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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.
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.
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.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
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.
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.
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.