Long-term solution?

If early indicators mean anything, under-coverof-law short-term apartment rentals are headed for near-extinction in New York City. Which is to say, thousands upon thousands of people might continue to rent in defiance of a new registration requirement, reopening burning questions about how to regulate a gray market that is every bit as big as the ones now hanging in a giant cloud of smoke over cannabis sales.

Under a new city law, all hosts looking to rent out part of their apartments for less than 30 days must tell the city; leaseholders or apartment owners who aren’t on the premises when renters are there aren’t eligible to register, because what they’re doing is against state statutes.

Since the registry launched March 6, only 92 (count ’em) hosts have applied to legally rent. Compare that piddling total to the more than 1,000 city apartments still listed on Airbnb when we looked Monday — many of them not for private rooms in an occupied apartment, which is conceivably legal, but for whole apartments, which is not.

In the face of mass refusal to play ball, the city will be back where it started: having to determine on whom to crack down. We repeat what we’ve said from the beginning: leave alone the ordinary folk who try to make a few extra bucks when they go out of town for a few weeks a year. Go after those who create de facto illegal hotel rooms.

And even as precious few hosts are complying with the registration requirement, another piece of the new local law is getting big uptake: a “prohibited buildings” list where building owners can alert the city that short-term rentals are expressly prohibited. To date, 3,773 have joined the list.

This raises another huge question. A shortterm, full-apartment rental in a building where the landlord hasn’t asked to be on the barred-building list is just as illegal as one in a building where the landlord has opted into the banned building list. Will only the latter bear the brunt of enforcement?