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The End of Airbnb In New York (wired.com) 200

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Thousands of Airbnbs and short-term rentals are about to be wiped off the map in New York City. Local Law 18, which came into force Tuesday, is so strict it doesn't just limit how Airbnb operates in the city -- it almost bans it entirely for many guests and hosts. From now on, all short-term rental hosts in New York must register with the city, and only those who live in the place they're renting -- and are present when someone is staying -- can qualify. And people can only have two guests.

Gone are the days of sleek downtown apartments outfitted for bachelorette parties, cozy two- and three-bedroom apartments near museums for families, and even the option for people to rent out their apartment on weekends when they're away. While Airbnb, Vrbo, and others can continue to operate in New York, the new rules are so tight that Airbnb sees it as a "de facto ban" on its business.
The rules "are a blow to its tourism economy and the thousands of New Yorkers and small businesses in the outer boroughs who rely on home sharing and tourism dollars to help make ends meet," says Theo Yedinsky, global policy director for Airbnb. "The city is sending a clear message to millions of potential visitors who will now have fewer accommodation options when they visit New York City: You are not welcome."

According to Inside Airbnb, there are currently more than 40,000 Airbnbs in New York -- 22,434 of those are short-term rentals. "While the number of rentals may be small compared to New York City's population of 8 million people, Murray Cox, founder of Inside Airbnb, says some desirable neighborhoods are overly burdened by short-term rentals, which can result in housing shortages and higher rents," reports Wired. "The new law, in theory, could open these homes to local residents."

The implementation of the law shows "very clearly you can cut down on short-term rentals," says Cox, who was part of the Coalition Against Illegal Hotels, a group that advocated for the registration law. "You can make these platforms accountable."
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The End of Airbnb In New York

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  • Person renting extra room

  • About damn time (Score:5, Informative)

    by innocent_white_lamb ( 151825 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @10:55PM (#63831356)

    The idea of airbnb is supposed to be that you rent out the spare room in your house occasionally.

    These regulations shouldn't be necessary if airbnb did what it says it does. But it doesn't, so the regulations are now in place.

    But if you're doing what airbnb is supposed to be doing, then nothing changes.

    Same with uber. They aren't doing what they say they're doing anyway. "Ride sharing". The very idea of a "Full Time Uber Driver" should be an oxymoron. That's what you call a taxi driver and there's a bunch of regulations and licensing if you want to drive a cab.

    • by torkus ( 1133985 )

      AirBnB is "not a hotel" as much as uber is "not a taxi"

      Politics, business, bullshit...reality is also a thing.

      But instead of creating a realistic law such as 'you can't buy 20 apartment units for AirBnB' while allowing individual homeowners do use their property as they see fit...we have the stupid "do the righteous thing" of NYC. This isn't a difficult fix if people weren't bowing to either the far left or special interest.

      TBH i'm surprised AirBnB didn't spend enough to win over the laws they wanted.

      • You can't create a "realistic law" to do restriction job because if the law is nuanced enough people can and will weasel their way around the terms of it. Open the door a crack and it'll get kicked wide open.

        Not staking a claim on either side being "right" - I have no dog in the race. I'm just saying people are weasels.

    • by dargaud ( 518470 )

      The idea of airbnb is supposed to be that you rent out the spare room in your house occasionally

      And it's exactly what we use it for: to rent out our house while we go on vacation, 5 people max, always families with young kids, so except for the occasional crying it's not like a bachelor party. Why would that be forbidden ?!? And yes, we do pay extra taxes when it's rented out. Just do a 3 months limit per year or something like that.

    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Same with uber. They aren't doing what they say they're doing anyway. "Ride sharing". The very idea of a "Full Time Uber Driver" should be an oxymoron. That's what you call a taxi driver and there's a bunch of regulations and licensing if you want to drive a cab.

      Yes... you're not running a "brothel", you're just facilitating "body sharing"... Lets just call a spade a spade, non? Uber are an unlicensed and unregulated taxi company. AirBNB is an accommodation provider in the same way that Expedia and Priceline are, as a facilitator. Personally I'm of the mind that we should just make it easy for them to operate as a licensed and registered business, make the rules clear, the processes to get licenses and authorisations simple. We do this here in England, you can run

    • by sconeu ( 64226 )

      I think NYC missed an opportunity for compromise here. They could have added, "You may rent your entire house while you are gone, provided it is your primary residence for tax purposes and you live there for 90% of the year".

  • by lsllll ( 830002 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @11:01PM (#63831366)
    This will end up slowing the housing market a little in NYC, or worse drive the prices down a bit. The rich will be able to weather the storm. Those on the verge of having made an investment will end up losing money and have to sell their property for a lower price, which the rich will pick up. Then the rich will take NYC to court and win and profit when the ruling gets reversed.

    Hotels (corporations) are rubbing their palms together right now.
    • by torkus ( 1133985 )

      Yep ... marginal homeowners will be forced out. Again. As usual.

      Wealthy investors who can write off months...years...of losses and literally profit from it will buy up those properties and make the money that the previous homeowners could have, would have, lived their lives off of.

      • by vlad30 ( 44644 )

        Yep ... marginal homeowners will be forced out. Again. As usual.

        Wealthy investors who can write off months...years...of losses and literally profit from it will buy up those properties and make the money that the previous homeowners could have, would have, lived their lives off of.

        This is where they should apply a empty property tax so the people can't just park there money in tax write-off properties. Empty properties and properties that are used only on weekends/rarely cost a lot to the communities around them due to businesses closing due to the lack of customers public transport gets reduced, Doctors move to where they have enough patients. etc

        • MORE taxes. MORE regulation. That'll solve it!

          If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.

  • by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @11:03PM (#63831368) Homepage Journal
    Courtesy of JWZ: [jwz.org]

    What's your favorite tech innovation?

    • Illegal cab company
    • Illegal hotel chain
    • Fake money for criminals
    • Plagiarism machine
    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Courtesy of JWZ: [jwz.org]

      What's your favorite tech innovation?

      • Illegal cab company
      • Illegal hotel chain
      • Fake money for criminals
      • Plagiarism machine

      To be fair, AirBNB isn't a hotel chain, they're a booking facilitator like Expedia or Priceline with a more exclusive inventory. Loads of places in the world where this is not illegal. Just not in NYC any more. Their gaff, their rules. If New Yorkers want to change the rules, they know where the ballot box is. Hell, half the stuff I see on AirBNB is also on Booking.com. No doubt a few other sites that I don't know about.

      • In tiny podunk towns the activity is probably totally legal, hell the town I live in doesn't even have a noise ordinance.

        But in most cities (even smaller ones) it ain't, it's just running an unlicensed hotel, and airbnb does nothing whatsoever to verify whether it's aiding illegal activity. They are supporting this illegal activity willfully, and they would not have a viable business without it so the argument about valid uses doesn't apply.

  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @11:17PM (#63831382) Homepage

    The vast majority of these 40,000 Airbnbs were really trying to operate hotels in such a way that they could avoid paying hotel taxes. New York City makes a LOT of money on hotel taxes, and of course they aren't going to let that income disappear without a fight!

  • by Train0987 ( 1059246 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @11:27PM (#63831398)

    New Orleans tried several sets of restrictions to reign in the proliferation of STR's that have destroyed most neighborhoods and made housing completely unaffordable in the city. All have been shot down by the courts after non-stop lawsuits by out-of-state investors (rent-seekers).

    So yesterday the City Council began the process of banning them completely too. The robber-barons could not care less about the community, only how much money they can make destroying it. After all, they don't live here. This was all entirely predictable.

    https://www.nola.com/news/poli... [nola.com]

    • New Orleans tried several sets of restrictions to reign in the proliferation of STR's that have destroyed most neighborhoods and made housing completely unaffordable in the city. All have been shot down by the courts after non-stop lawsuits by out-of-state investors (rent-seekers).

      This new law will not lower housing costs here in NOLA by any statistically significant amount my friend.

      Housing costs here have more to do with the fact that we're locked in here by water on all sides, and God just ain't makin

  • by timholman ( 71886 ) on Friday September 08, 2023 @12:07AM (#63831430)

    On one hand, I'm no particular fan of the hotel industry, and Airbnbs (in theory) are a great way for homeowners to make some money on the side.

    But on the flip side, I've seen first-hand the problems caused by the absentee investors who have come to dominate the STR market where I live. Those owners could not care less how much their party houses impact the people living around them. Why should they care? They don't even live in the city.

    NYC does a lot of things very poorly, but in this case they've got it right. They are forcing Airbnb to return to its roots, where the homeowners have to actually stay in the house and live with the consequences of operating a short-term rental.

  • by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 ) on Friday September 08, 2023 @01:10AM (#63831524)

    "...thousands of New Yorkers...rely on home sharing and tourism dollars to help make ends meet..."

    From what we read here, it sounds very much like such people will still be allowed to accommodate paying guests. Real estate vultures who spend millions taking dozens of apartments off the rental market to outfit them as de facto hotel suites are the ones being targeted.

    • by unrtst ( 777550 )

      100% right. And "thousands of New Yorkers" sounds like a lot, but not when you phrase it as a percentage of the population - 2000 of 8,500,000 = 0.02%
      That's not the 1%; It's a fraction of the 1%.

  • The common theme I hear in stories like this is "tourism". No matter what city, even if it's some craphole place. "Let's all take a tourist vacation to Newark, New Jersey! Yay!". Seriously, if you are not Miami, Florida or some other city that does in fact scream "tourist destination", why not have a strong local economic base that does not rely on out of towners with big winged sunglasses and loud Hawaiian shirts snapping pictures everywhere. Maybe something like MANUFACTURING DURABLE GOODS. That would be
  • by Walt Dismal ( 534799 ) on Friday September 08, 2023 @04:34AM (#63831788)

    In my personal experience, many airbnbs are very skeezy. I've stayed in a dozen Silicon Valley airbnbs semi-longterm as it was cheaper than a hotel as I moved around to engineering clients in the region.

    What I found was: 1) many places were rooms in a house someone had bought and converted into a multi-room 'hotel'. The owner was often Chinese and did not live there. Many places had no heat in the house. Portable fan heaters only, no fire extinguishers or alarms.

    2) about 1/4 of the 'guests' were people on the run (any of: could not get an apartment due to being a psycho; were dodging creditors; were actual criminals (one Sunday I was awakened by police tapping on my window, they were after another guest); a guest at one 5 room place was an alcoholic and 3 pack a day smoker, neither airbnb nor the host would do anything about the cig stink; I moved out). Some 'guests' used the places as a mail drop for criminal activities; there were often piles of mail from banks for people who were no longer there and at several places piles of envelopes with tickets or summons or from lawyers, for what looked like whole families (same last name but many different first names - multiple envelopes). Clearly multiple 'people' had used the address for some scam on a bank.

    3) 80% of 'guests' were foreign-born; American guests were frequently fringy people and some were criminals in hiding.

    All in all, many airbnbs that are offered as longer term rentals (not the $400 a night ones) seem very much an edgy venue. I could say a lot more but want to keep this short.

  • by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Friday September 08, 2023 @07:27AM (#63832054) Homepage

    In Canada, we're in the midst of a cataclysmic housing crisis. There's a severe shortage of rental accommodation in most of our cities and Airbnb exacerbates the problem. Toronto alone has more than 20,000 Airbnb listings.

    Airbnb's business model is to compete with hotels without being subject to the same rules as hotels. It's time for our cities to ban Airbnb also.

  • Good- fuck AirBNB. The licensing makes it so someone can rent out a room or something or for some small time- good. The original intent was that (ostensibly.) But now homes and apartments and all that are being bought simply to rent out on AirBNB. That is why we have hotels. Tough shit- cities are for the people and the people in them need a place to live more than some company needs more income. Fuck em.
  • They always take away something when you do.
  • While many might argue this is bad for poor people who just need to rent another room to have the apartment they want, it really just changes the average price of an apartment. Prior to Airbnb, the price of your apartment just reflected the average willingness and ability of people to rent at that price. With AirBnB, it now includes the potential to supplement the rent with a short term rental. The first adopters were able to profit, but gradually in order to profit you need to rent your apartment for more
  • "are a blow to its tourism economy"

    Not really. The industry shuffled a bit one direction, and it's shuffling back the other.

    "The city is sending a clear message to millions of potential visitors who will now have fewer accommodation options when they visit New York City: You are not welcome."

    They make it sound like NYC only started to have tourism when AirBNB hit the scene. If they closed all the hotels, put signs up saying, "No foreigners! And that means other states too!", and instituted an airport entr

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