To Airbnb is human

Coronavirus has knocked the city’s vital tourism sector on its knees. Hopefully soon, it’ll find unsteady footing, aiding hotel, retail and restaurant workers whose livelihoods should be one of policymakers’ top priorities.

Friday, the city notched real progress in dealing with a disruptive upstart offshoot of that sector — striking a data-sharing agreement with the home-sharing site Airbnb. This is, as people annoyingly say, a win-win.

Pre-virus, thousands of New Yorkers trying to make a little extra cash in this costly city used the online platform to connect them to visitors seeking short-term rentals. The rub is that renting out an entire apartment for less than 30 days is almost always illegal, and plenty of unsavory businesspeople exploited the platform to run de facto illegal hotels.

It’s never made sense for the city to throw the book at teachers who might rent out their homes for three weeks during summer vacation or actors traveling on out-of-town productions. It’s always been important for true abusers to get rooted out. Yet for years, as the city asked Airbnb to turn over data separating babies and bathwater, the company played coy.

Under the settlement, local government will get quarterly reports on all entire units up for rent, save those who’ve put their apartments up for less than five nights in that three-month stretch.

Which is to say, the city can fine and root out serious lawbreakers, ignore small-fry abusers — and maybe even someday start collecting taxes from millions spent on ordinary hosts. Huzzah.