I think this article is better written.
Took my a Brooklyn apartment down. Sad about this. I earned a bit of extra income when I was away, one or two weekends a month. Don’t see who I was harming.
Sorry to hear that 
Too bad that authorities need to take such extreme measures, because AirBnB does not want do cooperate.
I saw that at https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/pre-crime-returns-to-america-with-new-airbnb-law-20408/
Pathetic!
I have personally seen how many former rental units for local residents have been flipped into AirBNB units in my neighborhood. Just walking down the street, I can see the padlock keyboxes everywhere. An entire apartment complex of 7 units on the corner evicted all of its tenants last year, renovated, and all 7 units are now listed on AirBNB (in Chicago, only 25% of the units can legally be short term rentals). AirBNB definitely reduces the availability of rentals for local residents in tight housing markets. I don’t blame New Yorkers at all for pushing back on this.
I truly dont understand why cities or states cannot sue abnb to get a list of all rentals in their jurisdiction.
If nothing else, they could hire a couple of people to
"rent" suspect places…if they are then put out of business no one pays.
2 reasons:
- Money. AirBnB has a lot more money to play with than the average city.
- Time. With the amount of money AirBnB has, they can pay lawyers to delay a verdict for several years.
Changing the rules is much cheaper and quicker.
Or just charge them the accommodations tax that hotels have to pay; they’ve done it in Washington D.C. New York is currently leaving more than $113 million in tax revenue on the table per AllTheRooms report (http://alltherooms.com/analytics).
Because it’s not just about business tax, it’s also about adequate housing supply.
It’s also about the hotel industry bitching because they are losing out, similar to the NYC Taxi lobby when UBER came into the city.
You can not put Uber and AirBnB in the same category.
I know the marketing guru’s from AirBnB are trying to keep calling AirBnB “Sharing Economy”.
But with Uber you cannot drive several cars at the same time, or drive your care when you are not there.
If AirBnB would only be about renting out private rooms, then they would be like Uber.
I agree. Took my nephew (first time buyer) out to see some properties the other day - four out five of the ones he viewed were being looked at by AIR bnb buyers looking for whole properties to let out. Needless to say they had much bigger pockets then he did.
All of the estate agents he has registered with have reported the same - that Airbnb buyers are snapping up two bed flats normally being bought by first time buyers and along with developers are pricing them out of the market.
Well Uber is completely banned in Berlin.
It’s not just about hotels complaining. It’s about ordinary residents who are priced out of the market because landlords and buyers would rather put their stock on Airbnb because they can make more money. The more this multiplies the bigger the problem gets. Meanwhile due to scarcity amongst those landlords still doing traditional lets, limited availability pushes prices up. Governments are noticing this and it’s not just hotels complaining.
The time to make mega bucks in cities like NYC, Berlin etc have now passed. But you know for live in hosts it’s a good thing; in Berlin the cost of a room is pretty high in relation to the rental costs because the government have now drastically reduced competition.
Buytolet has always been a specifically UK thing what with the tax breaks on offer - buytoAirbnb is obviously soooo 2016. I think Airbnb still has legs in London and there’s still some money to be made if you have the portfolio. Shame as obviously we have an acute housing crisis.
Agree - Bristol is second to London in terms of street homeless and we have thousands on the Council waiting list and lots living in poor housing.
Unbelievably the Council just approved a major housing development in one of the poorest areas of Bristol with no affordable housing element despite having a Council policy of having a minimum 25% affordable housing on any new development.
Go figure 
Another problem with these cities that’s not caused by Airbnb (as they look for someone else to blame) is the reason many of them have such housing shortages is because they’ve regulated new supply out of existence.
If they would loosen up on some of their building and renovation regulations they could have a lot more supply. But, they’d rather blame Airbnb.
Anyway, for hosts who live on the property it’s not a bad deal. Our prices and bookings will only go up.
Yeah I got an email asking me to sign the petition. But I refuse. I agree with this. I have 3 rooms in my 4br apt on Airbnb and this doesn’t effect me negatively. I actually am stuck in an apt. I can’t afford without renting the rooms out because moving into a 1br that costs about the same amount literally makes no sense.
I know rent prices won’t be going down any time soon, but maybe lower price point apts will become available so that I can move. And I agree with you. I will get more traffic.
Unfortunately I had one guest who was horrified that I was “ruining” Airbnb because I had my personal objects in the apartment and lived there. Hope I don’t get too many more like her.
The way the law is written is sort of bizarre. If you have a 2BR apartment, it’s OK to rent one bedroom as long as you’re still in the other one, but it’s not OK to rent the whole thing if you’re going away (for under 30 days)? That makes absolutely no sense.
I agree with the other poster that changing zoning laws to allow denser housing makes more sense, especially in cities other than New York (which is obviously already really dense). In San Francisco, restrictions on new construction are extreme–everybody who lives there wants it to stay exactly as it was the moment they moved to SF (usually, less than 5 years prior). I agree that new construction is usually aesthetically horrifying compared to a classic Victorian, but you can’t have it both ways: if you don’t allow denser construction, rents are just going to keep going up. But renters in SF, at least, can take heart: the Airbnb market there is saturated. I could make a lot more money renting my flat full-time than on Airbnb. Partly this is because of simple supply and demand. As more units go to Airbnb, competition forces prices down. Although I’m skeptical that full-time Airbnb rentals are affecting the residential market, even in SF: there are approximately 15 “whole house” Airbnbs within a 3-block radius of my apartment, and there are at least a thousand rental units in the same area. This jibes with independent analysis that shows that the number of full-time Airbnbs in SF is still a tiny fraction of the total amount of available housing units. In spite of all the hype, anti-Airbnb sentiment is still largely funded by the hotel industry, but the hotel industry doesn’t have as much of an argument now that Airbnb collects the 15% hotel tax on my listings, and remits to the city for me. I know NYC is worse, but I’m still skeptical that Airbnb is having a big impact on local residential housing.