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Governor Cuomo Bans Airbnb From Listing Short-Term Rentals In New York (nypost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New York Post: Gov. Cuomo on Friday bowed to pressure from the hotel industry and signed into law one of the nation's toughest restrictions on Airbnb -- including hefty fines of up to $7,500 for people who rent out space in their apartments. Backers of the punitive measure -- which applies to rentals of less than 30 days when the owner or tenant is not present -- say many property owners use Airbnb and similar sites to offer residential apartments as short-term rentals to visitors, hurting the hotel business while taking residential units off the Big Apple's high-priced housing market. Enforcement, however, will be a huge challenge, as thousands of short-term apartment rentals are listed in the city despite a 2010 law that prohibits rentals of less than 30 days when the owner or tenant is not present. Violators could be turned in by neighbors or landlords opposed to the practice, or the state could monitor the site to look for potential violations. But beyond that how the law would be enforced was not immediately clear. The new law won't apply to rentals in single-family homes, row houses or apartment spare rooms if the resident is present. But will apply to co-ops and condos. Airbnb mounted a last-ditch effort to kill the measure, proposing alternative regulations that the company argued would address concerns about short-term rentals without big fines. Tenants who violate current state law and list their apartments for rentals of less than 30 days would face fines of $1,000 for the first offense, $5,000 for the second and $7,500 for a third. An investigation of Airbnb rentals from 2010 to 2014 by the state attorney general's office found that 72 percent of the units in New York City were illegal, with commercial operators constituting 6 percent of the hosts and supplying 36 percent of the rentals. As of August, Airbnb had 45,000 city listings and another 13,000 across the state.
The idea that people should be free to conduct business seems to be foreign to NYC. And has anyone bothered to actually confront how many issues this opens up? A girl stays with me for three weeks. Who gets to question me about why she is with me? Is she a relative, a friend, a sex partner or a health aid as I am an older man? Who exactly assumes the privilege of questioning me? Further, if cash changes hands with no receipt, how is proof established? Can i pound on the door of a neighbor i do not like and grill him about exactly why someone stayed with him overnight and can i legally prove that someone actually did stay overnight? Who defines overnight? I had a girlfriend who lived in a condo. I alway left about 4am. I rode a motorcycle that was banned from overnight parking. They were smart enough never to call a tow truck. If they had i would have sued them into the dirt. People almost never think of the consequences of writing rules or laws.
"Tenants who violate current state law and list their apartments for rentals of less than 30 days would face fines of $1,000 for the first offense, $5,000 for the second and $7,500 for a third."
This will be easy to get around...people will just list the property for a 30- or 60-day rental and have a $20 "early move out" or "cancellation" fee. So the "renter" will book it for 30 days, leave after a week, and pay a small, affordable "penalty" since they didn't stay the full 30 days.
And the owner will say, "I rented it for 60 days but they left after a week, what could I do?"
(I'm not saying this is right, just that this is what they'll do to get around the restriction.)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I'm in favor of AirBNB being in my city.
As long as they aren't in my building.
It's not new tech, AirBnB is pretty much a sublet which is and has been against the terms of most lease agreements since forever.
The twist is that a lot of their bookings are not Bill and Jan renting out the apartment while they're away on holiday but the landlord who's thrown his tenants out because he can make more on short term rentals without going through the task of having his building rezoned as a hotel.
But, hey, at least, abortions are still legal — is not that comforting?..
Sure, as long as you have a note from your husband, have attended a local church's "Don't do it!!" seminar, you've lasted through the mandatory 48 hour waiting period just to be really really sure you're certain you want one and then you've driven outside the state to find an actual clinic....
Conservatives, strict on property rights and still trying to consider women as property.
I own and live in a condo apartment in a big city. My condo association has banned AirBnB and similar, and I'm glad. When you have streams of short-term renters in your building, 80 percent of them might be a young couple on vacation or parents for their kids' college graduation, but it's the other 20 percent that worries me. They could set up a meth lab, deal drugs or throw wild parties and then move on before the sheriff arrives. They could trash the common areas and disappear with no forwarding address.