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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.
Government always picks winners and losers with the policies it sets. NAFTA: big boon for consumers, destroyed middle class manufacturing. Child tax credit: big win for people with kids, big loss for those who can't/don't have children (they have to make up the tax differential). ACA: Health care for people who can't afford it, destroys healthcare for everyone else. Cash for clunkers: money for car manufacturers and people who bought crappy, fuel inefficient cars, screw the used car lots and people who buy cars from them. So they passed a law that makes it illegal to rent out your apartment prices, and the result is higher hotel rates and shortly I suspect a fall in people investing in properties as Airbnb rentals and units falling back onto the market to be purchased by people who will actually live in them. Winners and losers. Not shocking, not unpredictable, not really even news.
"AirBNB is further annihilating affordable housing in the urban core in many cities."
Good, people need to spread out a bit more. The urban core of most cities is far far too dense with ridiculous ideas of what counts as healthy. If you spread out a bit in this massive country we've got here you might find you can buy a home that is detached from your neighbors with walls and an airgap that makes what they are doing far less big a deal.