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.

Comments

Freedom Not Allowed !

[JimSadler]

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.

Re:Freedom Not Allowed !

[Shados]

This is such a stupid argument. If Im good enough I can literally kill someone without any proof. Should we make murder legal?

Yeah, some shit is hard to prove, doesn't mean it should be legal if its genuinely hurting people and we decide it should not.

The distinction between residential and commercial establishment has been a staple for a long time, and it has a lot of value (if only so your neighbors can exercise their right of quiet enjoyment of THEIR properties, which I'd argue, is vastly more important than your freedom to rent it out).

Thats without even counting the insane amount of people who AirBNB condos after signing papers saying they wont (short term rentals are very frequently banned in condo associations). So fuck em.

Re:Freedom Not Allowed !

[Daemonik]

What is commercial and what isn't. It's none of the governments business.

You must be from Texas, where you can run a fertilizer plant in the middle of a residential neighborhood, until it blows up and destroys the neighborhood and you run off crying bankruptcy. This is exactly why government has a very keen purpose in deciding what is and isn't commercial property and what it's next to.

Re:Freedom Not Allowed !

[Ichijo]

The distinction between residential and commercial establishment has been a staple for a long time, and it has a lot of value...

...for middle- and upper-class neighborhoods, but not for the inner-city neighborhoods that subsidize them. That's right, single-use zoning is a form of reverse welfare that subsidizes the middle- and upper-classes at the expense of the poor.

Also, what's the value in prohibiting someone from building an apartment building next door to a factory? You'd think it would be good to bring jobs to a city without bringing traffic.

In Japan by contrast, they do things a little smarter than the USA's clumsy approach to zoning. Instead of single-use zoning, they allow anything of a lesser nuisance than the area is zoned for. A grocery store is less of a nuisance than a factory, so they allow grocery stores in industrial zones. An apartment building is less of a nuisance than a grocery store, so they allow apartment buildings in commercial zones. And a single-family house is less of a nuisance than an apartment building, so single-family houses are allowed in multifamily residential zones, but not the reverse.

If every neighborhood in a city had to become self-sufficient in city spending versus property tax revenue, you can be sure that people living in middle-class, single-family residential zones suddenly faced with massive property tax bills would do everything in their power to attract bed-and-breakfasts, corner stores, and the other tax-efficient amenities that existed in our neighborhoods until we legislated our freedoms away in the aftermath of WWII.

Re:Freedom Not Allowed !

[Half-pint HAL]

Much of Airbnb is selling inferior goods (excess capacity) [snip] Airbnb - where most property owners are trying to gain revenue from that which previously generated zero revenue.

That is completely tangential to the point of the law -- it's about owner-not-present lets. That means it not aimed at those selling their excess capacity, but those using it in what is effectively a professional capacity -- they are businesses, and they're currently failing to register as such. This means that they're ducking the tax and safety regs that apply to landlords operating long-term lets, and they're ducking the tax and safety regs that apply to short-term rented accommodation.

AirBnB has always recognised this as a problem and has explicitly forbidden it (if not globally, certainly in many countries, so why are they complaining about a law which supports their user policy? Because they only pay lip-service to the problem and are happy to continue to profit from it. A year or two ago they had a widely reported purge of accounts with more than one property (because logically at least one must be owner-not-present), but if they're complaining about this move, then clearly it was all a piece of theatre aimed at stalling any regulatory intervention being introduced.

This isn't an attack on civil liberties.

Re:Telling people what can and cant do with

[mi]

Telling people what can and cant do with their own property is called Communism.

No, under Communism there is no private property at all — it is all communal. What you are describing is Fascism. It is generally better than Communism, but still quite nasty — and inefficient.

Re:Easy Work-Around

[uncqual]

Of course, that would make it difficult to keep the place rented full time. One guest would decide to stay the full 60 days. The next renter would pay the "cancellation fee" after a week -- and you now have no renters lined up because you couldn't put it on the market until the one-week guy gave you your $20 cancellation fee and left (because you had made a commitment to the full 60 day term).

Re:The old world finally realizes

[Daemonik]

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.

Re:How do you like your freedom now, New York?

[Daemonik]

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.

Re: Execute branch? Legislative branch?

[ShanghaiBill]

You have the freedom to pick who stays in your house, clearly, under freedom of assembly.

This law is about "owner not present" rentals. You can pick anyone you like to share your house, as a boarder or roommate. But you do NOT have the right to pick anyone you like as a tenant in unshared living space. Federal "fair housing" laws apply.

This NY law may be stupid (and IMO it is), but it is unlikely that a court would find it unconstitutional. There is plenty of precedent for government regulations in this area.

Re:The old world finally realizes

[lxs]

There's little reason for it except that the hotel industry has greased enough palms to get a law passed in their favour.

Housing shortage is one good reason, safety is another. Plus it's a nuisance for the neighbours to have short stay guests partying all night and making a fucking pigsty of the building.

Most of these laws are on the books to make a city a nicer place to live. Sites like AirBnB and Uber are not about sharing but about selfish parasitic behaviour. I hope cities across the world will follow New York's example on this one.