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I found this law problematic because it was written to make enforcement easy, not to address actual issues with serial short-term renting. The intent of the la

I found this law problematic because it was written to make enforcement easy, not to address actual issues with serial short-term renting. The intent of the law was to bring serial short-term rented units back into the market for long-term renters. The intended outcome was to make more housing available for prospective renters and to reduce nuisances involved with serial short-term renters. The outcome is to further sclerotize and limit the rental market. Now students cannot effectively sublet their apartments on Craigslist while out on summer break or study abroad, for a summer intern working at a company in the city. Now a couple can't rent out their apartment for the week while they go to Disneyworld. To some degree I have fallen for the populist message in this article; the hoteliers are clearly reaping the most benefits from this legislation. However, in the long term, everyone in the city is harmed by unnecessarily restrictive laws. The outcome is going to be a drive of this activity underground, as we have seen in alcohol prohibition and the formerly wild west of off-meter (or "gypsy") cabs in NYC. At least with Airbnb, there was a rating system and an escalation/authentication path. Airbnb's failure was twofold: that of not spending as much capital and time as Uber/Lyft in changing the minds of lawmakers; and failing to address the targets of the legislation: serial short-term landlords. If Airbnb had addressed this issue, the hoteliers would not have had an argument for the public benefit.

wdewind 10y ago
I disagree. Airbnb has always had a really really simple solution to all of this: make it so people can file complaints about specific addresses without being involved in the Airbnb system. Airbnb lost the public support because they ignored externalities: so many people were adversely affected by living next to people who irresponsibly rented out their Airbnb. Personally in one building I had my lobby and elevator destroyed by Airbnb guests, as well as many loud party nights in an otherwise quiet building. In my next building I've dealt with noise and partying again. But I have effectively no recourse. A system like this would vastly limit Airbnb's market: it would make it so landlords could easily tell when people were Airbnbing their apartments out, and thus would vastly shrink Airbnb's market. I like Airbnb a lot. I use it when I travel, my friends use it when they visit me in NYC. But I am happy about this law because Airbnb chose short term profit over long term sustainability. The zoning laws that support hotels are there for a reason. And there was room for innovation there, but Airbnb has not been successful in traversing the space between the economic inefficiency and the zoning issues. None of this even touches on the macro issue that Airbnb demonstrably increases rent prices.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  It's pretty easy to figure the address from the map
  - ethanbond 10y ago
    And then go door by door to 100+ apartments in any one building?
    - ryuker16 10y ago
      Ask the Door man
      - ethanbond 10y ago
        Every building in NYC has a doorman? Lol okay.
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    I know there's an Airbnb in my building. Didn't really care until a guest puked in the elevator and broke a beer bottle in the lobby. I don't know which apartment it's in.
    - ryuker16 10y ago
      How do you know it was a guest?
bradleyjg 10y ago
"I found this law problematic because it was written to make enforcement easy, not to address actual issues with serial short-term renting." Those two things are very much related. It's all well and good to propose an exquisitely tailored law that only forbids exactly what is socially negative and nothing else, but if it is totally unenforceable as a practical matter then what good is it? "At least with Airbnb, there was a rating system and an escalation/authentication path." That's great for AirBnB's customers -- both guests and owners (or leasors), but did nothing at all for the rest of us living in NYC. All other things being equal, I'd be happy with lower hotel prices in NYC. That's good for tourism, which is good for NYC. But I sure as heck don't want to trade off not being able to rent an apartment and be assured that the apartment next door isn't an unregistered hotel room used by a rotating cast of drunk tourists every weekend. If those are my choices, I'm voting for higher hotel prices every time.
CPLX 10y ago
> Now students cannot effectively sublet their apartments on Craigslist while out on summer break or study abroad, for a summer intern working at a company in the city Incorrect. Sublets of 30 days or more are still legal, as they have been forever, and in fact are highly protected under NYC rent law, which requires landlords to allow sublets. So your narrative is fiction. The law, which existed before the founding of Airbnb, and subsequent flaunting thereof, prohibits short term transient rentals. The only recent change is the prohibition on actively soliciting this illegal activity, not the already-illegal activity itself, thus making enforcement easier. We can have a healthy debate about the short term sublet laws. Many NYC residents, myself included, will support the ban on transient rentals and improvised hotel arrangements, because it has severe negative externalities to other residents of the buildings in question, negatively affects the rental market, and violates community principles of land use and zoning. Others, perhaps including yourself, will take the opposite view. And via democracy, following that debate, the law against short term subletting can be amended or retained. Needless to say if you're promulgating these views from San Francisco your preferences on the matter will be disregarded. The only thing that's happened here is that the other strategy, the Silicon Valley end-around of just breaking the law and seeing what happened, has proven to be an ineffective means of changing policy. Good.
- linkregister 10y ago
  Thanks, I didn't remember the amount of days right; I thought it was a ban on longer rentals also. I'm glad that sublets aren't affected; that significantly changes my perspective on the law. It basically invalidates Airbnb's business model but changes nothing for preexisting common arrangements, such as month-long sublets. I appreciate your response. > The only thing that's happened here is that the other strategy, the Silicon Valley end-around of just breaking the law and seeing what happened, has proven to be an ineffective means of changing policy. Good. I think the outcome is a bit more nuanced than that. The lesson to be learned in this situation is that Airbnb provided terrible curation of its service while being instrumental in renters breaking the law. I don't think it's universally a bad idea to break laws one doesn't agree with, especially if they carried no significant consequences for all stakeholders involved. Because Airbnb failed at its curation, the state of New York added teeth to the existing law. I still maintain that the primary use case for Airbnb, the sporadic rental, is a useful one for both guests and owners. The Airbnb rentals I've used in the past were mutually beneficial. Maybe I'm an outlier because I used the rental for non-malicious purposes.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

wdewind 10y ago

I disagree. Airbnb has always had a really really simple solution to all of this: make it so people can file complaints about specific addresses without being involved in the Airbnb system. Airbnb lost the public support because they ignored externalities: so many people were adversely affected by living next to people who irresponsibly rented out their Airbnb. Personally in one building I had my lobby and elevator destroyed by Airbnb guests, as well as many loud party nights in an otherwise quiet building. In my next building I've dealt with noise and partying again. But I have effectively no recourse. A system like this would vastly limit Airbnb's market: it would make it so landlords could easily tell when people were Airbnbing their apartments out, and thus would vastly shrink Airbnb's market. I like Airbnb a lot. I use it when I travel, my friends use it when they visit me in NYC. But I am happy about this law because Airbnb chose short term profit over long term sustainability. The zoning laws that support hotels are there for a reason. And there was room for innovation there, but Airbnb has not been successful in traversing the space between the economic inefficiency and the zoning issues. None of this even touches on the macro issue that Airbnb demonstrably increases rent prices.

ryuker16 10y ago
It's pretty easy to figure the address from the map
- ethanbond 10y ago
  And then go door by door to 100+ apartments in any one building?
  - ryuker16 10y ago
    Ask the Door man
    - ethanbond 10y ago
      Every building in NYC has a doorman? Lol okay.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  I know there's an Airbnb in my building. Didn't really care until a guest puked in the elevator and broke a beer bottle in the lobby. I don't know which apartment it's in.
  - ryuker16 10y ago
    How do you know it was a guest?

bradleyjg 10y ago

"I found this law problematic because it was written to make enforcement easy, not to address actual issues with serial short-term renting." Those two things are very much related. It's all well and good to propose an exquisitely tailored law that only forbids exactly what is socially negative and nothing else, but if it is totally unenforceable as a practical matter then what good is it? "At least with Airbnb, there was a rating system and an escalation/authentication path." That's great for AirBnB's customers -- both guests and owners (or leasors), but did nothing at all for the rest of us living in NYC. All other things being equal, I'd be happy with lower hotel prices in NYC. That's good for tourism, which is good for NYC. But I sure as heck don't want to trade off not being able to rent an apartment and be assured that the apartment next door isn't an unregistered hotel room used by a rotating cast of drunk tourists every weekend. If those are my choices, I'm voting for higher hotel prices every time.

CPLX 10y ago

> Now students cannot effectively sublet their apartments on Craigslist while out on summer break or study abroad, for a summer intern working at a company in the city Incorrect. Sublets of 30 days or more are still legal, as they have been forever, and in fact are highly protected under NYC rent law, which requires landlords to allow sublets. So your narrative is fiction. The law, which existed before the founding of Airbnb, and subsequent flaunting thereof, prohibits short term transient rentals. The only recent change is the prohibition on actively soliciting this illegal activity, not the already-illegal activity itself, thus making enforcement easier. We can have a healthy debate about the short term sublet laws. Many NYC residents, myself included, will support the ban on transient rentals and improvised hotel arrangements, because it has severe negative externalities to other residents of the buildings in question, negatively affects the rental market, and violates community principles of land use and zoning. Others, perhaps including yourself, will take the opposite view. And via democracy, following that debate, the law against short term subletting can be amended or retained. Needless to say if you're promulgating these views from San Francisco your preferences on the matter will be disregarded. The only thing that's happened here is that the other strategy, the Silicon Valley end-around of just breaking the law and seeing what happened, has proven to be an ineffective means of changing policy. Good.

linkregister 10y ago
Thanks, I didn't remember the amount of days right; I thought it was a ban on longer rentals also. I'm glad that sublets aren't affected; that significantly changes my perspective on the law. It basically invalidates Airbnb's business model but changes nothing for preexisting common arrangements, such as month-long sublets. I appreciate your response. > The only thing that's happened here is that the other strategy, the Silicon Valley end-around of just breaking the law and seeing what happened, has proven to be an ineffective means of changing policy. Good. I think the outcome is a bit more nuanced than that. The lesson to be learned in this situation is that Airbnb provided terrible curation of its service while being instrumental in renters breaking the law. I don't think it's universally a bad idea to break laws one doesn't agree with, especially if they carried no significant consequences for all stakeholders involved. Because Airbnb failed at its curation, the state of New York added teeth to the existing law. I still maintain that the primary use case for Airbnb, the sporadic rental, is a useful one for both guests and owners. The Airbnb rentals I've used in the past were mutually beneficial. Maybe I'm an outlier because I used the rental for non-malicious purposes.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]