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Airbnb Sues New York City To Block User-Data Bill Over Privacy (bostonglobe.com)
Airbnb has filed a lawsuit against the city of New York over a recent law the city passed, requiring the home-sharing site to hand over information about its hosts. From a report: The company is hoping to avoid millions in losses when the law, designed to police short-term home rentals, takes effect this winter. The New York City legislation, which passed with a 45-0 vote, would require Airbnb to share the names and addresses of its hosts with the city's Office of Special Enforcement. "The ordinance is an unlawful end-run around established restraints on governmental action and violates core constitutional rights," the company said in a claim filed in New York court on Friday.
New York, which faces an affordable housing shortage, has struggled with how to enforce regulations to control Airbnb and other home-sharing services like Expedia's HomeAway. Regulators argue that short-term rentals, which can be more profitable than long-term leases, disrupt neighborhoods and drive up rents. The new legislation is designed to give officials enough information to catch Airbnb hosts who operate outside of strict home-sharing laws.
New York, which faces an affordable housing shortage, has struggled with how to enforce regulations to control Airbnb and other home-sharing services like Expedia's HomeAway. Regulators argue that short-term rentals, which can be more profitable than long-term leases, disrupt neighborhoods and drive up rents. The new legislation is designed to give officials enough information to catch Airbnb hosts who operate outside of strict home-sharing laws.
New York, which faces an affordable housing shortage...
Have they tried building more housing? Of course, good luck trying to build anything of reasonable size in NYC. All the NIMBYs come out and shout things like, "but it will ruin my view of the skyline," or, "it will negatively affect the character of the neighborhood.
Same problem as in SF and numerous other places.
Obvious solution: advertise on Craigslist's "short-term/sublet" section, which is semi-anonymous, take cash only in payment. Guess the city will lose out on potential revenue that way, but that's the price it will pay for violating people's privacy.
We prefer free markets as opposed to central control. Nice try NYC, kindly piss off.
Nearly all jurisdictions collect transient accommodation tax. TAT pays for things like convention centers, tourist attractions, and advertising to attract tourists. It is unfair to make every resident pay for these, when most of the benefit accrues to hotels, Airbnbs, and restaurants. TAT is a fair, reasonable tax, as long as the pols stick to using the revenue for supporting tourism, and refrain from using it as a general purpose piggy bank.
The hotels already pay TAT. Why should the Airbnbs get a free ride? NYC can only enforce the law if they know who is renting what.
If you want a totally free market, there are plenty of remote locations that do not have TAT. Good luck getting renters.
Disclaimer: I rent a few rooms on Airbnb, and I pay TAT. But not in NYC.
kill yourself you authoritarian retard
Have you ever heard of any area of the country that was not NIMBY? I've lived in small cities with 500 people, to large cities with millions, and they all don't want to build new housing. They all want everything to stay the same as when they moved there.
It doesn't matter how much money everyone has: If you have five million people and housing for only 3 million, there are going to be people without housing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
they're breaking long standing laws about sub-letting designed to control housing prices for residents. Those laws exist because wealthy people would buy up all the property during cyclic economic crashes and rent it back if they were allowed. There's currently a big problem with Chinese using foreign land to hide money from their corrupt government. They rent it out on services like airbnb. New Zealand just blocked them from buying land to prevent their countrymen from being extorted. But you don't really need the Chinese to buy up the land. Like I said, just wait for a few cyclic downturns when people are forced to sell homes for pennies on the dollar.
Once again a practice that was made illegal for a very good reason has become "legal" again because, hey, it's on the Internet.
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You can't build housing where housing is already, all the time.
Yes you can? It's called an "apartment complex." There's plenty of space for more housing even in Manhattan. Even in central Tokyo.
Cities are building office spaces, which attract people, without building housing. I would call it dumb but it pushes their property values up. If they wanted housing costs to be lower, they should have built more housing units.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You're doing two things - one, talking about centrally-macro-planned economics and development, and two, talking about places that are already at relatively high density compared to nearby areas. I don't know why this is hard.
It's not hard, all you have to do is build more housing. People commuting from outside will cause more traffic problems than people commuting five minutes to work.
Snap out of it. The real world doesn't work like that.
It really does: build enough housing and the price of housing will go down. We know how to build dense cities, it's something we can do.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well of course they can, AC, you own nothing. Just stop paying property taxes, you'll see how it all works.
Hey now you two....go ahead and fuck each other but be sure to give a reacharound now and then, k?
Your solutions require a market driver, 10-20 years to effectively accomplish, BILLIONS OF DOLLARS,
Well yes, actually, there is a market driver: people who are willing to pay billions of dollars to buy apartments. If apartments cost $500k each, then you'd need 2000 people willing to pay that amount. But there are more than 2000 people willing to pay that amount.
If it were trivial, they would do it your way.
NIMBY. People don't want to do it, it's not that there isn't a solution.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm 0 for 2 in being able to use Air BnB in NYC - in both cases sometime after I booked, they were told they had to shut down. One of them, a day after... I've sadly already given up on Air BnB in NYC, my heart goes out to those just trying to get a little extra cash to be able to afford living in NYC...
Hopefully Air BnB prevails.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The new legislation is designed to give officials enough information to catch Airbnb hosts who operate outside of strict home-sharing laws.
This sounds like governmental fishing when a court-issued warrant backed by actual probable cause is the correct way to go about this. It would expose anyone who is not operating "outside of strict home-sharing laws" to an unnecessary search.
There was a project in San Mateo that got rejected because the city council didn't like it. NIMBY, That's how it goes. So what's your solution? Let the suckers live somewhere else? You don't care where as long as it's not near you?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Land zoning is one of the main examples of how even free markets can coexist with centralized control. And NYC has many laws (like rent control) that modify the free market. Clearly, they don't want a free market solution to housing.
Also, what percentage of NYC residents do you think own, as opposed to rent from some really really rich fuck?
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They require the same thing from gun purchasers and that has constitutional protections, the chance that local judges will rule against the city is low.
We prefer free markets as opposed to central control.
Ironically, you can't have free markets without central control; someone has to stop fraud.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Local governments are the worst violators of human rights.
Yeah! Local governments are responsible for the holocaust! They conquered America and genocided the natives! They invaded Panama and lied about WMDs in Iraq! Er, wait...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
NYC has, is, and continues to build more housing (and offices/buildings/etc.)
The problem is the only thing being built is 1) ultra luxury rentals with 2) a few token low income units.
It only makes the housing problem when you add a few thousand new units and they push the average rental price UPWARDS. The lower priced units raise their rent because...well...it's less than the new overpriced units.
And...repeat. Forever.
Oh, and factor in hipsters who take over neighborhood by neighborhood and pay obscene rent because it's a 'trendy place' and then abandon it and move elsewhere in a year or three. Then that area is left with greatly elevated rents and stores that no one else can afford but are stuck with the costs...
welcome to NYC. no place like it on earth - both for the good AND the bad.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
It really does: build enough housing and the price of housing will go down. We know how to build dense cities, it's something we can do.
Actually, NYC is the test bed for ultra dense 'modern' city life. I'd argue that we don't really know how to do it all that well...or else they wouldn't skimp on things like mass transit maintenance and accountability.
> build more housing
Ha! They are and have been. Guess what though? Virtually all that housing is more expensive than the existing rental units. No one is building a middle class, non-luxury apartment building. They're building ultra-luxury, ultra expensive high rises with a pittance of low income units as require to get their permits and variances.
Stop talking like you 1) know NYC or 2) understand housing markets in major developed cities
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
NYC has, is, and continues to build more housing (and offices/buildings/etc.) The problem is the only thing being built is 1) ultra luxury rentals with 2) a few token low income units.
Manhattan population is growing faster than they are building new houses, which pushes prices up. New York is in many ways an example of what not to do. You would be smart to leave there as fast as possible.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."