Slashdot Mirror
New York Senate Passes Bill That Bans Short-Term Apartment Listings On Airbnb (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The New York Senate passed a bill on Friday that makes it illegal to advertise entire unoccupied apartments for short-term rentals on Airbnb. The bill is headed to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's desk for him to either veto or sign into law. The Verge reports: "The bill prohibits online apartment listings that last under 30 days and run up against the city's multiple dwelling law, which is designed to stop apartment buyers from renting out the entire space and basically turning their units into Airbnb hotels. First-time offenders would be fined $1,000, but a third infraction would be much costlier at $7,500. 'Let's be clear: this is a bad proposal that will make it harder for thousands of New Yorkers to pay the bills,' an Airbnb spokesperson told Tech Crunch. 'Dozens of governments around the world have demonstrated that there is a sensible way to regulate home sharing and we hope New York will follow their lead and protect the middle class.'" One of the bill's sponsors, State Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, disagrees and claims that it targets "people or companies with multiple listings. There are so many units held by commercial operators, not individual tenants. They are bad actors who horde multiple units, driving up the cost of housing around them and across the city." She went on to say, "You should know who your neighbor is and what happens when people rent out their apartments on Airbnb is you get strangers," said told the New York Post. "Every night there could be a different person sleeping in the next apartment and it shatters that sense of community in the building. It also can be dangerous."
Vancouver (and the lower mainland in general), has a similar problem that i assume new york does. Air BNB depletes possible rental stock. I am not sure low the new york vacancy rate is, but mostly due to foreign capital in-fluxing into the real estate market here, our vacancy rate is 0.3% (probably less now, things are only getting worse).
That said, I stay in airbnb pretty much every vacation i go on with my family as what you can get for the price blows hotels away (if there even are hotels in a destination). It's either that or camping, is really all one can really afford when you pay more than half of your salary into paying rent.
It seems that people are somewhat confused and think its like a "big hotel lobby" or something driving this ban on aribnb. It very well may be that people are trying to protect their cities from ever higher rents. Especially in popular cities where it is impossible for an average family to own a property. The cities become just a resort in this case, instead of what they should be: A place where people can live within an hour or two commute of their workplace affordably.
-
The only thing that should be banned is the use of the word "sharing" when it comes to all of this sort of stuff. I'm paying you for a ride, or for a place to sleep. You're not "sharing" it with me! More hipster word-erosion.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The idea of AirBnB is a good one but AirBnB in particular is an unethical company that specifically allows hosts to falsely advertise and get away with it with impunity.
I've stay at 20+ places and one in 5 has lied about their listings. From claiming it's 1 bedroom but actually being a studio. Claiming WiFi but actually stealing it from a neighbor. Claiming to provide parking but not. The latest is claiming to be 1 place but actually be several blocks away. In every case AirBnB did nothing. In the last case AirBnB even claimed it was policy that locations are false. So you try to rent something in a nice/safe/quiet area and it's actually an bad/dangerous/loud area and this is actually official AirBnB policy
AirBnB really need to be taken down until they stop being blatantly unethical.