let apartments be occupied a couple months, max a single year, while an owner or tenant is away.
Then leave city enforcers to focus their limited manpower on the bad guys: hosts making a business out of renting out apartments year round, depriving New Yorkers of precious housing.