Airbnb's response: "A majority of New Yorkers have embraced home sharing, and we will continue to fight for a smart policy solution that works for the the people, not the powerful."
I'd be more interested in knowing how New Yorkers feel about regulating short term apartment rentals than how they feel about sharing.
I don't think I'm guilty of being a broken record if airbnb keeps misusing the word "sharing." Although I understand there can be some ambiguity in the word "sharing", the arrangement "you may rent my apartment out for a week if and only if you pay me $1,000" isn't anywhere close to this zone of ambiguity.
It is commerce. It is unambiguously commerce, it is a pure quid pro quo money for services transaction.
New York has passed legislation regulating commerce - in this case, the conditions under which someone may rent out property for under 30 days. Those laws aren't obsolete just because someone wrote a rails app where you can type in an address and click a "create hotel here" button. Also, commerce doesn't become sharing just because the quid pro quo financial transactions take place over the web.
> we will continue to fight for a smart policy solution that works for the the people, not the powerful.
lol, they talk like they are a grass root movement, they fight for nothing but their own bottom line, I hate this insulting "disruptive" marketing speech. There are laws, just because you're an "app" doesn't give you the right to violate them.
The law in this case is a hammer looking for a nail. If a short term rental is violating noise ordinances, fine it or shut it down, don't shut down every short term rental just because you fear it.
The biggest thing I have learned from running a couple short term rental listings is that people are basically good.
I hosted 68 guests in the last three weeks and every last one of them was nice and respectful and quiet.
Anti short term rental sentiment is based on paranoid hysteria.
I don't live in NYC, but in a neighboring state and bought a three family house with the express intent of living in one unit and renting the others as vacation rentals.
The prospect of nosy, controlling moral scolds shutting down my American dream, is extremely maddening.
'
The only externality to my house is that there are cars in the drive way with license plates from a variety of states. Fear of new cars in the driveway should not trump my rights as owner and tax payer on this land.
Luckily in public meetings our town planners have declared their need for vacation rentals. The housing market is weak here and if the town were to shut down vacation rentals, it would put even more pressure on an already cold real estate market.
To answer your anecdotal evidence with my own: my neighbor's apartment is an AirBnb, and is often very noisy and over-capacity. I feel less safe in my building because I'm no longer on a personal basis with all my neighbors. I use AirBnb as well, but the negatives are more than "paranoid hysteria".
Folks, not all apartment units in New York City are big, crowded buildings with long hallways. You're forgetting the Multiple Dwelling Law affects multi-family houses, many of which (especially in Brooklyn and Queens) were single families build in the 1890's that were converted to 2, 3 or 4 family structures in the 1930's.
I'm not ideologically against regulation, don't get me wrong, but I DO recognize that sometimes 'big hammers' affect big and small scale landlords equally, and that's not fair. And quite frankly if you're disrupted because I'm AirBNBing one of my units, just come down the stairs and knock on my door and we can talk about it.
Joking aside - New York housing laws need to do a better job, whether it's housing code, fines, or anti AirBNB laws, of distinguishing between big and small scale operations.
Feel free to do short term rentals, but get a zoning variance and meet the same standards as hotels and real BNBs.
You can't make subjective judgements about small vs big landlords because frankly, lots of landlords, big or small are scum and can only be managed with a stick.
I don't need to knock on your door -- if you want to be a hotelier, buy a hotel.
Here is the thing, I have read the entire zoning code for my town. My town has a strict definition of what a hotel is, and what I am doing does not meet it.
A hotel has shared facilities, a check in desk and some other things.
It also does not meet the definition of a bed and breakfast, which by definition serves food.
So by the zoning of my town I am not operating a hotel or a bed and breakfast.
The problem is that you're trying to compare a vacation rentals in a small, depressed area to New York City. If you're in a situation where what your doing is legal, great, you're someone legally renting property through airbnb.
NYC has laws that may seem onerous to you, but they exist as a direct response to problems that have already happened in the past and are already manifesting themselves in the modern AirBnb era. The issues are real, and the company has taken an attitude that the law doesn't apply to them. Fuck them.
Airbnb often implies that they are like Uber/Lyft, fighting some evil hotel lobby. That's also bullshit -- Uber is fighting cartels with strong local regulation at the municipal level. Hotels aren't organized the same way and frankly don't need the regulatory protection that cabs do. To the contrary, my understanding is that Airbnb was the party doing lots of heavy lobbying in Albany.
If they were smart, instead of carrying on like children, they should come up with a co-op hotel model that is compatible with the law, less capital intensive and closer to the spirit of their platform.
> NYC has laws that may seem onerous to you, but they exist as a direct response to problems that have already happened in the past and are already manifesting themselves in the modern AirBnb.
Really? What exactly is the compelling problem solved by requiring all short term rentals to have a "check-in" desk? Why shouldn't I be able to rent out my apartment for a few weeks while I go on vacation?
This is straight up protectionism. I wonder how much it cost the hotel industry to buy this legislation.
As an AirBnB host, renter, and apartment building tenant, I do not want a "co-op hotel model." I want to be able to not spend thousands of dollars a month on a space which isn't even being used. It's ridiculous to try to spin this as some helpful regulation.
You have no obligation to spend money on a space that isn't used.
If you are truly renting your apartment home while you're away, you're actually fine with doing so with respect to this law. You're probably violating your lease or HOA contract, but that's your problem.
If you're buying or renting apartments to sublet as ersatz hotels, then you have a problem. It's not society's problem to save your from a poor investment choice.
This legislation passed in an environment where the US Attorney is likely tapping the phones of any remaining unindicted political players in Albany. Hotels aren't well organized to begin with, and I doubt they had an opportunity to make huge contributions to influence this. Real estate moguls like reduced housing supply as they get to reap higher rents, so they don't care. (Feel free to link to the board of elections filings if I'm wrong).
The public outcry against Airbnb is strong and consistent, and this law imho is unusually democratic and fair one. Everyone got what they claimed to want. True Airbnb hosts can continue to share their homes. You can continue to rent them. The only party hurt is Airbnb who has been deceptive about their true intentions from day 1 -- so fuck them.
> Really? What exactly is the compelling problem solved by requiring all short term rentals to have a "check-in" desk? Why shouldn't I be able to rent out my apartment for a few weeks while I go on vacation?
Seriously? You don't know why you should have someone available in person if the people staying at your hotel have an issue? There's a reason your homeowner's insurance is cheaper than the insurance for a hotel.
IANL but I think when people like most of us here try to interpret the law we try to think of it as software code. However the law doesn't work that way. Intent of the law can cover more than the strictly literal interpretation. That's why we have judges, to decide what the law means. A Judge could very well decide that what you are doing is close enough to a B&B as to be a distinction without a difference.
I don't know why being a small landlord would mean that you should be immune to regulation.
The idea that tenants are able to knock on your door means you shouldn't have to follow this law kind of demonstrates an attitude I've seen with a number of small but not "good" landlords I've had.
That last part's a wide logical leap from anything implied above. No one implied immunity. The suggestion is that the law should view differently those businesses which have the operational capacity and capital to handle strictly abiding by regulatory burdens firstly, and secondly whose scale is high enough that their negative social impact is truly high. In the world of property, that's the distinction between a landlord that owns hundreds of buildings and a family that owns a house that's split into three units.
In my neighborhood, for example, it's rare for houses to be renovated fully permitted because the entire permitting process is designed around large scale construction projects. There's an entire shadow economy that goes just to paying thousands to architects, expediters, inspectors, licensed pros, etc., in addition to the actual work. That's just one example. The end result is that people don't do it, because they can't afford it unless they have a lot of capital.
Now the law already does this distinction I'm mentioning: for example a three or four family home has to be registered for the rentals to be legal, a two-family doesn't. Also the code is different, and more broadly the Multiple Dwelling Law treats them differently.
Going back to AirBNB, concretely I think a good compromise would be to limit the number of units for rent to one, and take down the ones that have turned rental buildings into hotels. People who own big rental buildings do these things. What's left are co-ops and condos. Co-ops have self-regulating powers to evict people. Condos, which someone here complained upon, are a different story (even if they have house rules with fines, I don't know how that's enforced).
The 'knocking on the door' comment was an attempt to try to separate the large from the small. As for myself I'm always above board and legal, because I'm risk-averse, but my risk-averse nature also means I don't rent to anyone I don't know or trust. Partly because of comments about everyone needing sticks. Ironically I've been on that side, which is why I decided I didn't like being a tenant anymore. I haven't used AirBNB, but plan to do so -legally. I do have a right to feel wronged by the passage of the law, especially when I hear all the anti-AirBNB comments not apply to my situation (eg. 'disruption to the residents').
We should have a conversation of where short term rentals are appropriate. Maybe they are not appropriate in apartment buildings, but banning them in all of New York state is draconian.
The law only applies to Class A multiple dwellings.
A multiple dwelling "is a dwelling which is either rented, leased, let or hired out, to be occupied, or is occupied as the residence or home of three or more families independently of each other."
A Class A is a multiple dwellings "which is occupied, as a rule, for permanent residence purposes. This class shall include tenements, flat houses, maisonette apartments, apartment houses ..."
A Class B is a multiple dwelling "occupied, as a rule transiently, as the more or less temporary abode of individuals or families who are lodged with or without meals".
Who's being a moral scold or hampering "American Dream"s now?
There are reasons, good and bad, that states and municipalities have regulations about zoning for commercial, residential, mixed, and other use. There can be a discussion about how well they're applied, misapplied or whatever.
Here's my opinion: I think you, and other transient-rental aficionados, have the burden of showing sufficient reason for allowing you and AirBnB to avoid civil and possibly criminal (depending on circumstances) sanction for breaking the laws. You also have the burden of showing why the rules should be changed to permit your activities subsequently.
I disagree about the burden of proof here. Why should there be laws that prohibit Airbnb? Who is being harmed? The hotels are being harmed, no doubt. Why should they be protected.
I've never used Airbnb, but unless there are serious harms to people, where is the harm and why should the law be followed?
I bought a three family house. I live on the second floor and rent out the first and third floor units on the web.
It is sharing my house.
When I first bought the house I inherited a 12 month lease tenant from the previous owner.
When I had that tentant, I didn't feel like this was my house. I couldnt go on the first floor, I had to walk on eggshells around the tenant and her kid.
Now this is my house! My house! I own it, and I let in guests that I screen through airbnb and other sites. They come for a few days, pay 300-600, and I make the beds and greet them and its really nice and I have met some cool people.
So in my case we are talking about turning a three family house into a basically single family house with some guests. That is a use case I dont think is being represented in this conversation.
It's really hard to see a version of this story that supports your claim that these laws are "hammers in search of nails".
In one telling, you --- or, the proverbial you, the 10 less-responsible versions of you that exist for every equally-responsible you --- bringing a massive flow of short-term renters to buildings and neighborhoods zoned and coded for long-term tenants, overriding those regulations based entirely on your personal hunch that people are generally better than the democratic process of your municipality has decided they are.
In another telling, you are more or less stating outright that, because after buying a building designed for three families you discovered you don't like letting two other families have long-term leases, you've converted your three-family dwelling into a hotel. Even putting zoning aside, you're like living proof of how Airbnb impacts housing stock.
I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong. I'm saying that you're making a pretty clear case that there is a significant public policy stake in whether or not you should be able to continue doing it it.
I'm not even saying that the zoning concern or the housing stock concern should prevail or are dispositive or anything! I happen to find them compelling, but, whatever. I'm just saying, if I was trying to convince people that the state should mind its own business and let a hundred Airbnbs bloom, this is probably not the thing I would brag about in public.
This house was built around the turn of the century as a single family house. At some point someone changed it to three.
I'm changing it back. I own it. If for some reason the town tried to stop me from doing short term rentals, I would just convert the house to single family and sell it for twice what I bought it for.
Unless one is opposed to property rights and free markets, I don't see how how one has standing to complain.
> Unless one is opposed to property rights and free markets, I don't see how how one has standing to complain.
Owning property doesn't let you alone change its zoning. If I was your free market property right loving neighbor I would be upset that you're running a hotel in a residential area.
It is fine to own a place and do things that don't negatively affect other folks inside: Renting it out in any fashion affects others to a point.
The fact of the matter is that you've been living in a multiple-family dwelling with three residences, only one of which was being rented out. You didn't like the arrangement, and decided to revert it to a single family home, leaving the town with two fewer housing units.
In the process of rennovation, you have been renting it out in the manner of a hotel by layman's standards - but you aren't technically a hotel. Basically, you get to take advantage of a poorly written law.
Property rights only go so far - once you start affecting others, including renting a portion of house for any length of time - you start picking up responsibilities. Free markets? Free markets work well in some areas, some not as well: Others need regulations to various degrees.
And hotels and housing are one of those that somewhat need regulation because we know some folks do bad or stupid stuff to the detriment of others, and what you do as a landlord renting in any capacity affects others.
And you are still renting it out in some fashion. Why should the laws to either hotels/motels/b&b's or laws applying to a landlord not apply? For the most part, such laws are designed to protect a renter and keep minimum standards for cleanliness and other such things. Some rental laws are there because of shortages and prices [1]. Hotels often pay extra taxes. In some areas, a bed and breakfast has looser and different standards, partially because it isn't unheard of to take a family home and turn it into a B&B, with the owners living in a portion.
And truth is that while I'd support someone renting out their place for a week or two once or twice a year without many issues (permit or fees, mostly), once you are regularly doing such, you are either a landlord or a hotel manager and should have such laws governing you. The pushback from those doing this I see as basically folks trying to get out of complying with the law.
[1] Understandably, two units hardly affects the housing market so long as it is an isolated incident, but if or when that trends to multiple folks, it can.
Every time people say "property rights, free markets", other people keep pointing out that property rights in the US have never been absolute, and really represent a basket of different more specific rights. But people keep wielding the term "property rights" as if it alone was dispositive.
That's pretty much exactly what a lot of people don't want you to do - remove permanent housing and convert it to short term rentals for tourists. This is a big part of why NY and other municipalities are moving to regulate airbnb.
Well heres the thing, the house I am in is non-conforming multi-family.
Its only allowed to be mutli-family because its grandfathered in. Believe me, the town and neighbors would rather it be single-family, because multi-family brings in a lower class of occupant.
And heres the other thing. It was originally a single family house that was converted to multi family. So things change, markets change, demand changes.
Codifying usage in zoning laws and making it immutable might be a luxury affordable for places like NYC, but its not affordable for places with tons of sellers and little buyers, places where foreclosure rates threaten the value of homes with current mortgages.
The occupants of my house go to restaurants, rent kayaks, go to the local attractions. This is a tourist town, and vacation rentals are expanding our reach.
People will stay at a vacation rental that wouldnt stay at a hotel. Because they get a kitchen and a room for the kids. They will stay for a week in the summer. Who wants to stay for a week in a hotel room with four kids?
Vacation rentals are keeping this town alive, and I don't think this is being represented in this debate.
There is near unlimited affordable housing available in this area.
Seriously, if AirBNB were a free market (and it is), what these listings are doing is allowing more people to come into the city and spend their own money on services throughout the city. This is a boon for all businesses in the city. It increases the availability of units and lowers the cost of other hotels throughout the city.
What people are afraid of is that they see all these units available on AirBNB and assume they are empty? They are not, they are being rented out pretty regularly. Which means they are being used and filled, with real live human beings.
If people didn't like empty units in the city, they should be complaining about the high-end units like One57 and 436park that are removing available units for the city and creating high-rise ghost towns.
I don't believe for one second this increases the cost of rental and/or condo units in the city. Since what is really happening is that the units are still full. AirBNB allowed us to see that there was a very real apartment shortage in the city.
I lived in NYC, and even I had to move out because of high rents. But those high rents weren't because of AirBNB. It was due to a lack of smaller units being put on the market.
As the units consolidated from 1bd to 3 or 4bd apartments, the sizes of the apartments grew, and all new buildings were for multi-million dollar residences. The middle class got squeezed.
Now we are blaming AirBNB for the problems. And that is simply not the case.
> Seriously, if AirBNB were a free market (and it is), what these listings are doing is allowing more people to come into the city and spend their own money on services throughout the city.
thanks to airbnb i was able to visit nyc for ~10 where i spent a ton of money between restaurants, coffeeshops, random shopping and broadway shows.
the wife and i were thinking about returning next year but without airbnb (and all the freedom we have thanks to it, like cooking our own meals) i don't think we will. i'm sure i'm not the only one thinking like that.
> Vacation rentals are keeping this town alive, and I don't think this is being represented in this debate.
This debate is about a law in NYC. Not your little vacation village where things may be completely different. The Outer Banks aren't going to outlaw short term rentals.
Contrast to condo buildings, which throughout the country adopt similar rules with no pressure from the government; no leases under 6 months or 1 year are an extremely common in condo agreements.
These rules have been around for decades. My own buildings were set in 1989 in the original docs. The desire to not have short term rentals as neighbors is something extremely common. Most tenants don't have the ability to effect change the way an owner in a condo building does, so they cannot prevent the unit next door from being AirBnB'ed, so they turn to the government. Whether it should be the law as it is in NYC, probably not, but using the law is more like someone using a hammer to put in a screw, not your characterization of a "hammer looking for a nail."
You're pretending like your experience amongst suburban single family houses is at all applicable to multi-family housing in NYC when it isn't. You don't own a 10-unit building in Brooklyn Heights going all short-term rental, which is the more typical target of this law and what AirBnB is trying to defend.
So basically, you are running a small-scale hotel and you live in it. I think you are competing with other hotels and you should follow the same rules as the other hotels do. If you don't like the rules, then you should change them but it should be the same rules for everyone.
"The biggest thing I have learned from running a couple short term rental listings is that people are basically good."
I think you're in a honeymoon period where everything is working great because of thoughtful, well-intentioned early adopters on both sides (the providers and the guests).
I have done a lot of airbnb all over the world - and I love it - but I, as a user and the hosts are obviously very literate, technically adept, relatively wealthy people. It's not surprising that it all works out really nicely - and it does.
That can't last. People will find way to game both airbnb and the users of airbnb and it will be a race of con artists and malcontents all the way to whatever cesspool it is that form the back-story of every law we have on the books. Every law that governs a hotel or a taxi or a restaurant is on the books because some asshole got someone killed (or robbed them blind).
That's pretty harsh and a little bit rude, honestly. When someone buys a house or condo or whatever, they usually don't expect it to be turned in a hotel / motel. Most people don't like when their neighborhoods turn into rental units either, but at least in that case they have some time to react.
The idea that people are free to make business and do what they want with their own property is alien to the state of New York. By far, it is the most commie ridden state, even ahead of California.
The state should be fought over laws like this, not negotiated with.
Are you throwing "commie" in there as shorthand for something that you think we'll all agree is abhorrent? 'Cause I'm really totally fine with the community getting together and dictating certain things to each other. That's the level we're on here – not state control of the means of production for the benefit of the people collectively.
The state of New York has lost two Congressional representatives due to its population fleeing for more favorable areas.
New York State is not doing well, and its combination of nanny state, local government corruption and high taxes is not winning in the market place of governments.
If it wasn't for the inheritance of NYC being the capital of the world, NY state would be in seriously dire straits.
New York is kind of fucked as a state. The City has enough voters to completely nullify the rest of the state, so that what is sane to the rural, upstate New Yorkers, is droned out by the paranoia of the city people.
Yes, it's obviously BS on AirBnB's part, but this line of speech is their best chance of not being shut down in NYC.
The priority should be alleviating the burden of sclerosing bureaucratic regulations, and if AirBnB can do that with a BS narrative about "the sharing economy", more power to them. The same goes with Uber and the taxi medallion system.
This isn't a fair debate where we should weigh the merit of each's side argument. This is a battle where one side will ultimately resort to violence to enforce its decision.
> "Move fast and break things" is a saying common in science and engineering industries. In that context, it means that making mistakes is a natural consequence of innovation in a highly competitive and complex environment. In particular, it was adopted by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook (who even went as far as to say that 'breaking things' is a necessary feature of moving 'fast enough').
Breaking the law is a mistake (and a serious one for any business caught). Move fast and break things is more about breaking your own things, not someone else's things :)
What's next ? Breaking your node shop competitors' legs :) ?
Move fast and break things != One can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.
So its okay for the established businesses to use the power of government to shut down competition and prevent people from using their property as they see fit, even when it is safe and does not endanger the well being of others?
This is one of the biggest abuses of government power there can be, using to it to snuff competition or favor one particular business. It hides behind "regulation" and if that doesn't work there is always "think of the children"
Is there a handy list of jurisdictions where they successfully got what they were doing legalized after they were already doing it. Here in DC for one.
I know, right? It's one of the reasons why the culture of the SV tech industry turns me off so much, and it's a part of why I'm glad I don't live in SV or work for an SV company.
Sort of true... I've actually seen hotels list rooms on AirBnB in San Francisco. The logic is that the type of people who are looking at AirBnB are looking at a specific price range, great location, good value, etc... . So if you're a hotel you can list a room or so on that platform that you otherwise might lose out on to an AirBnB competitor.
It's not simply NIMBYism. In NYC and other cities, there are legitimate questions about the preservation of (rapidly dwindling) affordable housing at stake.
NIMBYism (in the form of parking minimums and height/density restrictions) are one of the main causes of that housing shortage you mentioned. The fact that permanent residents feel like they are locked in a tight competition with short-term visitors is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.
So you would like to see the zoning rules changed, and that's a reasonable discussion to have. OTOH, the intent of zoning is to let people know what to expect when they move into a neighborhood. Changing that after-the-fact violates this agreement, and not surprisingly results in what you call NIMBYism.
Our system of government is specifically designed to limit the tyranny of the majority. It may not be to your liking but a lot of smart people who came before you learned that slow and steady change is what effects actual progress, and (additionally) what the majority wants right now isn't necessarily what we should be implementing wholesale.
Yes. We live in a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. I like that.
(I am a current NY resident who was formerly a California resident, and the thing that most actively annoyed me about California politics was the little bits of direct democracy that popped up on the ballot.)
This highlights a flaw in the law more than anything else. Who owns your home? If government can tell you who can stay with you, regardless of any private transactions or agreements you make with that person, then government has more authority over your living space than you do.
Who owns your home? If government can tell you who can stay with you
The government can do all manner of proscriptions for your residence. For instance, no, you cannot run a brothel from your house. You cannot turn it into a bouncy house park. And you cannot have short-term rentals in an area that the community has decided to use for permanent housing.
It's called "zoning", and collectively we've agreed to the allowed uses of our property. You live in a community of others, and your property lines do not define "The Independent Republic of JJordan", so yeah, the government does have some authority over your use of your property. You might not like it, but you'll be going against the flow. Because, personally, I'd rather not have the house next to me used for short-term rentals "shared" with those that don't give two shits about the community they'll be leaving on Sunday afternoon.
You also don't get to just decide not to follow the rules after the fact. One moved to a community, and directly or indirectly agreed to abide by the community standards. If one decides that's just not really working for them anymore, well, move to a community that has standards more to your liking. There do exist places that will have no problem with you throwing all the loud parties you like, and renting to college students on spring break. Those places are not in SV, however, so good luck in your search for remote work.
Isn't "zoning" the primary reason why NYC real estate is so expensive in the first place? Controls that restrict the supply of housing is probably not a good thing if you're looking to make NYC real estate more affordable.
Actually it's mostly because NYC is a very very popular place to live. It's also because a lot of people with too much money are buying condos in NYC as an investment. Removing zoning laws will not change these things.
> a lot of people with too much money are buying condos in NYC as an investment
That would be OK, but renting for short term should be illegal? If AirBnb residents are noisy and disrespect the laws, call the cops on them. If owners don't pay their due taxes, call IRS on them. It's no reason to make it illegal to rent for short term.
I have used AirBnb in many cities on 4 continents and was always respectful to the locals and even tried my best to follow the specific recycling rules and such.
What I enjoy the most is the organic feeling of being in a real apartment vs being in a hotel room. Hotel rooms all feel the same, wherever you go. What I want is to experience the same perspective as a local, well, at least to attempt to do that, and that is because I appreciate the different cultures.
Banning short term apartment rentals would send a bad message to people who just want to appreciate your culture.
> If AirBnb residents are noisy and disrespect the laws, call the cops on them.
And what happens when that leads to calling the cops every weekend, for a different group of people?
I'll tolerate my neighbour having a loud party on his 25th birthday, or him accidentally banging his suitcase down the stairs at 5.30 when he's catching an early flight. I'll do the same, equally infrequently.
It's simply not fair to have that behaviour every fucking weekend, which was what happened when an apartment in the building was put on AirBnB.
Fortunately, the listing was removed the day after I sent it to the landlord, and the noise has stopped. I highly doubt any tax was paid on the income, which is also wrong.
Maybe AirBnb should allow neighbors to comment on disturbing behavior by tourists. Responsibility and consequences could follow a tourist wherever s/he goes.
Calling the cops on a noisy neighbor in NYC is pointless unless that neighbor is a business. The cops may pay a visit, but it the person starts making noise again, they can, they will, and the cops will not force the issue. They'll say that's for the landlord/condo association/coop board to sort out. Dealing with those entities can sometimes be extremely difficult, and can take a long time to sort out. A landlord can't evict someone without really good cause, and even then it can take a long time, during which the tenant can keep renting out over and over.
People don't want transients living in their apartment buildings for safety and other reasons. Unlike hotels in NYC, we lack the necessary security and also lacking is stringent check-in procedures that hotels have. We have doormen but they are not security guards.
It is true that NYC is a popular place to live, but the higher apartment costs are caused by zoning density restrictions and overuse of historic landmark status. These are "economic rents" -- a market failure that creates inefficient markets through use of politics by special interests -- in this case landlords that want to extract higher rents from tenants.
In general this is true (and certainly given that many HN readers live in the Bay area, it probably falls within people's personal experience), but NYC is not a great example. Parts of NYC have some degree of density restriction, but much of it (pretty much all of Manhattan, say) is among the highest-density residential areas in the US, and still very expensive, because even given all the density, there's a finite amount of land, which still means supply is constrained as compared to demand. Even given no density restrictions at all, some places would still be very expensive. Tokyo is another good example of this.
Yeah, the buildings aren't very tall, but people are in them right now.
Before you can build a newer, bigger building, you first need to buy a large enough contiguous area from potentially several owners who don't particularly want to move. That adds friction and years of extra work to any new building, which will discourage new construction, lower supply and raise prices regardless of the zoning.
Unless you're proposing that the government begin seizing tracts of land in Manhattan on behalf of high-rise developers?
I don't think this is as much of a problem as you are making it out to be. If the east village, which is currently mostly zoned R8B[1] were tomorrow to be substantially upzoned (to say R10) you'd see lots of new construction within a year. There'd be so much money to be made that deals would happen.
That's part of it. Another major part of it is that there are major zoning restrictions. Excessive zoning laws pushes up price. This has been demonstrated time and time again.
This is a fair point. My original comment should have been more specific: cities with above average zoning restrictions consistently see higher housing costs. A corollary of which is that excessive zoning also leads to higher costs, unless your position is there is no city with excessive zoning.
Isn't "zoning" the primary reason why NYC real estate is so expensive in the first place?
More directly, it's one of the reasons NYC real estate is so valuable in the first place. The way the city has managed density (and parks, open space, and its waterfront) has in general worked out pretty well, over the years. Which has helped the city thrive in ways that its direct competitors (such as Boston and Baltimore) have not.
You are correct that zoning density restrictions and overuse of historic landmark status create political scarcity of housing that benefits landlords such as Donald Trump to the detriment of renters. The landlords and allied special interests back laws that create "economic rents" -- additional profits not through wealth creation and efficient markets but through the market failure of creating artificial scarcity.
If AirBnb wants to make housing more affordable in NYC, they should lobby to remove these zoning laws that benefit wealthy landlords such as Donald Trump.
> short-term rentals in an area that the community has decided to use for permanent housing
It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out. We're not talking about someone running a business out of their home, where the zoning laws actually apply.
> I'd rather not have the house next to me used for short-term rentals "shared" with those that don't give two shits about the community they'll be leaving on Sunday afternoon.
How about the ones who let that druggie sister down on her luck move in, she's ok because it's for over 30 days?
This is just whiny bullcrap from someone who wants to be able to control their neighbors.
> You also don't get to just decide not to follow the rules after the fact. One moved to a community, and directly or indirectly agreed to abide by the community standards.
We're not discussing a housing authority here. If you and your neighbors get together and decide the community cannot abide someone allowing another person to use their house for less than ... what 6 months? a year ... you write that into the bylaws, set out the financial penalty, and then you enforce it.
And that's your right.
But when these kinds of things become illegal across an entire state, there's a problem. This law should have never been on the books in its current form to begin with.
> It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out. We're not talking about someone running a business out of their home, where the zoning laws actually apply.
By that definition so are long-term rentals, or even home buying and selling. A Colorado court has ruled that there's no substantive difference between a renter who rents for one month or one week.
Subletting is not short term, and is rightly considered to be largely governed by the same laws as those that apply to rentals since the uses are so similar.
I honestly do not understand the willful ignorance in this thread. Short term rentals is commerce. Everyone knows it's commerce. When you say you think it isn't (or you don't understand how it could be) you sound like you're denying the earth goes around the sun. This isn't even a particularly nuanced area of permitted use laws (zoning) or the appropriate role of government. You are all basically advocating for elimination of all zoning and/or pretending it doesn't exist as a totally normal type of regulation in the US (and all over the world).
Of course they shut down lemonade stands. Especially if you tried to run a daily lemonade stand out of your front yard, staffed by people who don't live there.
They're legal because the government has not decided to make them illegal. If the government decides that your lemonade stand is a danger to public health, or that your stamp collection is a national patrimony and cannot leave the country, it will make new laws that enforce those decisions.
It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out.
That's not what relevant the laws say ("You can't rent your property, period!"). Just that you can't use a residential property as a de-facto hotel.
If you and your neighbors get together and decide the community cannot abide someone allowing another person to use their house for less than ... what 6 months?
30 days. The point is that short-term rentals have a very different character (in terms of impact on neighbors, and impact on property values) than long-term rentals.
This is just whiny bullcrap from someone who wants to be able to control their neighbors.
No, it's just life the big city. Though I agree that whether these issues should be of interest of the state (as opposed to municipalities) is very much open to question. Then again, the Empire State is known to be messed up (and to have lopsided control over) a great many things, in this regard.
It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out
Your right to do as you please with your property ends where my property, and interference with my enjoyment of it, begins.
Or do you also think that if you buy some property straddling a river, you can dump waste into it and say "my property, nobody can tell me what to do with it" while making everyone downriver pay for the cleanup of what you did? Because that's the ultimate moral grounding of laws restricting property -- you don't own an isolated island in the middle of nowhere, you own property that's adjacent to and can affect other pieces of property owned by other people who also have rights.
> Or do you also think that if you buy some property straddling a river, you can dump waste into it and say "my property, nobody can tell me what to do with it" while making everyone downriver pay for the cleanup of what you did?
You can't actually own the land around a river, but I get the point you're trying to make regardless.
The point is, if they're causing a ruckus, report them and have it shut down. If they're not, leave it alone. And having multiple different vehicles in the driveway isn't causing a ruckus.
This is basically FUD. What if they do something the neighbors don't like!?! Then deal with it at that time, stop being thought police.
> It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out.
I mean, a majority of our forebears thought it should. The original law was passed by a representative democracy. And so was this one. You're one of the (totally guessing) 48% of people that disagree. That's democracy. You have to live with getting out-voted.
If the "fast-paced, innovative future" includes petulant children stomping around mad because the big, bad government won't let them do whatever they want no matter the consequences to those around them, I'd say governments are more relevant than ever.
We've already asked you to comment civilly and substantively, so we're banning this account. We're glad to unban accounts if you email hn@ycombinator.com and we believe that you won't do this any more.
Historically, either the government wins or the petulant children win and then become the power center that directs government that the next set of petulant children complain about.
Either way, governments are part of the future. There no real reason to expect this iteration to work any differently than all the others since humans gathered in structured societies.
Its not the government imposing these restrictions, its your neighbors. If there were no government for them to impose them through, they'd use other institutions, or else just the threat of violence. You can imagine a government-free future all you want, but you're talking about a non-collectivist future, which is absurd.
What exactly would that future look like? Where there is no government, one will appear. People seem to have this incurable efficiency whereby we create rules, regulations, and eventually bureaucracies. Rules, implicit and explicit, manifest whether you like it or not. Authority manifests.
I doubt the poster above is against rules, but like me wants to decentralize that authority and enforcement. My answer: you want to have a market for law and enforcement. Read "the machinery of freedom" by David Friedman if interested.
> Because, personally, I'd rather not have the house next to me used for short-term rentals "shared" with those that don't give two shits about the community they'll be leaving on Sunday afternoon.
Why do you believe that guests wont give "two shits" about the community. This sounds incredibly xenophobic to me.
Do you perceive that your sarcasm was effective? Did it convey your point clearly and concisely, so that you can share your perspective and point of view?
Or did it do more harm to what is otherwise a legitimate viewpoint and possibly deserving of discussion?
I'm btw sure that many Socialists would actually agree that the statement undoubtably displayed hatred and xenophobia. He did argue against allowing people from the outside to come and live in his community because he by default perceives foreigners as not giving "two shits" about the community. This is obviously not true, you can't just declare that all foreigners want to harm your community.
OK, I would encourage you to reread the conversation. The HN consensus is clearly different than how you perceive it.
You may be absolutely correct. The HN Hivemind is frequently wrong.
But please use this as an opportunity for introspection, wherein you centralize the idea that the community of peers with whom you choose to associate, think you are an ass.
This argument doesn't hold much water. There's many, many things you can't do in or with your own home due to various laws. There are externalities associated with lots of activities, and therefore these activities are regulated or outlawed. I can't use my home as a bar, or as a concert venue. I can't use it to tan leather, or operate a waste incinerator.
But you can let your druggie sibling live there for free. There's a reason why zoning laws exist, there's no good reason to disallow someone from doing what's effectively subleasing. It's been legal since forever.
If you want to have visitors over when you live in your house you're free to do so.
If you own a property and operate it as a hotel while not actually living in it you're violating the zoning laws that every business/hotel operation have to adhere to.
AirBnB's use of the word "sharing" is laughably liberal. By their standard if I'm running a convenience store I'm "sharing" my property with every customer who wanders in.
> If government can tell you who can stay with you, regardless of any private transactions or agreements you make with that person, then government has more authority over your living space than you do.
Fire marshals have limited the amount of people you can have in a particular building for more than a hundred years.
I don't know the rationale in this case, but there are very good rationales for government to have more control of your house than you do in some instances. Mandatory fire suppression systems can end up saving not just your apt unit, but your whole neighborhood.
Is it a flaw or a feature? This might be more akin to the local government saying that you can't run a business in a residential area (i.e. zoning laws) than it is to squashing "private transactions or agreements".
That's part of the deal with living in an urban area. Living in such close quarters, you can easily disrupt the lives of those around you - that's why we have noise complaints, rules around trash disposal, etc. etc.
If you don't want to live by those community rules then it would best to live outside of a community.
You own your home. Government also has a duty to the well being of the people living around you. Zone laws prevent you from using your home to manufacture chemicals. Noise law prevents you from running musical concert day and night. You would expect your neighbors to obey the same laws to enjoy your peace and quiet at home.
It's called "zoning" and it's been around for quite a while. You know, those pesky laws that says someone can't just build, say, a giant slag heap directly behind (and towering above) your house with nothing but rusty wire holding it together.
Which laws (a.k.a. zoning laws) you unequivocally agree to abide by when buying a piece of property, in just about any jurisdiction on the planet.
If you live in the US (where NYC is), you can also tell the government who can stay with you per the third amendment. Therefore, they don't have more authority than you, just different authority.
It's probably good that they do. I may not agree with this particular exercise of authority, but I'd like to be able to do something about it if my neighbor decides to build bombs in his spare room.
It's not exactly who but if, per the third amendment.
Also, I don't see how your point about neighbors is relevant to it. Is it a serious risk where you live? A common occurence, would you say? And how exactly, in constitutional sense, would you be able to do anything about it?
If implies who, as it gives negotiating leverage. But that's kind of beside the point.
Edit: I just realized I probably misunderstood you. The point about neighbors is meant to be relevant to the notion of the government having a degree of control over your property in general, not the specific question of who's allowed to stay there. Most of my response is no longer relevant with that clarification, so I've removed it.
Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man... To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses and passions. They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man's that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it.
What is ownership without a government? Who issues and authenticates the deeds? What do private police do when someone calls them and asks them to remove you from "your" property.
The housing in NYC is mostly apartments. People don't want transients in their apartment buildings. We value our safety. It is really that simple. People absolutely do not have the right to make an unsafe environment for others in the apartment building.
That's a poor description of what is going on here. I suppose you'd argue that having to pay a property tax is the same as paying the government rent, and so that means one doesn't "own" his home at all as long as it's taxed?
Where does that argument end? At what point can we just call it what it is: advocacy for disbanding government entirely?
Great point; property taxes are remarkably similar to rent, are they not? Pay your annual dues or you're out on your ass, so to speak.
Consumption taxes are a much fairer way of funding the government, IMO. Rich people consume more and pay more in taxes. Those with less consume less and pay less.
As long as property tax exists (your county will seize your home if you don't pay it) the concept of real estate ownership is pretty tenuous. I accept taxation in general but property taxes have always rubbed me the wrong way.
There's a movement that sees things exactly the other way, based on the ideas of Henry George: maintaining that only real property taxation is legitimate (or appropriate) and that other kinds of taxes aren't!
Property tax is pretty essential. Huge weird distortions can happen in low property tax places. California with prop 13, the UK with it's non-existent property taxes, Vancouver, BC with it's very low property tax rates are all examples of RE gone wrong and are places with low property tax.
The problem in California is the grandfathering in of rates, rather than the fact that the tax exists. If property tax was completely removed and the state made up the shortfall in some other tax (hopefully progressive) then there'd be no market distortion.
Yeah it's not the rate, it's the %2 increase rate. Takes 35 years for the tax to double in cost. Seattle's King County has a lower property tax rate than a chunk of the bay area for example.
Well, do you not own your home if an association can force you not to paint an icon on your roof or put certain statues in your yard? I would say so. I have always seen homeowners associations as a grevious affront to the First Amendment. But apparently I am missing something vital or I am insane.
* I have always seen homeowners associations as a grevious affront to the First Amendment. But apparently I am missing something vital or I am insane.*
The 1st refers to the government, not to housing communities to which you willingly moved. Don't like HOAs? Don't live in an HOA community. The government has no hand in this.
> Don't like HOAs? Don't live in an HOA community.
That's becoming harder and harder. Currently 68 million Americans live in some sort of community association [1] and that's constantly rising.
These are essentially hyper-local governments. I can "willingly move" between cities and states and yet city and state governments also can not infringe upon constitutional rights (though they certainly sometimes try).
It doesn't seem like a big stretch to hold HOAs to the same standard when you're talking about putting restrictions on something as fundamental as someone's residence. That isn't to say they aren't allowed to make any rules governing the community.
Some cities/states are effectively or actually forcing all new development to include a HOA as part of the developer opening up that tract of land, under the auspices of reducing the cost of maintenance by foisting that upon the HOA/community directly.
Like the fact that the HOA can lien your house for as little as $100 in dues.
And can then sell your house out from under you.
If you're _really_ unlucky, they'll sell it to a landlord who sits on the board of the HOA, and the board of the HOA will accept the sale for less than half of the market price, with the landlord buying the house being one of the deciding votes...
You are missing something vital. The First Amendment guarantees that the government cannot restrict speech, free association, etc. Homeowners associations are not the government. They are private organizations. You generally agree to follow their rules as part of the contract you sign when purchasing the property.
But why do you have to sign that contract? Why does this private organization have the power to force you to sign a contract before purchasing property? Because the munucipal government has granted them that power.
The way the bill of rights is applied to municipal governments isn't clear, but in my opinion this is an overreach.
Homeowners associations aren't the government, you technically agree to join them when you buy the house. It's "free exchange of goods and services" - quotes to indicate that it really isn't but in the government's eyes it's fine. Social coercion is a powerful force, the same that produces many odd laws.
There are a shocking amount of units in NYC that are full-time Airbnbs. As a New Yorker, I am in favor of legislation that tries to ensure that New York's rental units are occupied by actual residents.
I read somewhere that Amsterdam has a rule that states you can only use your lodging for short-term rental for up to 60 days a year.
This seems like it maintains the sharing spirit of something like AirBnB (rent your place out occasionally when you're away) while preventing the problems that come from people essentially running unregulated hotels..
The problem is enforcement. As it is this law is all about tractability of enforcement, it doesn't change what apartments are or are not allowed to be let/sublet but rather adds a provision that makes it illegal to advertise an illegal unit. This is because the existing law is very difficult to enforce and AirBnB moguls are blatantly flaunting it. This is the same problem with those that suggest that we don't need state laws because condos and co-ops can just enforce their contractual rules. (Also, that argument neglects rental buildings.)
Relaxing the law in the manner you suggest would make it even more difficult to enforce than the law as it stood prior to this addition.
Just like governments demand companies hand over financial information they could demand that AirBnb hands over the list of users and the total stay length.
But you have to do that for every similar service and try and match up records. It would be a nightmare. Landlords would also create different companies/accounts to rent out the max nights per year. It's just not enforceable.
The tax office does this for tens of thousands of companies.
It can easily handle at most a dozen sharing sites. And it's trivial to prevent landlords from registering multiple accounts i.e. make sure no two landlords advertise the same address.
In some of these cities, you also have the issue where people are renting out their state subsidized housing as unregulated hotels. So they aren't even paying market rent for the place in the first place.
We the "people" who are not the "powerful" are getting pushed further away from the center each year chasing afforadable housing. Pretty soon we'll end up in Jersey or Long Island.
Why not just leave the rules up to the property owners? For example, residents can move to properties where landlords have banned Airbnb customers. Wouldn't this be a win/win situation for everyone?
> For example, residents can move to properties where landlords have banned Airbnb customers.
The main problem with this sort of thing is that while it is easy to say that, it isn't actually always an option for folks. This is part of the reason why folks don't always just "move to where jobs are available."
Moving costs money and takes quite an effort. Minimally, for cost you have first month's rent and a deposit, usually equal. Sometimes last month's rent. There are fees for utilities, and sometimes deposits for them if you change companies. Collect boxes: Secure moving vehicles if you don't have something to move large stuff.
Heck, you might not even be able to move for months if the landlord starting allowing it after you signed your lease. Your lease might be against it, but the neighbor's doesn't.
This is truly only a win/win if you have the finances and time to be able to move.
There are many ways! The ones used by myself, my friends, and my family when moving to The Big City and looking for a job/permanent housing included:
1. Couch surfing with friends/family.
2. Youth hostels / YMCA.
3. Renting a terrible apartment cheap, sight-unseen,
breaking the lease early when better options became
available.
4. The Daughters of Divine Charity, et al, run boarding
houses.
5. Rent a place in the outer boroughs, Jersey, Yonkers,
etc, take the train in until you find something
closer.
6. Walk around until you see "room for rent" signs.
7. Check papers, Craiglist for roommates (*actual* room
sharing -- a number of people I know started off
renting a *bed*, not even a bed*room*.)
Ok, I wasn't being entirely literal. The point is AirBnB was just about the only way to find safe, convenient, relatively affordable housing for a few weeks. And it's probably going to get worse now given that this legislation applies to services like Craigslist as well.
AirBNB units make up 1/5 of 1% of the NYC's rental units. A bottleneck? no, but sizable and impactful, especially when you consider that these tend to be clustered around where they're convenient.
Convenient is not the right description -- high demand is. Who's to say an AirBnB is a worse use of space for, say, a unit in SoHo than a year-round resident?
AirBnB has real issues -- zoning, hotel tax, safety, etc -- but politicians like to use rent cost/resident displacement because it's an easy rallying call.
Eh, I don't know that most of the people I knew who sublet half a bedroom would ask themselves that question.
Subletting half a bedroom from a total stranger can be inconvenient and occasionally weird but if you're fresh out of college it's not really that different from the dorm room experience for most people. And it usually costs less than half what an apartment does a month, and is usually month to month or so.
I could have also rented a room for a couple of months while I figured things out (which is still legal, even on Airbnb), but this was a rent stabilized apartment in a nice neighborhood. It's pretty common for deals like that to be rented sight unseen.
Either way, there are many options for moving to the city. This doesn't really make moving to the city significantly more difficult than it has always been.
> It's pretty common for deals like that to be rented sight unseen.
Given the prevalence of the broker industry I'm not sure that's the case.
Either way -- the city only cares because they're missing out on hotel taxes. I don't think the city actually cares too much about who can afford an apartment in the desirable neighborhoods that have a high volume of AirBnBs.
> Given the prevalence of the broker industry I'm not sure that's the case.
I paid a broker that I found on Craigslist. No one said renting an apartment in NYC doesn't suck.
> I don't think the city actually cares too much about who can afford an apartment in the desirable neighborhoods that have a high volume of AirBnBs.
As a resident that lives in one of those desirable Brooklyn neighborhoods that has turned into Times Square for European tourists, I actually do think the city is looking out for me.
> As a resident that lives in one of those desirable Brooklyn neighborhoods that has turned into Times Square for European tourists, I actually do think the city is looking out for me.
Now that's an honest argument: "I just don't like tourists". The whole raising-prices-displacing-real-new-yorkers thing is just disingenuous.
NYC already has a rent-stabilization policy -- so generally speaking they don't. In fact, tourism bolsters the local economy which provides jobs for local residents.
I personally disagree with time spent being a metric for who gets to live here and who doesn't but people don't take kindly to that sentiment in the US.
Rent Stabilization has been in the process of being phased out since 1970:
- Rent Control simply doesn't exist if you or a relative you co-habitated for years with under special conditions lived there before then.
- Rent Stabilization for a unit ends the moment the stabilized rent hits within striking distance of market rate or the number of stabilized units in-building drops below a threshold. More units deregulate every year than are added and this is true year over year as well (sole exceptions to the latter being in 2014 & 2015).
But it's a very slow process: a majority of NYC residents live in below-market-rate housing. And Bill de Blasio's mayor campaign was anchored on preventing "affordable housing" units from leaving the pool, so the rate of decrease may have slowed down.
The law does not prohibit short term AirBnB rentals in general. It prohibits them when the owner does not also occupy the unit. You'd still be able to use AirBnB to rent someone's spare room short term.
What are the numbers? When the numbers were released for SF, it was a number around ~6000. While SF rent laws cause over 30'000 units to stay off the market because landlords don't want to deal with the risk and hassle. And even more potential units are 'off the market' because of building restrictions.
> "smart policy solution that works for the the people, not the powerful"
This is so duplicitous. AirBnB is a for profit company. They have zero skin in the game in terms of exposure to and responsibility for lowered quality of life, apartment hoarding, rental increase, etc.
The hotel industry works within the legal framework of my city. And as far as "power" goes, I'm pretty sure the $30B company playing the role of advocate for the weak and people is pretty powerful in its own right.
[& p.s. the hotel industry, afaik, has a pretty small footprint in terms of side effects on the average resident. Further, it provides a natural cap on the tourist flux in the city, which is a certain plus in my opinion.]
The poster was arguing against something that was never said, I was clarifying. Despite what anyone may think about whether or not the hotel industry is "powerful", the article was describing the hotel industry.
That doesn't change because someone lands on a specific side of the argument and feels they have to make an argument about whether or not the hotel industry is actually powerful. None of that is required in order to understand what the article was saying. And indeed, it actively takes away from it by doing shit like spawning this particular tangent.
Is political self interest nobler somehow than economic self interest?
Even if it was, does it make Airbnb wrong? Should people not be able to freely make living arrangements with whom they choose for arbitrary amounts of time?
> I'd be more interested in knowing how New Yorkers feel about regulating short term apartment rentals than how they feel about sharing.
Around the time when AG Schneiderman first subpoenaed Airbnb's records, Airbnb had a very aggressive advertising campaign in the NYC subway stations. Certain high-traffic stations were plastered with ads proclaiming how "New Yorkers Love Airbnb" and showing "regular New Yorkers" who were using Airbnb.
On my commute each morning, it was interesting to see how those ads would get defaced with graffiti... not just once, but every single day, with new messages in different handwriting. The messages weren't saying anything you wouldn't expect - mostly they were complaints from angry neighbors of people who rented out on Airbnb full-time, or people who had to move because their landlords had decided to turn their apartments into full-time Airbnb rentals[0]. But it was quite amazing to see how persistent the rancor towards Airbnb was. I took some pictures of them, though I wish I'd gotten a true time-lapse of those over the span of the weeks (months?) that the ads were up.
For contrast, advertising campaigns in NYC subways commonly get defaced, but usually over a much longer period of time. And it's rare for it to be in retaliation towards the advertising company - usually it's people drawing beards on women or making off-brand remarks.
[0] Yes, no matter how much Airbnb tries to deny it, this does happen.
>It is commerce. It is unambiguously commerce, it is a pure quid pro quo money for services transaction.
This is the same case for companies like Uber and Lyft. You're paying someone to drive you from Point A to Point B. You aren't sharing a ride, it's just a taxi.
Indeed. Ride sharing is BlaBlaCar, and countless other services that existed locally years (even a decade) before, that facilitated carpooling for work commute. In such a service, the driver advertises that they'll be going from Point A to Point B, and is willing to take passengers (in exchange for fuel money). Any additional money that goes to the service itself is payment for matching drivers and passengers.
Uber and Lyft are not sharing economy, they're taxis. AirBnB is not sharing economy, it's Booking.com meets Craigslist.
If your personal definition of property is such that property has never existed anywhere (except maybe early medieval Iceland) than you don't have a very useful definition.
The first is that there are a ton of rules about owning property, and (for the most part) nobody thinks that any of those other rules mean that it's not really the owner's property. There are zoning laws, for instance: if I own a house, I can't run a business there. If I own an office building, I can't live there. If I own a three-story building, I probably can't knock it down and replace it with a forty-story building. There's the rule of law: if I run a suspected meth lab in my basement, or harbor a suspected criminal in a spare bedroom, the state gets to barge in. There's taxes: if I don't give the state money merely for the privilege of owning property, it gets to take the property back. There are rent control/stabilization laws: depending on what my property is, I can't charge more than a certain amount to rent it out, even if the tenant is willing to pay. There are certainly political theories under which all of those mean that I don't really own the property, but those aren't the theories we live under. Airbnb shouldn't get an excuse just because we want to start theorizing at that particular point.
The second is that, for most rental property in New York, the state is already involved. There are tax exemption programs, subsidies, city services and infrastructure, and all sorts of things without which the building would not have existed in the first place. The state is more than free to set conditions on buildings where it helped with the construction, even if that condition is "We get to set rules arbitrarily forevermore" - if an owner doesn't want to agree, they're welcome to try building without the state's help.
For others who want to be lazy, but not that lazy to forego knowing what that word means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allod (so it seems to be allodial, not alodial, though dictionaries know both)
Please elaborate. I don't follow you. Are you arguing that if I own an apartment, I should be able to rent my apartment out for any purpose? Can I rent it out as a party venue? Can I rent it to 50 people at once? Are you just saying that regulation shouldn't be at the state level?
People staying somewhere for only 10 days have less concern about the neighbours, the building and the community.
The father probably wants his children to be able to sleep without interruption at the weekend, but is more likely to clatter up the stairs drunk at 3am during his 10-day business trip.
Property rights do not exist without the enforcement of the state. Property is essentially a limited contract between the owner and the state, so of course property owners cannot go against the will of the state.
There are many different types of properties. Condominiums and co-ops work very differently. If you are a condo owner and you give someone else your keys for 2 nights, you are violating the contractual rights of everyone else that owns property in the building and putting them at financial risk. The proprietor and state are the not the only parties involved.
that is definitely true for a co-op, and whether or not it is true for a condo is more up in the air. but I suspect you meant to say "co-op" where you said "condo".
Everything I've come to understand as a condo board president is that it is not "up in the air". Court cases have established precedent and we have reasonable by-laws. If we all collectively don't want it, we don't have to have it. Our lawyers tell us what we are doing is perfectly within our rights.
No, I don't think "timeshare" is the same. In a timeshare, there's no exchange of funds between you and the people with whom you're sharing; you and your co-sharers are collectively purchasing a thing from a third party and sharing it (in this case, a rental property). It's like if I said I was "sharing a cab": you would assume I meant some other person or people and I all got in a cab and split the fare. The other passengers and I would be the ones doing the sharing, with each other. The driver is not sharing with us, and I would never use the word "share" to describe taking a cab alone.
New Yorkers don't want AirBnB. We don't want transients in our buildings. There are elderly, there are children, there are women. Vulnerable populations. We have doormen. We pay a lot for our apartments.
I think you're really downplaying the impact the Internet and the acceptance of this market in the minds of consumers has. It's a big deal, and it IS disruptive, and I doubt Cuomo is signing this because he cares about noise complaints in apartment complexes.
I think you're hung up on the kindergarden meaning of "sharing." The word doesn't mean "free" -- it only means to subdivide something amongst multiple people.
We use the word "share" in commerce all the time. Time share, shares in a company, profit sharing, etc.
People at pro-airbnb rallies have chanted "sharing is caring". The reason airbnb so assiduously works to keep the word "sharing" in there is precisely because of the kindergarten meaning.
I'd be more interested in knowing how New Yorkers feel about regulating short term apartment rentals than how they feel about sharing.
I don't think I'm guilty of being a broken record if airbnb keeps misusing the word "sharing." Although I understand there can be some ambiguity in the word "sharing", the arrangement "you may rent my apartment out for a week if and only if you pay me $1,000" isn't anywhere close to this zone of ambiguity.
It is commerce. It is unambiguously commerce, it is a pure quid pro quo money for services transaction.
New York has passed legislation regulating commerce - in this case, the conditions under which someone may rent out property for under 30 days. Those laws aren't obsolete just because someone wrote a rails app where you can type in an address and click a "create hotel here" button. Also, commerce doesn't become sharing just because the quid pro quo financial transactions take place over the web.