New York’s Airbnb Ban Is Descending Into Pure Chaos

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 146 points –
New York’s Airbnb Ban Is Descending Into Pure Chaos
wired.com

New York’s Airbnb Ban Is Descending Into Pure Chaos::People are listing short-term rentals on social media and lesser-known platforms, bolstering a rental black market in New York City.

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Make sure you keep in mind that Conde Nast (the parent company of Wired) has subsidiary companies running articles like "35 Best Airbnbs Near New York City, From Cozy Cabins in the Catskills to Beachy Houses in the Hamptons"[1]. They likely have indirect or direct financial ties to AirBnB.

So this article that is seemingly trying to present an argument that this regulation isn't working because a black market has emerged, while giving more space in the article to small landlords and AirBnB's CEO and their defence than to critics of AirBnB, as well as mentioning hotel prices rising but not how AirBnB has caused rental prices to rise... should give you pause about the bias this article is trying to hide.

[1] https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/best-airbnbs-near-new-york-city

Conde Nast ruined Wired.

They also own reddit.

And Ars Techina...

They own a shit ton of media and I've never seen a positive improvement after they took something over.

None of these companies want to improve anything other than quarterly profits and will take whatever shitty action to get there

Yeah, the big tipoff that Conde owns a website is they post a lot of "great deals for ____!" posts.

Because they all use affiliate links.

And a lot less actual reviews of products because those have to be written. So you end up with a giant page full of links to a 100 products with maybe a sentence for each link.

News companies switched to affiliate links from ads. Even The New York Times made the switch. Google, Facebook, and Craigslist are their lunch.

I figured as much. Without an open and easy to advertise platform to rent out spaces, people are going back to how it used to be...

It's an alarmist article. Much ado about nothing.

The headline is alarmist nonsense that is absolutely not supported by the facts presented. There are no numbers given for how many rentals are being listed on alternate sources. The numbers for listings marked as exempt on AirBNB certainly suggest that the ban is working exactly as intended. Yes, hotel prices will go up, obviously. That's not something that anyone is surprised to hear. The rest is just anecdote presented as data. There's no "chaos" here, just life being life.

Purged by creator

Heck. Let people submit tips with proof, and split the fines with the reporters.

Then the short-term renters own customers will report the rental when they're done. And then get money. Crowdsource the snitching

Not the US, but my city actually started a snitch e-mail address.

Stuff like airbnb now need a permission, and if you suspect an address has an unlicenced one, you can ask them and they will actually tell you if it's an allowed listing.

Reported two of them, one was allowed, another one "will be checked". Not sure what happened to the latter

Not sure what happened to the latter

Believe it or not, jail.

Hell, just book the suites and dont pay. If they have an issue, they can get into contact with new yorks regulatory body.

What did they expect?

All the people who are renting out some spare appartment should suddenly stop it and move in themselves again? ;-)

A spare apartment, you say? Do people just have those lying around?

Yes, they move to a bigger one and rent out their old one for profit.

And, of course, it would be morally unacceptable to get in the way of them maximising the profits they’re entitled to, such as by forcing them to rent it out long-term to some poors rather than allowing them to run an unregulated hotel room, because invisible hand of the free market or something.

Or they move in with their period-of-life partners, and then maybe eventually back.

Fine, but don't profit and offer a decent rent length.

offer a decent rent length.

They don't take that risk.

In my city, most of the singles actually keep their own appartments when moving in with a new loved one. It isn't because of the money, it is their safety net so they can move back eventually. Very few of these appartments are actually rented out. Most are just empty.

And of course they would not want to wait for a year or so.

This number would so low I'm guessing it wouldn't really move the needle. It's like having 1 house mate instead of 2 in a 3room appt.

That they would return it to the pool of long term rentals and help drive rent rates down. That or drove them to sell to someone that wants to live there.

Probably.
A similar approach is under discussion even where I live and everyone seems to think that forbidding the "short rent" (as it is called here) will magically put all these apartament on the market for "long rent", lowering the prices.

Until it is not understood that (well, at least here) AirBnB is not the cause but the result the problem will never be solved.