Thanks to new regulations on short-term rentals, thousands of New York City Airbnb
In NYC, it is illegal to list an entire dwelling for short-term rental unless the host will be present, and it's also illegal to list more than one short-term rental. Currently, those rules are often ignored, but the registration process is expected to change that. The executive director of NYC's Office of Special Enforcement, Christian Klossner, said he expects roughly 10,000 Airbnb listings to disappear as a result of registration.
While Airbnbs have been cropping up across the city, the cost of housing for everyday New Yorkers has been on the rise. According to a report from Curbed, there are now more Airbnb listings in the city than there are rental apartments.
"Every illegal short-term rental in our city represents a unit of housing that is not available for real New Yorkers to live in," said New York State Senator Liz Krueger in July. "In the middle of an ongoing affordable housing crisis, every single unit matters."
Airbnb has nearly 40,000 listings in NYC, making the city one of its largest markets, and the short-term rental company has been fighting back hard against the registration rules. The company claims that the changes will hurt average New Yorkers.
"Airbnb agrees regular New Yorkers should be able to share their home and not be targeted by the City," Airbnb's public policy regional lead, Nathan Rotman, said in a statement to reporters. "We urge the administration to work with our Host community to support a regulatory framework that helps responsible Hosts and targets illegal hotel operators."
On December 27, the company also emailed some of its users an Airbnb-hosted form where they could file complaints about the new rules with New York City officials.
"We're reaching out because the City is set to enact a law that would drastically affect the ability of New York Hosts to continue sharing their homes," Airbnb wrote in the email. "As a result, short-term rental accommodations for travelers like you will be dramatically reduced to hotels and a shared room with no locks. This will restrict travel options outside popular tourism areas and hurt small businesses throughout the city."
NYC has had a rocky relationship with Airbnb, to say the least. Notably, earlier this year, the city sued to shut down a ring of illegal short-term rentals being run by real estate broker Arron Latimer.
"For years, Arron Latimer and the other defendants used fake host profiles on popular sites like Airbnb to deceive and lure unsuspecting guests into paying for substandard lodging at illegal rental listings," New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in July. "Not only did they unlawfully pocket millions, but they endangered guests and deprived New Yorkers of an entire building's worth of long-term housing."
The Latimer case was a major factor in the creation of the registration system, but some Airbnb hosts think the rules are too broad. Single-unit Airbnb hosts interviewed by Fox 5 News said they shouldn't be treated in the same way as hosts with multiple listings. While the hosts acknowledged that multi-unit renters are often a problem, they say the stricter rules will force small-time hosts off the market.
