Airbnb and New York City go head-to-head
New rules covering short-term rentals trigger a turf war
Action targets “people who have figured out they can take groups of apartments off of the market and turn them into their own privatized hotels.”
Airbnb attempted to head off regulatory efforts against it in New York City on Wednesday with a new rule that limits most hosts to listing one apartment for rent as of Nov. 1.
The new rules would also prohibit short-term rentals in public housing. In rent-controlled units, tenants would be able to rent only up to the level of their rents, or a portion of the income would be reinvested into upkeep of their building.
The company will also institute a “three-strikes” policy that per- manently bans repeat rule breakers and sets up an online system for its hosts to register.
Airbnb has cast the rules as aiming to make sure New Yorkers who are sharing their homes occasionally to make ends meet are “protected while we target enforcement to commercial operators who are running illegal hotels and taking housing off the market,” said Josh Meltzer, who oversees Airbnb’s operations in New York.
New York lawmakers called the plan “a Hail Mary” attempt to get around a bill that went to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday. The bill would fine illegal Airbnb operators in the state.
In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, lawmakers called Airbnb’s announcement “a publicity stunt” and urged the company to comply with the existing 2010 New York state law that regulates short-term rentals.
“The proposal is an attempt to do the same thing here in New York that has failed in San Francisco. Registration and taxation has not worked in any city where Airbnb operates. Nobody is actually registering,” said New York state Sen. Liz Krueger.
The New York City efforts are part of a larger struggle nationwide as municipalities strive to reconcile the undeniable draw of short-term rentals for visitors with the potentially lost housing that can result. Such issues have arisen in Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans and other U.S. cities.
The San Francisco-based company’s money doesn’t come from people living in their own homes renting out a room or a bed while they’re there, which is legal, said New York Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal.
Instead, it’s “people who have figured out they can take groups of apartments off of the market and turn them into their own privatized hotels,” she said.
In its conference call an hour later, Airbnb responded that the 2010 New York law was written before their platform’s wide-scale use and represented “horse and buggy laws” in an age of automobiles.
“The law was specifically written to impose fines on landlords, at that time there was a concern that landlords were using empty rooms to run these types of hotels and hostels,” said Meltzer.
Airbnb focused on what it said were middle-class hosts making ends meet in a lawful way during an era of income inequality.
New York Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal