Airbnb Sues NYC Over Limits On Short-Term Rentals - Slashdot

Airbnb Sues NYC Over Limits On Short-Term Rentals

• by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01, 2023 @06:48PM (#63568789)

  The city certainly has an interest in preserving housing for actual residents and controlling where and how hotels are operated.

  • Fee Simple

    That's not true, and never has been. You don't own property, you buy a fiefdom (fee simple), and are thus subject to regulation by the controlling entity, the city or county in which the property is located.

    Libertarians seem to be really into the idea of "every man a king, every woman and child a serf," but they also have a lot of problems with the one genuinely medieval aspect of our laws.

• You should be able to lease it out to whomever you want
  
  It isn't so cut and dry. Airbnb and similar business models leads directly to purchasing of available real estate by investors, who a lot of the time aren't even domestic, artificially inflating the cost of housing out of the reach of the common peoples.

  • Re:

    So, why not simply outlaw corporate control of residential property or tax the shit out of it instead? Must we coerce the two-house home owners too? Must we continue to empower the fucking awful governments to come smash the little guys?

    • Re:

      We can do those things too and the ever historically oppressed two home owners can do what they did before 2010 and just rent it out as a home to someone.

      • Re:

        The neighbors have a (usually legal) right to "peaceful enjoyment" of their property. However, property owners should have the widest latitude possible to use their property as they see fit as long as it's not hurting folks or externalizing costs onto them. Limiting the terms or people they rent to is pretty coercive. Noise problems? Call the cops. Lodge noise complaints. Sue. Code violations? Let the city fine the owner per-incident. There are plenty of laws already on the books for dealing with this shit.

  • Re:

    Last I checked, AirBnB has about 10000 units dedicated to renters [statista.com]. Please note, I'm not counting "Private Room" as that means the host is also living in the same unit. Consider that there are over 8.5 million housing units in NYC [census.gov]. So AirBnB has taken over a tenth of a percent, 0.1%, of housing units. So, are you going to stick to your "artificially inflating the cost of housing"?
    • 1 hidden comment

    • • Re:

        Here are the numbers for NYC [stlouisfed.org]. Nearly 4.5%. 0.1% is not the culprit. The 0.1% is being ostracized for illogical reasons, one of which is taking rental space away from residents.
        
        The sad fact of the case is that people's incomes have not kept up with apartment rentals in some of the large cities, like NYC. Rents are going up because of owners gouging renters and a little because taxes are going up constantly. Case in point. My daughter rents one flat of a house, shared by 2 others, just outside Chicag

  • Re:

    Airbnb and similar business models leads directly to purchasing of available real estate by investors, who a lot of the time aren't even domestic, artificially inflating the cost of housing out of the reach of the common peoples.

    They are aided by the anti-housing people (NIMBYs) who weaponize zoning laws to prevent the market from solving the housing crisis. It's all the same rent-seeking behavior, [nationalpost.com] for which land speculators are thankful. [youtube.com]

    • Re:

      I'm surprised you're still sitting at +2. A lot of people would rather bury their heads in the sand and blame the cost of housing on tiny influences like AirBnB.

• So you want to run a motel but without all the pesky regulations and public safety codes? Tell me more.

  • Re:

    Another flawed criticism of the AirBnB model.
    
    Is renting your property for longer than 30 days any different than renting it for less than 30 days? Does the "public safety codes" all of a sudden go away because of the 30 day cut off? No. The safety standards are there and are typed to the building/residence, all of which the property owner would have to abide by whether s/he lives in there herself/himself, or is having someone else stay there. Or are you alluding that because hotels must have sprinkle

    • Re:

      Landlords are also subject to local laws and health codes.

  • Re:

    yes, yes, yes, yes and a thousand times yes. I stopped with air bnb on multiple occasions and it was always what I needed and expected. I know people who rent via air bnb, actually I own a place and rent out over air bnb and I prefer to do it that way to escape fucking rent control regulations, I will never rent out long term and will keep renting out short term, maybe a few days or weeks at a time, doesn't matter if via air bnb or otherwise, I now have a stable client base and keep coming back. It is my

    • Re:

      You might want to take a basic English course.

  • Re:

    I'd be in favor of imposing regulation and public safety codes on AirBNB, but they would have to be actual substantive rules and they would have to apply objectively & uniformly.

    So, for example, a rule like "you can't rent for less than 30 days" isn't a substantive public safety rule -- it doesn't make a building more safe to offer a 6 month lease and the length of the lease is orthogonal to the safety of the building. By contrast, you can have a rule like "rentals require a compliant smoke & CO det

• It is a house for housing, either live in it or sell it to someone else to live in. If you want to treat your house like an apartment or business then you get to be treated like a for-profit landlord with all the regulations that entails. Easy and simple.
  
  If you are renting out you obviously don't give a fuck about your neighbors.

  • Re:

    Obviously owners would have to declare their income from the property on their taxes. Why do you care if it's an individual or a corporation behind it? And what regulation (non-financial) is there that a property owner would have to follow if renting the property as opposed to living in it? Is the regulation for safety? Because, if it is for safety, then it should apply to the owner as well as renters.

    • Re:

      What's good for the goose....

      Then remove all the rules and regulations governing hotels, clubs and business in general. The tax for a business should be the same as the tax for residential. Why even zone commercial, residential, industrial?.... What do you care if it's individual or a corporation?

      • Re:

        That's a very valid point. Let's not bother with rules and regulations for clubs and businesses in general (say, restaurants), because people congregate in a much tighter setting and have a higher density. Sticking to hotels, though, I believe the reason why the rules and regulations for them exist is because the city believes the rules and regulations to be valid, and knows that they can force a corporation to follow them, because the corporation is after profit, but not individual buildings that aren't

    • Re:

      Yes. You're generally able to live in some level of squalor on your property if you like, but landlords are required to ensure property meets some standard of habitability. They are typically responsible for pest control, etc. In my part of New England they are also required to ensure the heating system is functional. If heating is included in rent, not only must it be functional, it must maintain specified minimum temperatures from later fall through spring.

      • Re:

        Awww come on!! Are you actually arguing that AirBnB rentals can rent places with pest control problems and dysfunctional heating systems despite the bad reviews people will leave them? If anything, AirBnB rentals will be top-notch. At least that's been most of my experience using AirBnB (and B&Bs before that) throughout the world for over 30 years. In that business, a few bad review will kill you. There's nothing like that for actual landlords and rentals, unless they're a corporation renting a com
• For lots of reasons. Zoning exists for a reason. Having people coming and going and partying all hours of the night isn't fair to people who just live there. Cities also have a right and obligation to make sure there's enough housing for their citizens and that housing is affordable.
  
  The city absolutely has business getting in the middle of that. And if you want to talk safety, go look up how many times a party ends in a shooting.

  • Re:

    Zoning exists for a reason.

    What's funny is there are people on here who just the other day were saying cities need to rezone so there is more housing available, and here we are with people saying it's no big deal if someone "rents" out their own house.

    It would be nice if people could stop talking out of both sides of their mouthh.

  • Re:

    Of course it is not, but I believe you're making a mountain out of a mole hill. Clearly there have been instances you hear about of rowdy parties, but then again, you would normally only hear about "problems", and not about all the other instances that everything went smoothly. I have stayed at many, many AirBnB and private rentals throughout the world and have never "partied" in any of them. And I bet over 99% of people staying in AirBnB are just like me: they want a private, personal space that's reaso

  • Re:

    Zoning exists for a reason... Cities also have a right and obligation to make sure there's enough housing for their citizens and that housing is affordable.

    Which land use restrictions (zoning) prevents. [forbes.com]

    • If large corporations smelled money

      Those zoning laws would be changed tomorrow. And it wouldn't matter one wit what the nimbys think or want. There would be a bunch of television ads telling them how to vote without any indication of what they were voting for and they would fall for it hook line and sinker like they did when they voted to let power companies charge people to have solar power.
      
      Seriously I remember a commercial. It was a bunch of old people sitting around a table talking about something scary. At del point in time did they

      • Re:

        If you want to get affordable housing you have to force companies to build it. We used to do that through a complicated series of subsidies and loan programs. That's how the baby boomers were able to afford to buy houses.

        Are you talking about the mortgage interest deduction? Why does it no longer make houses affordable?

• Re:

  Unfortunately, flophouse landlords ruined it for everyone back in the 1930s.

• Re:

  Zoning laws exist for a reason.

  • Zone defense

    Preventing a chemical plant next to a kindergarten? Sure.

    Mandating that certain people sleep here and other people sleep over there? C'mon. The NYC hotel industry has long lobbied for restrictions on AirBNB listings because it drives more customers their way. The hotels have paid the price to jump through the city's regulations, and now they're defending against new market entrants. See: "regulatory capture".

• Re:

  Not exactly. This is why the city has zoning laws for different type of businesses, including hotel/motel/B&B business. If you bought a residential apartment, you would probably not appreciate if all your neighbors did what you suggest, for example start renting it for cash by by the hour, for people to come do whatever they want for the hour they leased it, attracting a whole lot of foot traffic and the types of customers you might not want to see in your building.

• Re:

  The city has many reasonable interests in regulating short-term rentals. Safety is just one interest. Others include traffic and parking, noise levels, occupancy levels, development of neighborhood communities, tax collection, as well as other considerations related to zoning. The government restrictions should ideally be set at the minimal level to achieve government interests. However, the local government can and should take the interests of neighbors, the neighborhood, and the city into consideratio

• Re:

  Depending on what scum of the earth you might lease to for the weekend, it can be a safety issue. Also a nuisance issue if you lease to loud partiers who don't care who they piss off because they don't have to live with any of them as neighbors when the party is over.

  This is compounded by people who buy extra houses to lease out full time a few days at a time.

• Re:

  The effects on the neighborhood is why we have restrictions on, say, running a hog farm on the lot next to your home. As long as I run that hog farm in compliance with building codes and whatnot, you should have no problem with it, right?

• Re:

  The problem with Airbnb in NYC is not that the city won't let people rent their homes. It's that they want people who rent their homes, to pay hotel taxes. Many businesses have exploited this loophole to set up hotels that are hotels in every way, except that they offer reservations through Airbnb. All the while, they dodge the hotel taxes they should be paying, just like every other hotel does.