lol, they talk like they are a grass root movement, they fight for nothing but their own bottom line, I hate this insulting "disruptive" marketing speech. There are laws, just because you're an "app" doesn't give you the right to violate them.

The biggest thing I have learned from running a couple short term rental listings is that people are basically good.

I hosted 68 guests in the last three weeks and every last one of them was nice and respectful and quiet.

Anti short term rental sentiment is based on paranoid hysteria.

I don't live in NYC, but in a neighboring state and bought a three family house with the express intent of living in one unit and renting the others as vacation rentals.

The prospect of nosy, controlling moral scolds shutting down my American dream, is extremely maddening. ' The only externality to my house is that there are cars in the drive way with license plates from a variety of states. Fear of new cars in the driveway should not trump my rights as owner and tax payer on this land.

Luckily in public meetings our town planners have declared their need for vacation rentals. The housing market is weak here and if the town were to shut down vacation rentals, it would put even more pressure on an already cold real estate market.

I'm not ideologically against regulation, don't get me wrong, but I DO recognize that sometimes 'big hammers' affect big and small scale landlords equally, and that's not fair. And quite frankly if you're disrupted because I'm AirBNBing one of my units, just come down the stairs and knock on my door and we can talk about it.

Joking aside - New York housing laws need to do a better job, whether it's housing code, fines, or anti AirBNB laws, of distinguishing between big and small scale operations.

You can't make subjective judgements about small vs big landlords because frankly, lots of landlords, big or small are scum and can only be managed with a stick.

I don't need to knock on your door -- if you want to be a hotelier, buy a hotel.

A hotel has shared facilities, a check in desk and some other things.

It also does not meet the definition of a bed and breakfast, which by definition serves food.

So by the zoning of my town I am not operating a hotel or a bed and breakfast.

NYC has laws that may seem onerous to you, but they exist as a direct response to problems that have already happened in the past and are already manifesting themselves in the modern AirBnb era. The issues are real, and the company has taken an attitude that the law doesn't apply to them. Fuck them.

Airbnb often implies that they are like Uber/Lyft, fighting some evil hotel lobby. That's also bullshit -- Uber is fighting cartels with strong local regulation at the municipal level. Hotels aren't organized the same way and frankly don't need the regulatory protection that cabs do. To the contrary, my understanding is that Airbnb was the party doing lots of heavy lobbying in Albany.

If they were smart, instead of carrying on like children, they should come up with a co-op hotel model that is compatible with the law, less capital intensive and closer to the spirit of their platform.

Really? What exactly is the compelling problem solved by requiring all short term rentals to have a "check-in" desk? Why shouldn't I be able to rent out my apartment for a few weeks while I go on vacation?

This is straight up protectionism. I wonder how much it cost the hotel industry to buy this legislation.

As an AirBnB host, renter, and apartment building tenant, I do not want a "co-op hotel model." I want to be able to not spend thousands of dollars a month on a space which isn't even being used. It's ridiculous to try to spin this as some helpful regulation.

If you are truly renting your apartment home while you're away, you're actually fine with doing so with respect to this law. You're probably violating your lease or HOA contract, but that's your problem.

If you're buying or renting apartments to sublet as ersatz hotels, then you have a problem. It's not society's problem to save your from a poor investment choice.

This legislation passed in an environment where the US Attorney is likely tapping the phones of any remaining unindicted political players in Albany. Hotels aren't well organized to begin with, and I doubt they had an opportunity to make huge contributions to influence this. Real estate moguls like reduced housing supply as they get to reap higher rents, so they don't care. (Feel free to link to the board of elections filings if I'm wrong).

The public outcry against Airbnb is strong and consistent, and this law imho is unusually democratic and fair one. Everyone got what they claimed to want. True Airbnb hosts can continue to share their homes. You can continue to rent them. The only party hurt is Airbnb who has been deceptive about their true intentions from day 1 -- so fuck them.

Seriously? You don't know why you should have someone available in person if the people staying at your hotel have an issue? There's a reason your homeowner's insurance is cheaper than the insurance for a hotel.

The idea that tenants are able to knock on your door means you shouldn't have to follow this law kind of demonstrates an attitude I've seen with a number of small but not "good" landlords I've had.

In my neighborhood, for example, it's rare for houses to be renovated fully permitted because the entire permitting process is designed around large scale construction projects. There's an entire shadow economy that goes just to paying thousands to architects, expediters, inspectors, licensed pros, etc., in addition to the actual work. That's just one example. The end result is that people don't do it, because they can't afford it unless they have a lot of capital.

Now the law already does this distinction I'm mentioning: for example a three or four family home has to be registered for the rentals to be legal, a two-family doesn't. Also the code is different, and more broadly the Multiple Dwelling Law treats them differently.

Going back to AirBNB, concretely I think a good compromise would be to limit the number of units for rent to one, and take down the ones that have turned rental buildings into hotels. People who own big rental buildings do these things. What's left are co-ops and condos. Co-ops have self-regulating powers to evict people. Condos, which someone here complained upon, are a different story (even if they have house rules with fines, I don't know how that's enforced).

The 'knocking on the door' comment was an attempt to try to separate the large from the small. As for myself I'm always above board and legal, because I'm risk-averse, but my risk-averse nature also means I don't rent to anyone I don't know or trust. Partly because of comments about everyone needing sticks. Ironically I've been on that side, which is why I decided I didn't like being a tenant anymore. I haven't used AirBNB, but plan to do so -legally. I do have a right to feel wronged by the passage of the law, especially when I hear all the anti-AirBNB comments not apply to my situation (eg. 'disruption to the residents').

A multiple dwelling "is a dwelling which is either rented, leased, let or hired out, to be occupied, or is occupied as the residence or home of three or more families independently of each other."

A Class A is a multiple dwellings "which is occupied, as a rule, for permanent residence purposes. This class shall include tenements, flat houses, maisonette apartments, apartment houses ..."

A Class B is a multiple dwelling "occupied, as a rule transiently, as the more or less temporary abode of individuals or families who are lodged with or without meals".

There are reasons, good and bad, that states and municipalities have regulations about zoning for commercial, residential, mixed, and other use. There can be a discussion about how well they're applied, misapplied or whatever.

Here's my opinion: I think you, and other transient-rental aficionados, have the burden of showing sufficient reason for allowing you and AirBnB to avoid civil and possibly criminal (depending on circumstances) sanction for breaking the laws. You also have the burden of showing why the rules should be changed to permit your activities subsequently.

I've never used Airbnb, but unless there are serious harms to people, where is the harm and why should the law be followed?

The neighbors onto whom AirBNB providers offload their externalities.

Yes, there are bad guests occasionally. But there are also bad tenants occasionally—and the former is a hell of a lot easier to deal with quickly.

This is why my land owning neighbors love me and are happy with the direction the neighborhood is changing into.

Edit: parent has editted comment after my reply.

It is sharing my house.

When I first bought the house I inherited a 12 month lease tenant from the previous owner.

When I had that tentant, I didn't feel like this was my house. I couldnt go on the first floor, I had to walk on eggshells around the tenant and her kid.

Now this is my house! My house! I own it, and I let in guests that I screen through airbnb and other sites. They come for a few days, pay 300-600, and I make the beds and greet them and its really nice and I have met some cool people.

So in my case we are talking about turning a three family house into a basically single family house with some guests. That is a use case I dont think is being represented in this conversation.

In one telling, you --- or, the proverbial you, the 10 less-responsible versions of you that exist for every equally-responsible you --- bringing a massive flow of short-term renters to buildings and neighborhoods zoned and coded for long-term tenants, overriding those regulations based entirely on your personal hunch that people are generally better than the democratic process of your municipality has decided they are.

In another telling, you are more or less stating outright that, because after buying a building designed for three families you discovered you don't like letting two other families have long-term leases, you've converted your three-family dwelling into a hotel. Even putting zoning aside, you're like living proof of how Airbnb impacts housing stock.

I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong. I'm saying that you're making a pretty clear case that there is a significant public policy stake in whether or not you should be able to continue doing it it.

I'm not even saying that the zoning concern or the housing stock concern should prevail or are dispositive or anything! I happen to find them compelling, but, whatever. I'm just saying, if I was trying to convince people that the state should mind its own business and let a hundred Airbnbs bloom, this is probably not the thing I would brag about in public.

I'm changing it back. I own it. If for some reason the town tried to stop me from doing short term rentals, I would just convert the house to single family and sell it for twice what I bought it for.

Unless one is opposed to property rights and free markets, I don't see how how one has standing to complain.

Owning property doesn't let you alone change its zoning. If I was your free market property right loving neighbor I would be upset that you're running a hotel in a residential area.

The fact of the matter is that you've been living in a multiple-family dwelling with three residences, only one of which was being rented out. You didn't like the arrangement, and decided to revert it to a single family home, leaving the town with two fewer housing units.

In the process of rennovation, you have been renting it out in the manner of a hotel by layman's standards - but you aren't technically a hotel. Basically, you get to take advantage of a poorly written law.

Property rights only go so far - once you start affecting others, including renting a portion of house for any length of time - you start picking up responsibilities. Free markets? Free markets work well in some areas, some not as well: Others need regulations to various degrees.

And hotels and housing are one of those that somewhat need regulation because we know some folks do bad or stupid stuff to the detriment of others, and what you do as a landlord renting in any capacity affects others.

And you are still renting it out in some fashion. Why should the laws to either hotels/motels/b&b's or laws applying to a landlord not apply? For the most part, such laws are designed to protect a renter and keep minimum standards for cleanliness and other such things. Some rental laws are there because of shortages and prices [1]. Hotels often pay extra taxes. In some areas, a bed and breakfast has looser and different standards, partially because it isn't unheard of to take a family home and turn it into a B&B, with the owners living in a portion.

And truth is that while I'd support someone renting out their place for a week or two once or twice a year without many issues (permit or fees, mostly), once you are regularly doing such, you are either a landlord or a hotel manager and should have such laws governing you. The pushback from those doing this I see as basically folks trying to get out of complying with the law.

[1] Understandably, two units hardly affects the housing market so long as it is an isolated incident, but if or when that trends to multiple folks, it can.

Its only allowed to be mutli-family because its grandfathered in. Believe me, the town and neighbors would rather it be single-family, because multi-family brings in a lower class of occupant.

And heres the other thing. It was originally a single family house that was converted to multi family. So things change, markets change, demand changes.

Codifying usage in zoning laws and making it immutable might be a luxury affordable for places like NYC, but its not affordable for places with tons of sellers and little buyers, places where foreclosure rates threaten the value of homes with current mortgages.

The occupants of my house go to restaurants, rent kayaks, go to the local attractions. This is a tourist town, and vacation rentals are expanding our reach.

People will stay at a vacation rental that wouldnt stay at a hotel. Because they get a kitchen and a room for the kids. They will stay for a week in the summer. Who wants to stay for a week in a hotel room with four kids?

Vacation rentals are keeping this town alive, and I don't think this is being represented in this debate.

There is near unlimited affordable housing available in this area.

Seriously, if AirBNB were a free market (and it is), what these listings are doing is allowing more people to come into the city and spend their own money on services throughout the city. This is a boon for all businesses in the city. It increases the availability of units and lowers the cost of other hotels throughout the city.

What people are afraid of is that they see all these units available on AirBNB and assume they are empty? They are not, they are being rented out pretty regularly. Which means they are being used and filled, with real live human beings.

If people didn't like empty units in the city, they should be complaining about the high-end units like One57 and 436park that are removing available units for the city and creating high-rise ghost towns.

I don't believe for one second this increases the cost of rental and/or condo units in the city. Since what is really happening is that the units are still full. AirBNB allowed us to see that there was a very real apartment shortage in the city.

I lived in NYC, and even I had to move out because of high rents. But those high rents weren't because of AirBNB. It was due to a lack of smaller units being put on the market.

As the units consolidated from 1bd to 3 or 4bd apartments, the sizes of the apartments grew, and all new buildings were for multi-million dollar residences. The middle class got squeezed.

Now we are blaming AirBNB for the problems. And that is simply not the case.

thanks to airbnb i was able to visit nyc for ~10 where i spent a ton of money between restaurants, coffeeshops, random shopping and broadway shows.

the wife and i were thinking about returning next year but without airbnb (and all the freedom we have thanks to it, like cooking our own meals) i don't think we will. i'm sure i'm not the only one thinking like that.

This debate is about a law in NYC. Not your little vacation village where things may be completely different. The Outer Banks aren't going to outlaw short term rentals.

These rules have been around for decades. My own buildings were set in 1989 in the original docs. The desire to not have short term rentals as neighbors is something extremely common. Most tenants don't have the ability to effect change the way an owner in a condo building does, so they cannot prevent the unit next door from being AirBnB'ed, so they turn to the government. Whether it should be the law as it is in NYC, probably not, but using the law is more like someone using a hammer to put in a screw, not your characterization of a "hammer looking for a nail."

You're pretending like your experience amongst suburban single family houses is at all applicable to multi-family housing in NYC when it isn't. You don't own a 10-unit building in Brooklyn Heights going all short-term rental, which is the more typical target of this law and what AirBnB is trying to defend.

Adhering to the few rules you listed above doesn't mean you follow ALL the same rules as hotels.

(Not implying that in your case you're not zoned correctly or following ALL rules, but certainly many airbnb properties are non-compliant).

Where "some" is "68 in 21 days".

I think you're in a honeymoon period where everything is working great because of thoughtful, well-intentioned early adopters on both sides (the providers and the guests).

I have done a lot of airbnb all over the world - and I love it - but I, as a user and the hosts are obviously very literate, technically adept, relatively wealthy people. It's not surprising that it all works out really nicely - and it does.

That can't last. People will find way to game both airbnb and the users of airbnb and it will be a race of con artists and malcontents all the way to whatever cesspool it is that form the back-story of every law we have on the books. Every law that governs a hotel or a taxi or a restaurant is on the books because some asshole got someone killed (or robbed them blind).

Enjoy it while it lasts!

You need boots on the street, investigating complaints. Who is going to pay for that enforcement?

But who's shoulders this extra enforcement cost? Not AirBNB, right?

The state should be fought over laws like this, not negotiated with.

New York State is not doing well, and its combination of nanny state, local government corruption and high taxes is not winning in the market place of governments.

If it wasn't for the inheritance of NYC being the capital of the world, NY state would be in seriously dire straits.

Governments have been regulating the activities in your home for centuries. And it's common place in every country.

There are numerous incidents of parties run amok, drug use, prostitution etc.

The priority should be alleviating the burden of sclerosing bureaucratic regulations, and if AirBnB can do that with a BS narrative about "the sharing economy", more power to them. The same goes with Uber and the taxi medallion system.

This isn't a fair debate where we should weigh the merit of each's side argument. This is a battle where one side will ultimately resort to violence to enforce its decision.

> "Move fast and break things" is a saying common in science and engineering industries. In that context, it means that making mistakes is a natural consequence of innovation in a highly competitive and complex environment. In particular, it was adopted by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook (who even went as far as to say that 'breaking things' is a necessary feature of moving 'fast enough').

Breaking the law is a mistake (and a serious one for any business caught). Move fast and break things is more about breaking your own things, not someone else's things :)

What's next ? Breaking your node shop competitors' legs :) ?

Move fast and break things != One can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

Wouldn't you want to break their arms? ;)

In a world of APIs, the line between these blurs when things break.

This is one of the biggest abuses of government power there can be, using to it to snuff competition or favor one particular business. It hides behind "regulation" and if that doesn't work there is always "think of the children"

Offtopic: Love utilitydive.com! Very helpful for keeping track of how renewables are making inroads in the utility sector.

And thanks so much about Utility Dive! Always happy to grab a coffee or a drink with a reader if you happen to find yourself in DC.

I would've thought it was the opposite.

This law is not different from those terrible laws. And the best way to get rid of terrible laws is for everyone to break them.

(I am a current NY resident who was formerly a California resident, and the thing that most actively annoyed me about California politics was the little bits of direct democracy that popped up on the ballot.)

The government can do all manner of proscriptions for your residence. For instance, no, you cannot run a brothel from your house. You cannot turn it into a bouncy house park. And you cannot have short-term rentals in an area that the community has decided to use for permanent housing.

It's called "zoning", and collectively we've agreed to the allowed uses of our property. You live in a community of others, and your property lines do not define "The Independent Republic of JJordan", so yeah, the government does have some authority over your use of your property. You might not like it, but you'll be going against the flow. Because, personally, I'd rather not have the house next to me used for short-term rentals "shared" with those that don't give two shits about the community they'll be leaving on Sunday afternoon.

You also don't get to just decide not to follow the rules after the fact. One moved to a community, and directly or indirectly agreed to abide by the community standards. If one decides that's just not really working for them anymore, well, move to a community that has standards more to your liking. There do exist places that will have no problem with you throwing all the loud parties you like, and renting to college students on spring break. Those places are not in SV, however, so good luck in your search for remote work.

That would be OK, but renting for short term should be illegal? If AirBnb residents are noisy and disrespect the laws, call the cops on them. If owners don't pay their due taxes, call IRS on them. It's no reason to make it illegal to rent for short term.

I have used AirBnb in many cities on 4 continents and was always respectful to the locals and even tried my best to follow the specific recycling rules and such.

What I enjoy the most is the organic feeling of being in a real apartment vs being in a hotel room. Hotel rooms all feel the same, wherever you go. What I want is to experience the same perspective as a local, well, at least to attempt to do that, and that is because I appreciate the different cultures.

Banning short term apartment rentals would send a bad message to people who just want to appreciate your culture.

And what happens when that leads to calling the cops every weekend, for a different group of people?

I'll tolerate my neighbour having a loud party on his 25th birthday, or him accidentally banging his suitcase down the stairs at 5.30 when he's catching an early flight. I'll do the same, equally infrequently.

It's simply not fair to have that behaviour every fucking weekend, which was what happened when an apartment in the building was put on AirBnB.

Fortunately, the listing was removed the day after I sent it to the landlord, and the noise has stopped. I highly doubt any tax was paid on the income, which is also wrong.

Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser wrote about this in his Op-Ed, Build Big Bill: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1....

Before you can build a newer, bigger building, you first need to buy a large enough contiguous area from potentially several owners who don't particularly want to move. That adds friction and years of extra work to any new building, which will discourage new construction, lower supply and raise prices regardless of the zoning.

Unless you're proposing that the government begin seizing tracts of land in Manhattan on behalf of high-rise developers?

[1] http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/zoning/zoni...

More directly, it's one of the reasons NYC real estate is so valuable in the first place. The way the city has managed density (and parks, open space, and its waterfront) has in general worked out pretty well, over the years. Which has helped the city thrive in ways that its direct competitors (such as Boston and Baltimore) have not.

If AirBnb wants to make housing more affordable in NYC, they should lobby to remove these zoning laws that benefit wealthy landlords such as Donald Trump.

It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out. We're not talking about someone running a business out of their home, where the zoning laws actually apply.

> I'd rather not have the house next to me used for short-term rentals "shared" with those that don't give two shits about the community they'll be leaving on Sunday afternoon.

How about the ones who let that druggie sister down on her luck move in, she's ok because it's for over 30 days?

This is just whiny bullcrap from someone who wants to be able to control their neighbors.

> You also don't get to just decide not to follow the rules after the fact. One moved to a community, and directly or indirectly agreed to abide by the community standards.

We're not discussing a housing authority here. If you and your neighbors get together and decide the community cannot abide someone allowing another person to use their house for less than ... what 6 months? a year ... you write that into the bylaws, set out the financial penalty, and then you enforce it.

And that's your right.

But when these kinds of things become illegal across an entire state, there's a problem. This law should have never been on the books in its current form to begin with.

Short term rentals are a business, by definition.

We, as citizens, have ascribed them that right. And it is what protects me from having my neighbours run a brothel or smelting plant in their house.

Your definition is wrong.

I honestly do not understand the willful ignorance in this thread. Short term rentals is commerce. Everyone knows it's commerce. When you say you think it isn't (or you don't understand how it could be) you sound like you're denying the earth goes around the sun. This isn't even a particularly nuanced area of permitted use laws (zoning) or the appropriate role of government. You are all basically advocating for elimination of all zoning and/or pretending it doesn't exist as a totally normal type of regulation in the US (and all over the world).

This is where the original poster went off the rails. Just because there's an exchange of money does not mean these laws do, or should, apply.

I think it's silly, but there it is.

That's not what relevant the laws say ("You can't rent your property, period!"). Just that you can't use a residential property as a de-facto hotel.

If you and your neighbors get together and decide the community cannot abide someone allowing another person to use their house for less than ... what 6 months?

30 days. The point is that short-term rentals have a very different character (in terms of impact on neighbors, and impact on property values) than long-term rentals.

This is just whiny bullcrap from someone who wants to be able to control their neighbors.

No, it's just life the big city. Though I agree that whether these issues should be of interest of the state (as opposed to municipalities) is very much open to question. Then again, the Empire State is known to be messed up (and to have lopsided control over) a great many things, in this regard.

Your right to do as you please with your property ends where my property, and interference with my enjoyment of it, begins.

Or do you also think that if you buy some property straddling a river, you can dump waste into it and say "my property, nobody can tell me what to do with it" while making everyone downriver pay for the cleanup of what you did? Because that's the ultimate moral grounding of laws restricting property -- you don't own an isolated island in the middle of nowhere, you own property that's adjacent to and can affect other pieces of property owned by other people who also have rights.

You can't actually own the land around a river, but I get the point you're trying to make regardless.

The point is, if they're causing a ruckus, report them and have it shut down. If they're not, leave it alone. And having multiple different vehicles in the driveway isn't causing a ruckus.

This is basically FUD. What if they do something the neighbors don't like!?! Then deal with it at that time, stop being thought police.

I mean, a majority of our forebears thought it should. The original law was passed by a representative democracy. And so was this one. You're one of the (totally guessing) 48% of people that disagree. That's democracy. You have to live with getting out-voted.

Either way, governments are part of the future. There no real reason to expect this iteration to work any differently than all the others since humans gathered in structured societies.

I doubt the poster above is against rules, but like me wants to decentralize that authority and enforcement. My answer: you want to have a market for law and enforcement. Read "the machinery of freedom" by David Friedman if interested.

It is possible (I believe it's even likely) that humanity will never see such freedom again.

Why do you believe that guests wont give "two shits" about the community. This sounds incredibly xenophobic to me.

Anyways, I was being sarcastic by using the tools of a leftie. (declaring the parent to be a xenophobe)

Or did it do more harm to what is otherwise a legitimate viewpoint and possibly deserving of discussion?

I'm btw sure that many Socialists would actually agree that the statement undoubtably displayed hatred and xenophobia. He did argue against allowing people from the outside to come and live in his community because he by default perceives foreigners as not giving "two shits" about the community. This is obviously not true, you can't just declare that all foreigners want to harm your community.

You may be absolutely correct. The HN Hivemind is frequently wrong.

But please use this as an opportunity for introspection, wherein you centralize the idea that the community of peers with whom you choose to associate, think you are an ass.

edit: Cleary comedy isn't my fortè.

If you own a property and operate it as a hotel while not actually living in it you're violating the zoning laws that every business/hotel operation have to adhere to.

AirBnB's use of the word "sharing" is laughably liberal. By their standard if I'm running a convenience store I'm "sharing" my property with every customer who wanders in.

Fire marshals have limited the amount of people you can have in a particular building for more than a hundred years.

I don't know the rationale in this case, but there are very good rationales for government to have more control of your house than you do in some instances. Mandatory fire suppression systems can end up saving not just your apt unit, but your whole neighborhood.

If you don't want to live by those community rules then it would best to live outside of a community.

It's called "zoning" and it's been around for quite a while. You know, those pesky laws that says someone can't just build, say, a giant slag heap directly behind (and towering above) your house with nothing but rusty wire holding it together.

Which laws (a.k.a. zoning laws) you unequivocally agree to abide by when buying a piece of property, in just about any jurisdiction on the planet.

It's probably good that they do. I may not agree with this particular exercise of authority, but I'd like to be able to do something about it if my neighbor decides to build bombs in his spare room.

Also, I don't see how your point about neighbors is relevant to it. Is it a serious risk where you live? A common occurence, would you say? And how exactly, in constitutional sense, would you be able to do anything about it?

Edit: I just realized I probably misunderstood you. The point about neighbors is meant to be relevant to the notion of the government having a degree of control over your property in general, not the specific question of who's allowed to stay there. Most of my response is no longer relevant with that clarification, so I've removed it.

-- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XIII

There was some house of horrors where a 5 family was converted into an AirBnb ersatz hotel with 30 beds.

Where does that argument end? At what point can we just call it what it is: advocacy for disbanding government entirely?

Consumption taxes are a much fairer way of funding the government, IMO. Rich people consume more and pay more in taxes. Those with less consume less and pay less.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_tax

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism

The 1st refers to the government, not to housing communities to which you willingly moved. Don't like HOAs? Don't live in an HOA community. The government has no hand in this.

> Don't like HOAs? Don't live in an HOA community.

That's becoming harder and harder. Currently 68 million Americans live in some sort of community association [1] and that's constantly rising.

These are essentially hyper-local governments. I can "willingly move" between cities and states and yet city and state governments also can not infringe upon constitutional rights (though they certainly sometimes try).

It doesn't seem like a big stretch to hold HOAs to the same standard when you're talking about putting restrictions on something as fundamental as someone's residence. That isn't to say they aren't allowed to make any rules governing the community.

1. https://www.caionline.org/AboutCommunityAssociations/Pages/S...

Ex: https://www.calhomelaw.org/doc.asp?id=460

You can also say something similar about corporations.

The answer is that the GOVERNMENT enforces its will.

Like the fact that the HOA can lien your house for as little as $100 in dues.

And can then sell your house out from under you.

If you're _really_ unlucky, they'll sell it to a landlord who sits on the board of the HOA, and the board of the HOA will accept the sale for less than half of the market price, with the landlord buying the house being one of the deciding votes...

The way the bill of rights is applied to municipal governments isn't clear, but in my opinion this is an overreach.

This seems like it maintains the sharing spirit of something like AirBnB (rent your place out occasionally when you're away) while preventing the problems that come from people essentially running unregulated hotels..

Relaxing the law in the manner you suggest would make it even more difficult to enforce than the law as it stood prior to this addition.

Just like governments demand companies hand over financial information they could demand that AirBnb hands over the list of users and the total stay length.

It can easily handle at most a dozen sharing sites. And it's trivial to prevent landlords from registering multiple accounts i.e. make sure no two landlords advertise the same address.

In a nutshell: 60 days max, fire safety equipment is mandatory, and the building home owner's association (body corporate) need to agree to it.

The city produced a one-pager to spell it out:

https://www.amsterdam.nl/publish/pages/707219/infographic_ho...

We the "people" who are not the "powerful" are getting pushed further away from the center each year chasing afforadable housing. Pretty soon we'll end up in Jersey or Long Island.

https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20151127/hells-kitchen-clin...

Edit: Nice throwaway. Tell us about your Airbnb unit!

The main problem with this sort of thing is that while it is easy to say that, it isn't actually always an option for folks. This is part of the reason why folks don't always just "move to where jobs are available."

Moving costs money and takes quite an effort. Minimally, for cost you have first month's rent and a deposit, usually equal. Sometimes last month's rent. There are fees for utilities, and sometimes deposits for them if you change companies. Collect boxes: Secure moving vehicles if you don't have something to move large stuff.

Heck, you might not even be able to move for months if the landlord starting allowing it after you signed your lease. Your lease might be against it, but the neighbor's doesn't.

This is truly only a win/win if you have the finances and time to be able to move.

  1.  Couch surfing with friends/family.
  2.  Youth hostels / YMCA.
  3.  Renting a terrible apartment cheap, sight-unseen,
      breaking the lease early when better options became
      available.
  4.  The Daughters of Divine Charity, et al, run boarding
      houses.
  5.  Rent a place in the outer boroughs, Jersey, Yonkers,
      etc, take the train in until you find something
      closer.
  6.  Walk around until you see "room for rent" signs.
  7.  Check papers, Craiglist for roommates (*actual* room
      sharing -- a number of people I know started off
      renting a *bed*, not even a bed*room*.)

Convenient is not the right description -- high demand is. Who's to say an AirBnB is a worse use of space for, say, a unit in SoHo than a year-round resident?

AirBnB has real issues -- zoning, hotel tax, safety, etc -- but politicians like to use rent cost/resident displacement because it's an easy rallying call.

Was it worth it?

Subletting half a bedroom from a total stranger can be inconvenient and occasionally weird but if you're fresh out of college it's not really that different from the dorm room experience for most people. And it usually costs less than half what an apartment does a month, and is usually month to month or so.

I fixed that for you. The thing is, in most cases what is being done with these units was already illegal.

Picking out the one or two unattractive neighborhoods to live in doesn't really do anyone any good.

I'm just saying I don't really feel bad about a unit in Lower Manhattan somewhere being off the market because it's rented to tourists.

Honestly, it wasn't so hard.

Either way, there are many options for moving to the city. This doesn't really make moving to the city significantly more difficult than it has always been.

Given the prevalence of the broker industry I'm not sure that's the case.

Either way -- the city only cares because they're missing out on hotel taxes. I don't think the city actually cares too much about who can afford an apartment in the desirable neighborhoods that have a high volume of AirBnBs.

I paid a broker that I found on Craigslist. No one said renting an apartment in NYC doesn't suck.

> I don't think the city actually cares too much about who can afford an apartment in the desirable neighborhoods that have a high volume of AirBnBs.

As a resident that lives in one of those desirable Brooklyn neighborhoods that has turned into Times Square for European tourists, I actually do think the city is looking out for me.

Now that's an honest argument: "I just don't like tourists". The whole raising-prices-displacing-real-new-yorkers thing is just disingenuous.

I personally disagree with time spent being a metric for who gets to live here and who doesn't but people don't take kindly to that sentiment in the US.

- Rent Control simply doesn't exist if you or a relative you co-habitated for years with under special conditions lived there before then.

- Rent Stabilization for a unit ends the moment the stabilized rent hits within striking distance of market rate or the number of stabilized units in-building drops below a threshold. More units deregulate every year than are added and this is true year over year as well (sole exceptions to the latter being in 2014 & 2015).

This is so duplicitous. AirBnB is a for profit company. They have zero skin in the game in terms of exposure to and responsibility for lowered quality of life, apartment hoarding, rental increase, etc.

disclosure: a "New Yorker" since 1989.

[& p.s. the hotel industry, afaik, has a pretty small footprint in terms of side effects on the average resident. Further, it provides a natural cap on the tourist flux in the city, which is a certain plus in my opinion.]

Do you have anything substantial to add to this conversation, green account?

That doesn't change because someone lands on a specific side of the argument and feels they have to make an argument about whether or not the hotel industry is actually powerful. None of that is required in order to understand what the article was saying. And indeed, it actively takes away from it by doing shit like spawning this particular tangent.

Even if it was, does it make Airbnb wrong? Should people not be able to freely make living arrangements with whom they choose for arbitrary amounts of time?

Around the time when AG Schneiderman first subpoenaed Airbnb's records, Airbnb had a very aggressive advertising campaign in the NYC subway stations. Certain high-traffic stations were plastered with ads proclaiming how "New Yorkers Love Airbnb" and showing "regular New Yorkers" who were using Airbnb.

On my commute each morning, it was interesting to see how those ads would get defaced with graffiti... not just once, but every single day, with new messages in different handwriting. The messages weren't saying anything you wouldn't expect - mostly they were complaints from angry neighbors of people who rented out on Airbnb full-time, or people who had to move because their landlords had decided to turn their apartments into full-time Airbnb rentals[0]. But it was quite amazing to see how persistent the rancor towards Airbnb was. I took some pictures of them, though I wish I'd gotten a true time-lapse of those over the span of the weeks (months?) that the ads were up.

For contrast, advertising campaigns in NYC subways commonly get defaced, but usually over a much longer period of time. And it's rare for it to be in retaliation towards the advertising company - usually it's people drawing beards on women or making off-brand remarks.

[0] Yes, no matter how much Airbnb tries to deny it, this does happen.

Could you post them somewhere? I'd be interested to see those graffitis.

This is the same case for companies like Uber and Lyft. You're paying someone to drive you from Point A to Point B. You aren't sharing a ride, it's just a taxi.

Uber and Lyft are not sharing economy, they're taxis. AirBnB is not sharing economy, it's Booking.com meets Craigslist.

Can a proprietor rent out his property to someone else, and possibly so against the will of the state?

I do think yes, if the state has a say then it's not really the proprietor's property.

The standard conception of property in American legal thought is the 'bundle of rights' metaphor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_of_rights

The first is that there are a ton of rules about owning property, and (for the most part) nobody thinks that any of those other rules mean that it's not really the owner's property. There are zoning laws, for instance: if I own a house, I can't run a business there. If I own an office building, I can't live there. If I own a three-story building, I probably can't knock it down and replace it with a forty-story building. There's the rule of law: if I run a suspected meth lab in my basement, or harbor a suspected criminal in a spare bedroom, the state gets to barge in. There's taxes: if I don't give the state money merely for the privilege of owning property, it gets to take the property back. There are rent control/stabilization laws: depending on what my property is, I can't charge more than a certain amount to rent it out, even if the tenant is willing to pay. There are certainly political theories under which all of those mean that I don't really own the property, but those aren't the theories we live under. Airbnb shouldn't get an excuse just because we want to start theorizing at that particular point.

The second is that, for most rental property in New York, the state is already involved. There are tax exemption programs, subsidies, city services and infrastructure, and all sorts of things without which the building would not have existed in the first place. The state is more than free to set conditions on buildings where it helped with the construction, even if that condition is "We get to set rules arbitrarily forevermore" - if an owner doesn't want to agree, they're welcome to try building without the state's help.

Think you do? Do you have an alodial title for your property?

No? You are a serf who rents the privilege of a roof over your head from the state. The illusion is nice but it's not real.

Did you say yes to that particular leading question?

Then why say no to renting it out to that same father for 10 days?

Exactly. The properties are being used for exactly what they were meant to be used for, living space.

Your statement amounts to

"can I run around in my backyard firing my weapons off in random directions? Well then why would you expect them to allow me to live there quietly?"

The father probably wants his children to be able to sleep without interruption at the weekend, but is more likely to clatter up the stairs drunk at 3am during his 10-day business trip.

1. "If the state has a say in renting a property then it's not really the proprietor's property".

2. "If the state has a say in renting a property in a way which has no effect on neighbours then it's not really the proprietor's property"

The person you replied to was arguing against proposition 1. You seem to be arguing in favour of proposition 2. Perhaps you are both correct?

Isn't that exactly how the word has always been used? For example, in timeshare which, while not a flattering comparison, definitely predates Airbnb.

EDIT: Oh, I see a similar comment has been stomped into the ground for some reason already.

I live in NY, and I'd say a majority of New Yorkers feel the exact opposite. Nice truthyness, there.

We use the word "share" in commerce all the time. Time share, shares in a company, profit sharing, etc.