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Hotel CEO Openly Celebrates Higher Prices After Anti-Airbnb Law Passes (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Post: A hotel executive said a recently-passed New York law cracking down on Airbnb hosts will enable the company to raise prices for New York City hotel rooms, according to the transcript of the executive's words on a call with shareholders last week. The law, signed by New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday, slaps anyone who lists their apartment on a short-term rental site with a fine up to $7,500. It "should be a big boost in the arm for the business," Mike Barnello, chief executive of the hotel chain LaSalle Hotel Properties, said of the law last Thursday, "certainly in terms of the pricing." Barnello's comment adds fuel the argument, made repeatedly by Airbnb and its proponents, that a law that was passed in the name of affordable housing also allows established hotels to raises prices for consumers. It was included in a memo written by Airbnb's head of global policy, Chris Lehane, to the Internet Association, a tech trade group, reviewed by the Washington Post. LaSalle, a Bethesda, MD-based chain, owns hotels around the country, including New York City. The memo is the latest volley in a bitter fight that has pit the hotel industry, unions, and affordable housing advocates against Airbnb and its supporters. At the heart of the fight is a debate over the societal value of the Airbnb platform and its role in the economy of cities throughout the world. The question is whether Airbnb has been a net benefit, by enabling middle class city-dwellers to make extra money by renting out their homes, or whether it has had the unintended consequence of exacerbating affordable housing crises in expensive cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
AirBNB is further annihilating affordable housing in the urban core in many cities.
Personally, as a home owner in a downtown location who actually lives at the property, I am glad our association agreement banned them. I don't know if it would hold up in court, but the last thing I want is a home I bought legitimately to live to become a neighboring unit to flophouses for partiers who are going to ruin the community for people who actually live there instead of trying to make money off the property.
However the law shouldn't had been such a blanket ban, but more targeted towards people who abuse the service. Stipulations such as a minimum living time, in the building by the owners say 200 days a year. Rules to insure that safety and equality measures are taken place as AirBnB does have a problem with people excluding minorities. In essence to make sure people who are using the service are not playing by a different set of rules.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
When everybody must be a taxi driver or run Mom's Boarding House to make ends meet, sure, the economy sucks balls. On the other hand, if you have a better idea, we're all ears.
Airbnb and hosts make money at the expense of the neighbors. That's abuse by itself.
You live in a nice quiet condo tower, and then suddenly it's 24x7 party next door because the unit is being rented on Airbnb. What can you do? It's a new temporary tenant every fee days so even if you complain this start overs the following week.
Hotels are equipped for this and designed for this. Residential buildings are not. It's unfair to put this burden on neighbors just so the host and a startup can make a few bucks.
lucm, indeed.
It seems that every time we have a good example of capitalism the entrenched players come in and justify why it doesn't work. There is no way that capitalism will ever exist in it's true form because the established payers have no incentive to allow it. That's one reason but this article mentions another, subsidized housing (socialist solution that encourages lower wages).
There is no right or wrong here if the playing field would just remain constant but as soon as there is a way that the little guy can make a profit the rules change. I may be over simplifying the problem but the way I see it if rules were not written to favor one citizen over another then maybe we would see the wealth evenly distributed.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Using the state to fight your competition is called crony capitalism and gets more opposition from capitalists than commies.
The law is there because the city is missing out on the tourist taxes hotels collect. Higher prices means more tax for the city, a win for everyone except the tourist. If Airbnb finds a way to pay the taxes these laws won't spread.
There's nothing to prevent AirBnB from paying those taxes now. But the whole purpose of AirBnB's existence is to be in the house/apartment rental business but but pretend that they aren't so they can *AVOID* all the rules and fees that everyone else has to pay. Same with Uber and all the others. They just want to be a middleman who does nothing but skim a few dollars from every transaction, with no accountability to anyone.
You live in a nice quiet condo tower, and then suddenly it's 24x7 party next door because the unit is being rented on Airbnb.
All your airbnb's turn into a 24/7 party? What they hell are you guys doing? Most of the time I see AirBnb's empty during the day and having several passed out tourists snoring in beds at night. I challenge your assertion that the place suddenly turns into a party room.
cities like NYC have very carefully-crafted laws regarding hotels designed to protect the rights and safety of both the hotelier and the guest
I'm sure this is exactly what happened as shown by this example of the powerful hotel lobby. It's all for guest safety. /sarcsam
they can *AVOID* all the rules and fees that everyone else has to pay.
And yet, liberals fail to see the actual problem. So, instead of recognizing the problem (too many fees and rules), they create more fees and rules designed to prevent people from avoiding all the previous fees and rules. And when someone figures a way around that, they add more fees and rules.
The real problem is, that nobody is stopping long enough to ask do we need more fees and rules to protect the people who have set the barriers to entry protecting their industries?
The biggest gripe I've seen is that the "Tourists" aren't "paying their fair share", as if the city has a right to highway robbery under the guise of being the Lord of the land, and claiming it is to protect the serfs that serve the Lord.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I'm sure you also marveled at how huge the Soviet economy was and what a huge city Moscow was. See, it's easy to build a huge economy if you bleed others dry to pay for it.
And California, Chicago, and NYC also have huge fiscal problems, huge inequality, and huge social problems.
https://www.brookings.edu/rese...
These cities and states are doing well for a powerful political and social elite, who use government interference in the market to enrich themselves. In fact, you left out the biggest example of them all: Washington DC, whose wealth has gone through the roof under recent, increasingly corrupt administrations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/technology/new-york-passes-law-airbnb.html
The law does not preclude you from offering a room for rent on AirBnB in an apartment you continue to reside in, i.e., while you are present. Bottom line is that you must continue to live there during the rental period, sort of like taking on a short-term roommate. Perfectly legal.
The law doesn't even preclude you from subletting or renting your entire apartment on AirBnB, provided that the rental period is 30 days or longer. That brings the rental under New York's apartment rental laws, and gives the person who rents the apartment certain rights that they would not have had with a shorter rental period. Perfectly legal.
The law does preclude you from renting an apartment for fewer than 30 days in which you will not be also residing during the rental period.
TL;DR : the law is intended to prevent landlords from turning their apartment stock into hotel rooms.
Cry me a river for AirBnB and for the landlords who have been abusing the already existing NYC law to extort even more money from their already overpriced NYC housing inventory. They bought their apartments knowing what the law was; they just figured that nobody would bother enforcing it. Well, surprise, surprise, surprise!
No, you got it wrong. I have no problems with imposing restrictions on property owners, I have a problem with such restrictions being imposed through a political process that necessarily ends up being corrupt.
It is perfectly fine for my HOA to decide, according to our own rules, to prohibit AirBnB rentals.
It is not fine for the hotel lobby to corrupt the political process in order to prohibit other private property owners from competing with them, while they themselves don't bear the cost of the restrictions they impose.
As for the "rendering plant", you couldn't build that next to my house since the private property association that I'm a member of doesn't allow it; in effect, I paid for being protected from such land use. If, on the other hand, I had converted a building in an industrial area to residential use, then I wouldn't object to my neighbor building a rendering plant; there would be no basis for such an objection.
What you are saying is that you want to buy unrestricted land at a low price, and then later impose restrictions on other property owners without paying for them. That's what a lot of property owners are trying to do, and it's wrong.
What makes you think things are worse or less fair? Obviously, any distribution of resources, compared to any other distribution is going to be good for some people and worse for others. I'll say, not only does this rule make things better for the far majority of people, it also makes things far better for the vast majority of people who can vote in NYC elections.
Winnners:
Losers:
Uncertain:
Why shouldn't a city be able to look at those tradeoffs and make a decision?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Is it fine for the hotel lobby to advocate for the political process to apply the same obligations and restrictions to AirBNB as they are expected to follow? The reason AirBNB does it cheaper and can compete with, say, Hilton, is because AirBNB claims it is exempt from many of the taxes, restrictions, and other regulations that hotels fall under, apparently, because "the internet."
Same thing with Uber.
If you want to talk corrupt - how about the companies that are ignoring or circumventing (you might even say, willfully corrupting!) regulations that everybody else providing the same services is subject to? What makes AirBNB special - why is it moral for a homeowner to "make extra money", but immoral for Hilton to try and "make extra money"? Why should Hilton be subject to these rules and regulations, but AirBNB shouldn't be? All you've done is assert "corruption!" without any evidence, while ignoring the fact that you're basically saying "my team should win, because... intarwebz!"
At some point, many NYC hotels weren't subject to all of the taxes and regulations they are subject to today. Someone later came along and imposed restrictions on those property owners without paying for them.
Why should we sympathetic to AirBNB, but not Marriott, exactly? If you want to enter the "room for rent" game, why shouldn't you be subject to the same set of rules and regulations that every other existing "room for rent" business is subject to?
PRIVATE PROPERTY OWNERS who can and should be able to use their private property however they choose.
This is actually known as "rent-seeking"; a businessman uses the power of government to attack other businesses. Because it's easier for a big business to get the government to attack small businesses (because small businesses don't have a gross of lawyers on retainer) than it is for the big business to actually do BUSINESS in an efficient way.