NYC Fines Airbnb Hosts For 'Illegal' Home Rentals (cnet.com) 267
In October, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law one of the nation's toughest restrictions on Airbnb, which includes hefty fines of up to $7,500 for people who rent out space in their apartments. Several month have passed and the New York Post has learned of "the first casualties of [the] newly enforceable law." The city has reportedly charged two hosts with a combined total of 17 violations, and since each violation comes with a $1,000 fine, it adds up to $17,000. From their report: Property owner Hank Freid -- who was once crowned one of NYC's "Worst Landlords" by a watchdog group in 2005 -- and real estate broker Tatiana Cames were slapped with 17 violations, at $1,000 apiece, for their allegedly illegal listings on Manhattan's Upper West Side and in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn, according to documents obtained by the Post. Freid, who manages the Marrakech Hotel, was hit with 12 violations for listing SROs in the building on several booking platforms, including Booking.com, Expedia, Kayak, Hotwire, Travelocity, and Orbitz, the citations reveal. Meanwhile, Cames -- who was served with five violations -- allegedly posted five separate listings to Airbnb advertising 320 Macon St, which records show she purchased for $2.15M in 2015. The Macon St. property was discovered to have inadequate fire alarms, sprinklers, illegal subdivisions, and a confused bunch of French tourists in a rear unit, according the procured documents. Cames appears to be making money off the vacancies in the building as she attempts to fill the space, as the same units are advertised as "for rent" on her personal website. The listings also seem to suggest that drawing illegal Airbnb-ers into BedStuy will help "diversify" the locale. If Freid and Cames don't pull their listings, they could be hit with a second set of violations, at $5,000 a pop.
The law (Score:2, Insightful)
Right.... AirBNB has some illegal unlicensed activity and NYC uses law to impose heavy fines.
At the left side of the argument, illegal unlicensed people in NYC get taxpayer subsidized healthcare and public services and, including cash benefits.
Can somebody explain to how to reconcile enforcement of one laws and ignoring the second laws, printed on the same paper with the same ink.
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Right.... AirBNB has some illegal unlicensed activity and NYC uses law to impose heavy fines.
At the left side of the argument, illegal unlicensed people in NYC get taxpayer subsidized healthcare and public services and, including cash benefits.
Can somebody explain to how to reconcile enforcement of one laws and ignoring the second laws, printed on the same paper with the same ink.
But they're not printed on the same paper with the same ink. The first is a state law and the second a federal law (I assume you mean the fact that these people are here illegally). So in the first case it is the state enforcing its own law, and in the second the state is not checking to see if enforcement of a federal law would apply to a particular person. Does that clear it up?
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illegal unlicensed people in NYC
States are not allowed to enforce immigration laws. Arizona tried doing something and got slapped in federal court.
It's up to the citizens of each state how they treat people who entered or stayed improperly.
printed on the same paper with the same ink
We have a tiered system of government, and immigration laws are certainly not within the purview of the individual states. Your argument is deeply flawed.
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So, NYC should also enforce immigration laws?
Further, are local municipalities or states now responsible for enforcing federal law? Do they check to make sure someone doesn't owe federal taxes? Or are there only certain federal laws they should enforce? How do we make the determination which federal laws states and cities should enforce?
Society (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Society (Score:5, Insightful)
You can only have a functional society if people have some sort of empathy for people.
What kind of difference does this make, then? I knew 0 of the people in the only apartment complex I've ever lived in. I know 0 of my neighbors. Remember when someone moved into the neighborhood, and someone would come to welcome them, maybe several of the neighbors? They'd bring a basket of fruit or something, and you'd all meet one another? Yeah, me neither. That shit was over long before I was born.
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That happened last year, the last time a new person moved in. Yes, I live in a major city. I suppose those of us who live in a nice community want to keep it. Maybe you should focus on making your personal community nicer instead of trying to drag everyone else down to your level.
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You can only have a functional society if people have some sort of empathy for people.
What kind of difference does this make, then?
It's not really even about that.
Well, why don't you make up your mind what it is about before posting comments?
What? (Score:2, Troll)
For all that the Progressive Leftists claim to be against big business and for the working people, they sure as hell don't show it. AirBnB gives people the ability to rent out their property for a few extra bucks. It gives consumers a chance for a possibly better price and experience for accommodations when traveling. That takes the money away from Hotel conglomerates and massive union control and puts it back into the hands of the working people. Isn't that what the Left claims to be all for?
I find it
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The failure to understand why people don't want a different stranger living next to them every week is a sure sign that our society is breaking down.
There is no "failure to understand", there is only "failure to care" that people don't want strangers living next to them (both by the company and by the people who rent our their rooms).
Otherwise agreed.
The cost of doing business (Score:4, Insightful)
The fines were $1000 per incident. Let's assume each unit rents for $1000/wk. And since there are multiple units in these buildings, a single ad could cover several units. I'll make a giant assumption of 10 units per building, and an occupancy rate of 50%.
(10x52x1000)/2 = $260,000. A $17,000 fine may cut into profits a bit, but it is hardly punitive. At $5,000 a pop, that starts to be enough to discourage the behavior. But even then the venture appears, if not wildly profitable, still better than having the units sit empty.
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... A $17,000 fine may cut into profits a bit, but it is hardly punitive. At $5,000 a pop, that starts to be enough to discourage the behavior. But even then the venture appears, if not wildly profitable, still better than having the units sit empty.
Good observation on the nuisance-level penalty.
But I disagree that it is better than having units sit empty. In either case, the unit is off of the market for long-term rentals (>1 year). The function of short-term accommodations is fulfilled by the hotel/motel industry –which can only be built where zoned to allow for it.
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"Better" for the owner, not necessarily better for society at large.
Some people see breaking the law as inherently bad and avoid doing it on principle. Some see the penalties involved as a tax, on the off-chance you get caught.
Do you always drive the speed limit? 5 over? 10 over? 20 over? At some threshold - assuming there are police around to catch you - driving over the speed limit becomes more expensive than it is worth, below that threshold, most people speed. Same applies to business. Many business own
Why is illegal in quotes (Score:2)
Proper punishment (Score:2)
Not a measly $1000 per instance fine. Just make Airbnb rentals subject to NYC's rent control laws. Rent out a unit off season for a low rate and you can't raise it or kick the occupants out.
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Re:Go! Government! Go! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, residential areas are created to provide places to live. Period. Full Stop.
You don't get a veto over your neighbors, only who stays at YOUR house. . . . .
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Re:Go! Government! Go! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Might" ?? You can't value hypotheticals. Now, if they **DO** have loud parties every night, you call the cops for their disturbing the peace, or perhaps talk to your landlord or Homeowners' Association. The latter two generally have enforceable rules about nuisances. . .
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Which is precisely fuck all use if the culprits were only there two days and a week later another bunch arrives.
Re:Go! Government! Go! (Score:5, Insightful)
. . .in which case you target the property owner.
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Perhaps with fines for renting out the apartment?
Re:Go! Government! Go! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, not with fines for renting out the apartment. Fines for disturbing the peace. The problem isn't the rental, which is no one's business but the property owner's. The problem is holding the property owner accountable for the use of the property, including use by guests. You want to rent out your apartment on AirBnB? No problem—but you are responsible to your neighbours for your guests' behavior during their stay. So you'd better make sure they're well-behaved and considerate before letting them stay at your apartment.
Re:Go! Government! Go! (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's really just a harsher enforcement of regular zoning laws. You can't run a commercial hotel in a residential neighborhood, and you shouldn't be able to get around those laws by saying "no it's different because it's on the internet." When there's such a pattern of behavior of disruption coming from apartments being rented out, isn't it okay to ban the underlying bad behavior? Drunks are so likely to cause accidents, injuries and deaths on the roads that we just ban drunk driving all together. We don't say "well, you can drive hammered and we'll only punish you if you run somebody over."
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When there's such a pattern of behavior of disruption coming from apartments being rented out, isn't it okay to ban the underlying bad behavior?
No, that sort of prior restraint requires serious justification—"imminent threat of irreversible harm". The handful of minor disruptions which have actually occurred are nowhere near that level of threat; very few things are, short of direct physical attacks. While it would certainly be a simpler solution, prior restraint violates the property rights of those who rent out their apartments to considerate guests who do not cause such disruptions, while also causing harm to the guests themselves in the f
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Speaking of enforceable, what got me in TFS was this:
"and a confused bunch of French tourists in a rear unit"
Is that really illegal in NYC?
Re:Go! Government! Go! (Score:5, Insightful)
.....for free. Once you charge money for individuals to stay at your home you are in direct violation of zoning laws put in place by the local government voted in place by you and your neighbors. You want to turn your house into a short-term commercial rental, then get the zoning and/or laws changed to allow for that use in a residential zone. Those zoning laws are the same reason why I can't buy the house next to you and on a whim decide to bulldoze it and put up a small factory.
Re: Go! Government! Go! (Score:3)
If this was already against the zoning laws, why did NYC need this new law?
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If this was already against the zoning laws, why did NYC need this new law?
Because the activity is in the gray area. It is very similar to share riding companies. If there is no clear law, corporation will keep exploring it (and get individuals involved because individuals will get a piece of the pie even though they don't realize (or care) about how tiny the piece is).
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I suspect the laws were either weakly enforced, not well defined or the fines were so small as to only discourage thinking about it.
Airbnb now makes it so much easier to tap into a large market to make a lot of money that those small fines could just become the cost of doing business.
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voted in place by you and your neighbors.
What kind of government is that? Is this the mythical democracy I keep hearing about that other non-US countries have?
No man is an island (Score:2)
Even if you think that you're entitled do doing with your home whatever you want to, that's not entirely true.
You live in a society. This has implications regarding what you can and what you should do. The obvious example would be me setting $UNPLEASANT_INDUSTRIAL_PLANT on my own property next to your apartment, effectively killing its worth or your ability to use it.
But there are also finer, albeit none the less important implications. Take the social one for example: in Berlin, Europe rents have climbed b
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You know that wild camping is illegal in large parts of Europe, right?
Off-topic, sorry. I didn't know this. I just assumed it was England that had fucked up access laws. Just another reason for you all to come to Scotland where the 'right to roam' is enshrined in law - http://www.outdooraccess-scotl... [outdooracc...otland.com]
Now back to your regular programming...
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You don't seem to know the difference between hiking and camping. Go set up a shanty town in Kelvingrove Park and see how long it lasts.
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Yeh, thanks. You don't seem to know the difference between wild camping and a shanty town.
'Scotland's access legislation means that everyone can go camping wherever access rights apply, as long as it’s done responsibly. There are a few reasonable exceptions to where you can camp - you should avoid camping in enclosed fields of crops or farm animals, or near buildings.'
http://www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/pub... [snh.org.uk]
Any issue you have camping in Kelvingrove Park are down to Glasgow Council and their increasingly regr
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Re: No man is an island (Score:2)
Yes you do. You have every business keeping the society you're part of in working condition. Same goes for your neighbours.
From time to time, this implies telling each other what you are to do and what not.
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Actually, unless you make being an asshole a crime, the assholes of the world will skate along the edges of the rules, because that is what assholes actually do to be assholes. They are the ones that ruin everything for everyone else. You make a new law, they will adjust and keep on going, skirting along the edges of the law. Eventually the laws take into account every last possible way to keep assholes from being assholes, but by then it is too late, because the rules and laws now affect normal behavior, a
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No, residential areas are created to provide places to live. Period. Full Stop.
You don't get a veto over your neighbors, only who stays at YOUR house. . . . .
I agree that your neighbors shouldn't have anything to do with whatever happen INSIDE YOUR HOUSE (not AT) because it is your own space. I have no objection on that. However, when you start invading other people's space, then there must be rules or laws against that type of activities. For example, playing loud music that neighbor can clearly hear it is invading other people's space. Similarly, having strangers who short rent/lease the place to come in and out and/or use the same COMMON areas with everyone w
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No, residential areas are created to provide places to live. Period. Full Stop.
You don't get a veto over your neighbors, only who stays at YOUR house. . . . .
This is how it should be, but ain't. Just take a look at homeowners associations, and all the regulations they lay out - like you can't paint your house mauve. The pretext being that it alters the value of other houses in the neighborhood, hence the 'greater good' argument.
Anyway, it's funny how AirBnB, which wants to defy the travel ban, is now running into rough weather w/ Comrade deBlassio just for doing their own thing
Re:Go! Government! Go! (Score:5, Insightful)
Since you brought up zoning... Some zoning laws don't allow hotels, motels, or a bed and breakfast to be operated in a residential zone. I'm not arguing for or against what NY is doing, I'm just making a point that these operations MAY be in violation of their local zoning laws.
I'm all for what Air BnB does, as long as the original intent is followed. If my neighbor wants to rent out his house while he's out of town, more power to him. I would start to object when a slumlord is buying up the houses in my neighborhood, pimping them out on a daily basis to whomever is passing through town, and not maintaining them.
I mean that is kind of the point of zoning laws, isn't it? If I don't want to live next to a motel (or smelter plant) I am pretty secure in knowing that one isn't going to be built next to my house 2 years after I buy it. And having a stable place to live, knowing who my neighbors are, knowing who I need to keep an eye on is part of the value of living in a residential neighborhood. I certainly don't have the ability to control who my neighbors are, but by choosing to live in a residential area I have a certain expectation that I won't have a new set of neighbors in the house next door every week.
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I certainly don't have the ability to control who my neighbors are, but by choosing to live in a residential area I have a certain expectation that I won't have a new set of neighbors in the house next door every week.
Entirely agree. You get new neighbors every weekend but you also get an empty property the meantime. In my community I'd argue that the increase in Airbnb rentals is highly correlated to the closing of local small businesses. These properties are entirely empty from Sun-Thur every week and there have been a rash of barber, bookstore, coffee shop, etc. closings in what's a fairly metropolitan area.
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That is what zoning laws are for.
And if a place is zoned residential, it's designated for long-term occupancy.
Short-term occupancy such as hotels and hostels are almost always commercial zones.
Thus, the AirBnB rentals are almost always an attempt to use residential property for commercial purposes. Especially if the owner does it regularly or frequently.
I've lived in apartments, and noise problems are difficult enough without adding people who don't care because they won't be around next week.
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Do pay attention, AC.
The fact that any of us would agree that it's not ok to just build a smelting plant by someone's home, is enough to show that it is not the case that:
No, residential areas are created to provide places to live. Period. Full Stop.
Re:Go! Government! Go! (Score:5, Insightful)
I call Bullshit on that "part of a community" bit. Tell me the name and hobby of your next door neighbor.
And now find 5 other people who can tell that. Nobody gives a shit who's living next door in large cities. You would probably only notice that someone in your apartment megacomplex died because after a few months in Summer it starts to smell funny.
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You would probably only notice that someone in your apartment megacomplex died because after a few months in Summer it starts to smell funny.
Actually, the last apartment building I lived in didn't smell that great when everyone was alive!
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Yes I do know the name of everyone on my block and what their interests are. That's what a community is.
I haven't had that since I was a child. Nobody wants that now. Also, I don't want to know my neighbors. I've seen how they drive, and they are inconsiderate fuckbags.
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Well if you're neighbors are like you, I don't blame you.
My comment made you so angry you forgot how to use apostrophes? U MAD BRO?
The neighbor behind me runs his bulldozer for hours and hours and hours every week working on and reworking his roads like he's some kind of tweaker and drives like canned fuck. Oh yeah, and one time I had to go down to the lower part of my property and fire off my .22 semi auto rifle rapidly into a burn pile because he was behind my house SHOOTING INTO MY HILL, WHICH IS TO SAY TOWARDS MY HOUSE. If he had just aimed up a little high,
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Maybe you were born in a shit pile and lived in one your whole life, so if you don't want to search for anything better then that's fine.
Maybe you haven't noticed, but housing in California is severely fucked up. This is what I could find that was within my budget. I'd love to have neighbors that aren't nasty shitbirds, but you can easily move to someplace where they're all great, and then have them all die and/or move away and be replaced with fuckbags. The best laid plans of mice.
Frankly you sound like the kind of stereotype a lot of Americans try to deny.
Oh yeah? Because I'm conscientious and don't want to hang out with a bunch of fuckheads who have proven that they're selfish fucks? Run that one by me again, I'm
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I thought being a selfish fuck is mandatory in the US? Ain't that one of the tenets of capitalism?
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I thought being a selfish fuck is mandatory in the US? Ain't that one of the tenets of capitalism?
It's one's god-given right. Manifest destiny FTW!
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If you really read TFA, you should know that it is a state law, not a city law [news [engadget.com]]. Even AirBnB appears to disagree [nytimes.com] with the type of activity in TFA (though, I don't know for sure if they really care).
Airbnb offered an alternative to the legislation, saying it would crack down on hosts with multiple listings who essentially run illegal hotels and provide a registry of hosts to local regulators to make it easier for them to enforce existing housing rules. The company also emphasized that it had already removed nearly 3,000 commercial operators from the service.
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Are you sure you wanted to reply to me? If yes, please explain 'cause I'm really confused now.
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... Nobody gives a shit who's living next door in large cities. You would probably only notice that someone in your apartment megacomplex died because after a few months in Summer it starts to smell funny.
Nonsense. Condo homeowners' associations work to keep the property values up – by law – so they order maintenance & repairs, and hire & track services such as janitorial, gardening, and so on. Many in the community take their turn on the HOA Board every few years, depending. This keeps things stable for the community.
Now imagine one owner starts renting out their unit to vacationing groups of frat boys every weekend. I might not know my neighbors' hobby (actually I do), but the HOA
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"Ask most neighbors of air bnb rentals how they feel about having a different stranger live next to them every few days." ...Say people in an urban area where they don't know their neighbors anyway. NYC regulations make it impossible to build any new housing units other than condos for the super-rich, so subletting apps are a natural way for the proles to eke out more living space.
If a city doesn't want to deal with this, then start making it easier to put up new apartment stock.
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Ask most neighbors of air bnb rentals how they feel about having a different stranger live next to them every few days. Residential areas are created so that people can be part of a community that shares a common interest in the quality of living in that place. Even complaining to the police won't deter an air bnb resident because they know they will be gone soon.
Most people these days don't even know their neighbors. If people want to exclude airbnb then they should create a homeowner's association and set that rule. I wouldn't even mind if a city voted to ban airbnb. My problem with this and similiar bans like smoking bans is that something major like this should be put on the ballot and voted on instead of being enacted by special interest groups.
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Maybe once upon a time, MANY years ago....
But these days...people don't even know the name of their next door neighbors for the most part.
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I live in a comfy suburb and in my neighborhood we use a Facebook group to keep in touch, set up Easter egg hunts for the kids, fireworks for 4th of July (one guy has a drone and he flies it over the crowd and through the fireworks and posts the videos later, it's really neat), board game nights, cook outs, somebody has an outdoor movie projector he sets up for family movies, talk about neighborhood issues, and catch the thieving kids who were going into people's unlocked cars at 3am that one time. Not ever
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We're the government and we're here to help. You know, because babies and terrorists and shit. We sympathize, but we can't allow you to use you own home because [Redacted].
But now we have to get back to other important things, like polishing up regulation on restrooms and soda refills.
Also we need to kindly ask you to dispose of the lunch your brought to work today. New York special executive order 1428731, Section 4b, Paragraph 28, clearly states that your Michelinas frozen noodle lunch exceeds permissible
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We sympathize, but we can't allow you to use you own home as a bed and breakfast because it's a home and not a bed and breakfast.
FTFY
Re:Go! Government! Go! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just what we need - more government telling us what to do with our own damn homes.
Reason 124,151,813,523 Trump won.
What part of "The Macon St. property was discovered to have inadequate fire alarms, sprinklers, illegal subdivisions" you didn't get? Or maybe you missed the "Hank Freid was once crowned one of NYC's "Worst Landlords" by a watchdog group in 2005" part?
Newsflash: it might be your own damn home, but it's likely close to someone else' and, surprise surprise, you can't do as you please with it.
RT.
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Airbnb would like you to think it is all about people renting out their spare bedroom occasionally. You can find offers like that, but they're probably the minority.
This is about property owners trying to run a hotel in property that is not suited to that purpose. If you want to run a hotel, you need a building in a commercial zone, so you don't annoy the neighbor. The building also has to meet requirements, like fire regulations, so that it is safe for such high occupancy. By never having any fixed residen
Re:Go! Government! Go! (Score:5, Insightful)
Preposterous! Next you'll be saying that Uber doesn't match you up with someone going to the same place as you were going anyway in order to split the gas money! Have you no shame, sir?
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Hank got off light, by the way. Some landlord in Amsterdam was running what amounts to an illegal hotel through AirBnB; now he and the property mana
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But it's not a hotel, it's a short term home rental. A hotel has a very different building structure as well as consumer protections to it. The only reason it's illegal is because big government Cuomo says it is and that's because he's been bribed by the hotel lobbyists.
This makes it practically illegal to rent out your property for any period of time unless it's registered as a hotel.
Re:Go! Government! Go! (Score:5, Insightful)
However I agree that the NYC law seems overly strict. Over here, cities implement such laws to prevent disturbances caused by short term rental, but in most cases this amounts to a rule that properties cannot be rented out short-stay for over 30 or 60 days a year; anything below that is fine. The idea is that people should be free to rent out their own home for short periods (even when they are away themselves), while preventing landlords from turning entire tenement buildings into year-round AirBnB short term rentals. Because that does amount to running a hotel.
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The only reason it's illegal is because big government Cuomo says it is and that's because he's been bribed by the hotel lobbyists.
And nobody who lives in apartments adjacent to AirBnB apartments were happy about this? My parents live in a condo community and their homeowners' association was absolutely taking action against people who were trying to rent out their units because they didn't want to put up with the noise, the parties, and the scumbags. The community was set up for owners, not renters. If you don't want to play by those rules, don't buy one of those condos. But you don't get to ignore the rules and get on some high horse
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You don't own your property, stop paying your property taxes if you want proof you don't actually own anything
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Owning your home doesn't mean you get to use the rest of the city's infrastructure for free.
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Not point. you don't own ANYTHING
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Just what we need - more government telling us what to do with our own damn homes.
Reason 124,151,813,523 Trump won.
Yes, it may be reason 124,151,813,523 why Trump won. His voters, like this post, seem to think of things in very simplistic and superficial terms; not considering the wider ramifications of what they are advocating.
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Those who did not vote for Trump, seem to think of matters too broadly, so broadly that the broad impact extends to someone else's pocket.
What's the matter? Are you unable to remain independent of and unaffected by the world around you? Or is some law preventing you from making money?
Re: Go! Government! Go! (Score:2)
If you support the right if people to do as they please with their homes, then support zoning reform to eliminate restrictions on what people can build.
The restrictions on what can be built are what make being an AirBNB host profitable.
On most (typically 80%) land in North American cities, the only thing that can be built is a single family detached, no matter how much demand there is. Cheaper options like townhouses, row houses, and apartments are either forbidden or squeezed into a few slivers of land des
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It is really illegal. There's a law against it. If the law was secret, you might have a point but, if not, you can avoid the fines by stopping listing rooms on AirBNB.
Re: Scare Quotes (Score:2)
It's arguably an unconstitutional law, in that it takes property rights from owners without compensation.
Under anti-miscegenation laws, would you describe inter-racial marriages as illegal or "illegal"?
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It's arguably an unconstitutional law, in that it takes property rights from owners without compensation.
I don't think so. The Constitution says nothing about depriving one of property rights; only property.
"...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
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The Constitution says nothing about depriving one of property rights; only property.
A distinction without a difference. Property rights are property, and vice-versa. Any time your property rights are infringed you have been deprived of your property to at least some degree. To argue otherwise admits the absurd legal fiction that the property technically still belongs to you, you just don't have any actual right to use it—the property rights belong to someone else. When people talk about being deprived of their property, it's not mere physical possession that they're referring to but
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Because it isn't really illegeal becasue they changed the law after peoples sstarted doing it that's ENTRAPMENT
You obviously do not know what entrapment means, do you? There are many cases of laws that make previously legal behavior illegal.
Entrapment is when law enforcement induces you to commit a crime. Let me know if any of the words I've used are too big for you!
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TL;DR -> Coward dumb, not know what he says.
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Laws barring property rental are per se illegal, as the constitution does not give the government, at any level, the explicit right to dictate what one does (or does not do) with their own property. This goes for zoning as well.
Sure it does. It delegates or defers (depending on your view) to the states the authority to make laws that are not spelled out specifically in the constitution. States have done so, generally at the behest of their citizens. Granted money talks and not all citizens get an equal say, but the states do have the rights to make laws wherever not explicitly prohibited by the constitution (and federal law, which ultimately rolls up to the constitution.)
Zoning and property use laws are generally a good thing. I
Re: Illegal Laws (Score:2)
Where do you draw the line? Does your local government have the right to say you can't park a car at your house because they think mass transit is better? That would be a similar form of use restriction as this law.
Re: Illegal Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
The line is drawn where the community draws it. If you don't like where they draw the line you either have to pick a different community, convince them to change their minds or accumulate so much power that you can overrule them. Whinging about natural law/rights has proven to be a very poor way of doing the latter. What works better is to be part of a tight nit minority and filling the media, judiciary and government with members of your minority.
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Actually, some communities do restrict street parking -- some overnight, some at any time. Generally it's because people don't want their streets clogged with a bunch of RVs, not to promote mass transit. So yes, your local government have the right to say you can't park a car at (or at any rate, on the street in front of) your house.
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Not bothering your neighbors is generally a good thing. But it's also a good thing for a renter to be able to make some money by renting out a spare bedroom. Example you have an apartment and so does your girlfriend. You rent out your apartment for the weekend and spend it at your girlfriend's place. And secondly in NYC there are lots of apartment buildings where you DO NOT kn
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I don't think this is quite the kind of person they're clamping down on.
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Well that goes for most laws, as the constitution was mostly written as a list of things that the government should not do. I expect even all the way back then that they expected the federal government to grow until it toppled from the weight of its own tyranny.
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Laws barring property rental are per se illegal, as the constitution does not give the government, at any level, the explicit right to dictate what one does (or does not do) with their own property. This goes for zoning as well.
If you take an originalist, states right centric view of the constitution, the constitution defines limits on what the federal government can do, but does not in any way restrict the rights of the states to pass whatever laws they wish.
In the modern view of constitutional supremacy, where states are not allowed to limit rights granted by the constitution and the states are generally subordinate to the feds, there is nothing to prevent either the states or the feds from limiting rental rights.
So in both of t
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Re:Illegal Laws (Score:5, Informative)
Laws barring property rental are per se illegal, as the constitution does not give the government, at any level, the explicit right to dictate what one does (or does not do) with their own property. This goes for zoning as well.
Yes, it most certainly does. The Tenth Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Because there is nothing in the Constitution specifically prohibiting laws barring rental property, that power is reserved to the states or the people. So it is perfectly constitutional.
You know, I really wish you folks who are so obsessed with the constitutionality of things would actually read and understand the document. I don't blame you for posting AC; I would be embarrassed to put my name to that post too.
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What are the proper punctuation marks to communicate disdain or contempt for stupid laws which were enacted by people with ulterior motives?