Originally published at: Airbnb effectively banned in New York City | Boing Boing
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That’s good news.
Tick tock, Airbnb.
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The kind of folks who would be the most upset about this news
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It’s too bad that there’s no allowance of renting your full apartment for a total of, say a few weeks or a month per year. The ability to rent your place out while you’re on vacation is a nice idea and makes travel more affordable/accessible for everyone (and often more comfortable - I personally prefer staying in a place with a kitchen).
But of course, the vast majority of airbnb rentals haven’t been like that for a long, long time. They’re effectively unlicensed hotel rooms that fuck with local rental prices and availability, cause headaches for neighbours, etc, etc. So, I can understand why they don’t want to leave any exceptions to exploit.
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People used to advertise summer sublets in the Voice back in the day.
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I hate what AirBnB has done to the residential real estate market, but I also don’t think short-term rentals should be completely banned.
I also think this law is virtually unenforceable.
It’s a complex problem to resolve solely through legislation.
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They’re so full of shit. Wasn’t the original intention just for people that had an extra room in their own house?
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I cannot stand these virtual businesses that operate with little due care to local regulations.
Is your city having a housing crisis? Here comes AirBnB to make it worse.
Are your sidewalks cluttered with garbage and obstacles? Welcome Lime and carelessly discarded scooters.
Transit system not up to snuff? Driverless eCars using ChatGPT and 0.1a firmware.
Other day got into a convo with someone regarding the robotic floor cleaners at Walmart - I could not convince them the human who did that before is now out of a job… they trusted Walmart placed them elsewhere and are still earning a living. AURRRGGGG.
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The law is fairly easy to enforce where buildings aren’t 100% unlicensed hotels. Neighbors tend to hate the parade of different people through apartments. Making them likely to fink on people AirBnB’ing.
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This was just published alongside an op-ed about the Kingston/Woodstock area housing crisis in one of the local papers.
Woodstock was already a shitty place to live due to the massive wealth inequality, but it’s all better now that everyone is filthy rich! It’s just a shame they’re not rich enough to avoid renting out their accessory dwellings for $5000/mo to a family from Denmark instead of someone who lives and works locally.
/s
Exactly. IANAL, but that appears to be exactly whom this law is creating a carve-out for. The rentier class can just go back to ripping off recent Sarah Lawrence grads on a longer-term basis.
Especially when they are 100% reliant on a single app to advertise. Pretty easy to spot them.
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I was surprised that there are (were) only 40,000 AirBnB units in NYC. Now, don’t get me wrong, in a high demand area that’s more than enough to completely wreck the housing market even in a city of 8.4 million, but I figured there would be more. Looks like there’s about 140k hotel rooms in NYC.
What happens when housing is “full” and then 40,000 units are taken off the regular market and turned into short term rentals? I bet it’s bad.
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The fact that a problem is complex and difficult to solve through legislation shouldn’t be an excuse to let policymakers off the hook for not doing things that can be done.
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yeah - though airbnb (and the like) added nice features like reviews, payment systems, insurance, etc. Those gave some level of protection that you weren’t going to get scammed (on either side of the deal) or end up in a rat-infested dump or have a renter strip/destroy your place. That and a unified search interface to make the whole thing easier.
Plus, it seems like listings like that would still be banned by the current regulations?
It’s all reasonable to crack down - airbnb has contributed to a lot of problems in a lot of cities, it’s just a shame to lose the benefits too. It also seems to me like sticking to the original airbnb idea (renting an extra room, or your place when you’re away) would still be a profitable business.
A reminder that the whole thing started with some air mattresses in a loft, renting cheap during a conference when hotels were unaffordable.
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I don’t see how this app has added any real improvement. All it’s done is destroy the single-family home market nationally while making a handful of rentier speculators rich. I hope AirBnB, et al., go bankrupt.
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As one meme on popular Instagram account @real_housewives_of_clapton reads: “Hi am looking for someone to rent my room for 8 hours while I go out for a bit of lunch and see an exhibition. Lovely house. All bills included.”
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Well it’s enforceable that Airbnb and VRBO won’t be able to provide this service… the informal apartment thing in NYC is as old as time, and gets really complicated around the rent stabilization and rent control laws. NYC just reinforced the stabilization laws, but it’s pretty important to make sure that people who have those apartments can’t turn them into money makers… my sister is currently using a rent stabilized apartment she inherited from me after being my roommate (it’s probably $800-1000 below market and it has a parking space) for $600 a month in extra income as she lives in Boulder… makes me absolutely furious. She is doing a long term rental, but it’s all part of the problem for people who want to continue living in NYC… (As a fun side note, our father was from Ireland, and used to regale us tunelessly with a lot of Irish songs, one of which was about the evil of landlords… I now keep that one alive for her.)
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“The Landlord and his agent wrote Davitt from his cell
For selfishness and cruelty have no parallel
And the one thing they’re entitled to these idle thoroughbreds
Is a one way ticket out of here third class to Holyhead”
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Bilbao has an interesting way to handle/limit short term rentals.
Only first floor units are available to the likes of AirBnB
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Does this mean the original premise of Air BnB is still ok? like renting out your second bedroom? I mean in my mind the owner/proprietors of a Bed Breakfast live on site. I know a few folks that rented out rooms on Airbnb in this manner. Obviously you can’t charge the same rates but that’s also what made it nice IMO as a guest. I got to spend almost two weeks in Ibiza for a reasonable price renting a room this way.
It seems at some point Airbnb just pivoted into turning residential homes into temporary accommodations like VRBO. I guess the money was too good but it’s an exploitive business model.
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I feel like SanFran? or some other west coast city trying to reign in Airbnb and the like did carve out an exception like that? It’s obviously doable.
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