Not surprised that NYC is overcorrecting once again. I work in the industry and out of 2500 apartments we estimate around 20 are tenants involved in short term rentals. The last two we caught were even people that rent multiple rent-stabilized apartments and run their own business on Airbnb. This not only puts a pressure on unit supply in general but also specifically removes affordable housing opportunities for those in need.
At least with the buildings I’m involved in, the bigger issue is the state removing any ability to raise rents on vacant rent-stabilized units. We have at least 60 units sitting vacant indefinitely because it would take over 5 years to recover the cost of fixing up the unit and getting it rented. This rule was meant to stop shitty landlords drom taking advantage of tenants but if their focus was on tenant protection laws instead of completely removing all incentives to invest capital in old units they wouldn’t have swapped one issue for another.
I’m sure there are legitimate uses for Airbnb that have now been completely eliminated and we’ll see unintended consequences down the line.
I think a lot of people have kinda forgotten what NYC was like before companies like airbnb and uber showed up.
Before Uber, there were underground networks of ride sharers that had to evade the police by using “secret” signals and code words. It was absolutely wild, required a ton of trust and only really existed because of the stranglehold the cab companies had over the city.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a similar system in place for rentals before airbnb showed up.
“removing any ability to raise rents on vacant rent-stabilized units”
Am I misreading or doesn’t this actually sound great? Whoever wants to raise the rents can fucking starve for all I care. if it’s too expensive to fix and rent out then you should lose the place. what’s not happening?
At least with the buildings I’m involved in, the bigger issue is the state removing any ability to raise rents on vacant rent-stabilized units
NYC housing law allows close to unlimited rent increases when apartments are vacant, especially if there are (however dubious) “improvements” made.
If your “issue” is “inability to endlessly profit off an investment in something that should never have been treated as a financial instrument in the first place”, then get fucked. Otherwise, please explain.
“Publicly funded” doesn’t mean “publicly owned.” Plenty of states give grants and tax incentives to film productions to entice them to work there. That’s tax dollars going into a copyrighted work.
And being of a public figure has absolutely no bearing on copyright. If it did, paparazzi wouldn’t exist, because they wouldn’t be able to effectively sell their photos.
For photos the copyright belongs to the photographer. If this was a federal employee (it wasn’t) , then there’s no copyright. If it’s a state employee then it’s possible it could be copyright or you could argue that the ban on copyright for government works is incorporated to states as well. There’s also the technicality that if it’s a contractor then there’s copyright no matter what.
The free market isn't going to solve this problem. It isn't profitable to solve climate change.
This is where Governments are meant to step in, to serve the best interests of the people... instead they're too busy bickering over bullshit, and giving themselves and their cronies handouts.
If you’re impressed by your number, you just don’t understand how big China is…
And tarrifs on cheap foreign profits is really the only way to stimulate internal production. Not sure where you were a few years ago, but COVID should have taught you why domestic production is important
Because the people working those sweatshops have such great lives too.
Their lives are demonstrably better than before those opportunities arrived, and the increased wealth enables governments to grow inclusive institutions that ban sweatshops and still benefit from the relative value of the US dollar to local currency
People with my views do run the economy. This is economic orthodoxy.
No I didn’t bring up slavery at all, and equating paid jobs that do not exist until a company invests in a developing nation with slavery is disgustingly offensive.
Developing nations are developing because of outside investment, and equating that to the rape of their lands and people that was chattel slavery is a monstrous thing to do.
Sweatshops, while terrible working conditions, are paid labor and people seek out those jobs because the money is so much better than what they were doing before.
I am not pro sweatshop. International trade is so good for developing nations that even sweatshops are better than what they had. I’m all for treaties that straight up require investment capital to regulate that any foreign suppliers meet a certain level of safety and health regulations.
The reason that foreign investment in labor is profitable is not because of sweatshops but because of comparative advantage. An easy example is Mexico where the US dollar is currently worth 18 pesos, meaning you can pay a Mexican laborer 1/5th of what you pay an American and still are actually paying them more relative to their cost of living than an American.
This is true worldwide and is the essence of global trade, and it is impossible to call this a bad thing without just straight up saying you don’t give a shit about the livelihood of the Global South.
Comparative advantage is the reason that standards of living are rising worldwide. This investment spurs local capital growth, grows institutions to be inclusive instead of extractive, and in the long term encourages democratic reforms.
The US should, and does when our President isn’t a drooling imbecile, see global trade as a form of soft power and spreading of democracy.
So after reading the article, there is no information as to what China is spending $6 trillion on. The vast majority of the article discusses how China is building a really long road and that they will be depending on coal until at least 2050.
The free market is the only solution to climate change, and it is absolutely profitable to solve climate change.
The problem, as the article indicates, is that we currently subsidize fossil fuels and do not tax them to pay for their externalities, stacking the deck in favor of fossil fuels companies and away from green energy transitions.
Even with that in place, capital is flying toward green/renewable energy.
A carbon tax is 100% needed, and dividends can be handed out to bottom quintile earners to offset the cost for those who literally cannot survive the increases a carbon tax causes. Problem there is just that taxing fuel in the US almost guarantees you lose your next election.
That is wild! I watched the videos in the linked article, and I’m shocked how easy it is to steal vehicles!
I guess what I see in the movies/shows if hot wiring and the time that takes isn’t the norm nowadays.
IMO I feel like the Shipping Ports need to step up their game as far as inspections and stop the cars BEFORE they’ve been shipped to other countries. I would hope that the car insurance companies would be willing to help the cost of this increased inspections, considering they have to pay the value of the stolen vehicles to the owners…
Port authorities do need to do that, but first the feds have to give them more money and raise staffing levels … cause right now there is not enough people or funding to do the job right.
The physical key and a keyfob is like manual vs automatic. It doesn’t fully prevent your car from being stolen, but it does make it harder to steal said car.
I love to blame how terrible software and ux is in cars as theyre very unreliable, but yes, a lot of this is a port problem
The issue with rotations being “normal” is that it makes it trivial to protect abusers. Just look at the catholic church where it is pretty obvious that any time there is a new priest in town, some kid got molested.
I am also not convinced we would have good national standards considering how many red states are actively trying to cripple education.
At least it’s one target to fight to fix rather than every small town’s own shitty way to be shitty, and blue states would in theory try to counter the red state shittiness.
I don’t know enough to know if nationalizing the police is a good idea, but that’s already an issue. Police can and do just move from one department to another.
At the very least there should be a national license or record that follows them.
There already are records that follow them. Arrest records and police reports. Then the police union plays the qualified immunity card and gets them all their back pay.
Which gets back to “If we lived in a utopia, these steps toward fixing society wouldn’t be an issue”
I hate police unions and consider them organized crime. But I am generally going to vote against ANY precedent for the government breaking up a union because that is the kind of slippery slope that actually has consequences. Instead, I push for politicians who want to get rid of qualified immunity.
I mean it works pretty decently in Canada. We have two ways of becoming a police officer and two systems. The College route is a two year program that focuses on police sciences, psychology, ethics and law. Then there is the RCMP route where you get shipped off for intensive training where you live millitary boot camp style for 6 months for a concentrated version with some physical training and then basically get a cadet status to be apprenticed out to a detachment.
Municipalities can choose to either have a police department run by them or to contract a federal detachment of the RCMP. The RCMP are only on the hook to solve federal law and bylaw enforcement is largely outside their perveiw. They are however cheaper for a Municipality because they are paid for in part by provincial government and 30 percent of their cost comes from the federal level.
The accountability is I think a little better than hiring people with just a GED. The investment of time and education makes a difference particularly since there’s a pretty heavy emphasis on de-escalation models of policing up here. Having an officer actually draw their firearm up here much less point it at a person is a shock.
the early days of airbnb was basically this concept.
they didn't start out as a marketplace for unregulated hotels that destroy housing markets. that didn't happen until after they started cashing checks venture vulture capitalists.
So many people forget this origin. Air mattress in your spare room (in SF), iirc.
As much as I, personally, prefer a house when away - either with the family or as a couple - this is one of the drivers behind the crunch in housing. People can’t possibly afford to by a place to live when the competition is a wanna-be property “entrepreneur” who is going to get 2-4x market rent by doing short term rentals.
Originally my mum moved my brother and I into the same room and rented out the empty room for $40 a night. The cleaning fee was $20 and we still cleared $2,000 in one summer.
My brother and I each got a 5% cut and we bought ice creams from Safeway every day for a week until we got wicked stomach aches
What a crappy article, it doesn’t even say what he was charged with.
Beginning on an unknown date and continuing through on or about August 29, 2023, upon the highseas outside the jurisdiction any particular state or district, in international waters, while on board a vessel subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, the defendant(s) violated:
18 U.S.C. §2237(a)(2)(A) Obstruction of a Boarding
46U.S.C. §70036(b)(1) Violation of a Captain of the Port Order
Basically he’s being done for resisting arrest while at sea.
I just tested positive for the first time and thanks to the US FDA rule changes, I have to physically go to the doctor to get Paxlovid, putting more people at risk. Very frustrating.
I was with them until they banned more than 1 guests at a time. Are you a couple needed somewhere quick to stay before going to an airport or something? Go die in a fire. New York only wants solo couch surfers. People who want a friend along. A single person with a child. A family in a money crunch, anyone really can just pound sand.
That is a super bizarre and IMO indefensible position. If someone wants to host more than one person in their home for a short span why is does they city even care?
I’m also worried about how this could be abused. What if you legitimately take someone (or even two someones) in for a week, kick them out and then they report you for being “an unregistered short term rental”. This is going to be a shitshow.
Edit: alright I misread this morning. It’s 2. Still bullshit. Why have a limit at all with the other stuff. My same complaints apply now with one more person. It’s not like 3 people groups (aka 2 parents an a single child or one parent and 2 children, etc) are uncommon.
IMO hotels just don’t fill the niche of needing a cheap single night or needing to have a bunch of people for a long time. Traveling with my family got so much better when airBNB became a thing.
“Are you a couple needed somewhere quick to stay before going to an airport or something?”
Damn, if only there was some sort of established and regulated type of business where you could rent lodging by the night in New York City. I bet they could make a whole lot of money building big buildings full of rooms you can rent like that.
“What if you legitimately take someone (or even two someones) in for a week”
Do you make a habit of charging your friends and family that come visit you?
Airbnb is a lot better than a hotel for families: you get several bedrooms plus a full kitchen for a similar price to a hotel that only gives you two beds in a room. That kitchen will save a typical family $100/day over a hotel if they cook their own meals.
Damn, if only there was some sort of established and regulated type of business where you could rent lodging by the night in New York City. I bet they could make a whole lot of money building big buildings full of rooms you can rent like that.
As someone who has a big ass family, hotels fucking suck for families. When I compare my childhood vacations in hotel to what we do now in airBNB, we do airBNB every single time.
Do you make a habit of charging your friends and family that come visit you?
I have in the past when I was hard up for money because food costs for extra people can be great.
I read it in the summary, but I guess I made a mistake. I still think it’s ridiculous. Like why have a limit at all on who people want to host in their house?
Probably held a bidding auction between hotels and air bnb. The hotels must have had deeper pockets to buy up a piece of legislation in a democratic system. How good is freedom
New York City’s housing stock has only increased 4% since 2010, not nearly enough to keep up with its 22% increase in jobs. And from 2017 to 2021, New York City permitted 13 homes for every 1,000 residents in 2017
This is because of zoning restrictions preventing building. This occurs everywhere you see housing spiking, which distorts even the areas where building is occurring.
People don’t want “those people” in their neighborhoods or don’t want to lose their “neighborhood character,” or simply want to “protect their home values,” and so a persistent lack of supply is strangling the market.
Denying current renters an income stream, tightening the grip of the hotel market monopoly, and not actually freeing enough homes to impact the increase in demand, is not the solution.
That’s fair, but I think it’s not particularly relevant here.
Tourists should not be holidaying in people’s “back yards”.
It’s not about keeping out certain “types of people”, it’s about not wanting any people who have specifically come to holiday and treat the area like their playground.
And every Airbnb I know is run by someone who has multiple properties, and certainly isn’t letting holidaymakers live in their actual home.
I just don’t see how anything you’re saying is relevant to Airbnb??
Landlords are buying more houses and turning them into Airbnbs, hence less houses available and increasing prices for regular people.
The idea that it’s really benefitting regular people is just not the reality of the situation.
NIMBYism
the behaviour of someone who does not want something to be built or done near where they live, although it does need to be built or done somewhere
The area for holidaymakers are hotel districts. If you need to expand the actual hotel district then so be it, but don’t just let everywhere essentially be a hotel district.
We will never see lower home prices while NIMBYism exists.
I’m willing to bet you don’t want tall buildings with dense housing for low-income people on your street either, yeah? They’d ruin your view/the charm of the neighborhood/bring crime?
But turning half the units in that tall building full of dense housing into short-term lets that are a nuisance to the people who actually live there is okay in your book? Because, as you say, objecting to that would be “NIMBY”.
Airbnb is way more profitable than conventional letting. Why would anyone offer stable leases to poor people when they can rent out the whole place for higher rates?
In some parts of my country, it is becoming functionality impossible for families to rent a property for a stable term, because landlords want properties vacant over the holidays for short-term lets.
Yes, because you’re still adding net housing in those buildings.
I think AirBnB helps people pay their rent in NYC, because data confirms that people do in fact use it as bridge income
I also think AirBnB both is not the culprit here (a housing shortage is) and that building more housing solves the problem more neatly while also discouraging using housing as an “investment” which then discourages predatory housing practices.
Human beings will always respond to incentives, and right now the incentive is to buy housing and hold it because it will be worth more later. That’s a big problem.
Evidently AirBnB is not the only problem here, and building more residential homes is needed. But
discouraging using housing as an “investment” which then discourages predatory housing practices
is exactly what is happening here. If you can buy an empty property & rent it out to tourists for a chunk of money – with better returns than you can get on the stock market – people with capital will cheerfully do that. Except now with these rules there’s little point in them trying that in NYC.
Renters are free to continue to use AirBnB to continue to pay their rent (bans on subletting notwithstanding) as long as they’re still living in it at the time.
Long term capital considerations re. investment in real estate are a separate issue. Historically, housing has not performed like this.
Not if they need to pass inspection as hotels in NYC they aren’t. Renters already AirBnBing to make ends meet don’t have the money for fire doors, etc.
“Not having enough money to make what you are renting out safe for occupancy” is not an acceptable defence to renting out something that is unsafe for occupancy.
Approximately 18,000 Airbnbs in the UK do not have smoke detectors and nearly 65,000 have no carbon monoxide alarms, according to figures from analysts AirDNA.
Shocking. Safety regulations are written in blood.
We will absolutely see evictions over this and I’m very interested in watching this site lose their shit over and eviction increase in NYC in a few months
New York isn’t like other places - it is quite literally out of available land to build residential structures. NIMBYism may have an affect, but the overwhelming restriction in preventing new construction is that you’d have to raze structures to do so.
First 2 are aesthetic complaining or lack of density related. Third contains this gem that supports my entire stance:
For better or worse, Houston housing providers have to follow regulations for how they can use their funding and who gets access to resources. Aside from small tweaks in HUD’s language, these regulations have remained largely the same over the past decade. While other U.S. cities, under the same funding restrictions, implemented a patchwork approach and fell victim to poor planning or scant resources, Houston wagered that centralized decision-making could speed up the process.
6th link confirms it. Edit: 6th not 5th because 5th is broken and also proof you didn’t actually read any of these. You just googled for headlines that sound bad.
That’s irrelevant because net increases to supply still move toward closing the supply/demand gap, and people further down the chain just move into vacated homes as people move into the new ones.
It’s not happening because demand still outstrips supply by a huge amount. What is happening when building occurs is a mitigation of cost increases, but the production is not not enough to lower costs .
The thing about supply and demand is that it exists even if you don’t like it.
Apartments are not commercially zoned, and neither are AirBnBs.
Both should be added to mixed zoning. That would be dope. Stores on the bottom, or alternating floors, with very dense buildings above current height restrictions, is basically the ideal solution.
Apartments are residentially zoned. Hotels are commercially zoned (for good reason).
Turning residential homes into unregulated mini-hotels at scale depletes housing stock, and is a nuisance to residents.
This law effectively blocks residential homes from continuing to be used as hotel businesses operating out of residentially zoned areas, allowing residential units to once again be used as housing, and removing the nuisance to residents.
Please explain why you see this as a NIMBY net negative for housing.
Mixed use zoning is absolutely the way forward everywhere, but most especially for already-dense cities like NYC. “Nuisance to residents” is always, and will always, be a terrible reason to do anything. A nuisance isn’t a health concern, but a preference. Their preferences are irrelevant when the market is on fire.
This is not a big enough number to actually dent the housing shortage, and a not-insignificant number of these people are doing part-time rentals to make ends meet, which means they’re gonna get evicted. Meanwhile, the landlords people are bemoaning will simply rent their properties at the AirBnB rate to not lose income since the net housing has not meaningfully shifted.
I agree with your sentiments about multi-use, multi-story buildings. I am, however, a bit baffled as you how you seem to have confused New York fucking City with the suburbs. NYC is the most dense city in the US. In fact, a quick wiki search has the NYC metro area occupying the top 12 spots for density.
If you’re renting a place, and subletting your guest room on Airbnb… This doesn’t stop you, they specifically made this the default case. If for some reason you’ve got a 5 bedroom place or something, maybe consider finding some long term housemates, then. It’s not like there’s a shortage of renters.
I don’t know how I feel about this. On one hand: I dislike the trend of commercial companies buying up living space to turn around and rent it out to disruptive short-term tenants.
On the other hand: I don’t want to have anyone else present in my rental with me because that’s creepy.
They are trying to address housing shortages. The hotels might benefit, but so does everyone else because it effectively bars commercial operation of AirBnB. No landlords with 50 units etc.
This will not actually help with the housing shortage. It will even result in further evictions as some people lose the potential income of renting out excess space to get over the hump.
Like what, exactly? If you can’t afford a fire alarm or sprinkler system, you really shouldn’t be running a rental business. Hell, if you can’t afford a fire alarm, you have much bigger problems than whether or not you can rent a room to a stranger.
…which makes you a business. You’re making income from rentals. A landlord who has 500 units but can’t seem to fill them but once or twice per year for a weekend doesn’t suddenly stop being a landlord. And if they told me “I’m just supplementing my income” in order to get around installing fire alarms, I’d laugh in their face.
If you’re providing a commercial service to strangers, you should be able to ensure their safety, full stop. If you can’t afford to do that, you can’t afford to provide the commercial service.
What a cockamamie take! We’re not kicking these people out of their homes by forcing them to follow simple rules to ensure they don’t burn families of random strangers in a raging inferno. They’re still free to…y’know…have and live in their home.
By your exact same logic, if someone is making and selling meth out of their home in order to make supplemental income and bridge payment gaps, then by telling them to stop we’re effectively telling them “only the wealthy deserve a home, period.”
<span style="color:#323232;">Meth dealer: "But I can't afford my home without it!"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Me: "Um, tough shit. Stop it."
</span>
Is “people can’t afford to live” your “get out of jail free” card?
So people should be able to do whatever they want as long as it helps them pay rent, because them making rental payments ipso facto impacts housing availability?
Should a hair stylist require schooling and training? Yes, they put caustic chemicals on people’s heads which can cause sever harm.
Should police have more training? Yes.
This isn’t a good argument because the lack of police training has no bearing on the licensing and training of hair stylists.
Here’s the take you are trying to get people to say, if you cannot afford to own a home without supplementing income by provided room rentals which are potentially unsafe and do not meet the bare minimum of fire code, then you cannot afford that house. It doesn’t mean you don’t afford a house. Just that you cannot afford THAT house. And I make no mention of “deserve housing” because all humans deserve housing.
Putting people’s lives at risk to make a few extra dollars is unacceptable. You have no right to gamble with other people’s lives.
I don’t think that’s an ideal analogy. No-one sells meth legally.
It’s more like selling people food prepared in your uninspected and potentially unsanitary kitchen, and complaining about being told to comply with the food hygiene regulations that every licensed business is required to adhere to.
I find this viewpoint fascinating. Like arguing that trying to put out a burning building will hurt poor people trying to keep warm.
The housing market as a whole is the problem, one which AirBnB is exacerbating. That it locally enriches those renters able to find people willing to rent out their homes – which I’m guessing is disproportionately going to be people without elderly family members & kids – doesn’t mean it isn’t detrimental to the housing market as a whole, particularly at the lower end, and to everyone who rents.
If they can’t afford to sit on multiple empty houses due to increased AirBnB regulations, then they can always sell some of those assets back into the market. In fact, that’s the point of the regulation :P
The idea of some poor landlord barely scraping things together because their 50 rental properties (and thus millions of dollars worth of assets) are less profitable is preposterous
Judging by how hard they are attacking this thread (seriously like half the comments are them), I am going to say yes. I don't believe them denying it.
Units made available as short-term rentals must also abide by building and fire codes, including one that prohibits placing locks between rooms and having certain sprinkler and fire alarm systems on the property.
Growth in home-sharing through Airbnb contributes to about one-fifth of the average annual increase in U.S. rents and about one-seventh of the average annual increase in U.S. housing prices.
Those struggling renters might not be struggling so much if other people renting out their apartments on AirBnB weren’t pushing up their rent by an extra 20%.
Housing markets have problems. AirBnB is not a responsible solution to those problems.
As mentioned previously, then they shouldn’t be housing others. You spend a small sum of money to make money, when I worked for the city of new York, all us engineers knew the saying, “regulations are written in blood” because NYC was one of the first cities to experiment with new housing methods and such. We were thus the first to witness the horrors of lack of regulation.
I wasn’t alive for the triangle waistcoat factory disaster. Will I learn from it? Yes. Will I force others to learn from it and protect innocent people around them? Also yes. Fire does not care about your class or situation, they happen and the steps to being protected are necessary.
If a person has extra rooms and can barely afford rent, they are occupying a unit that doesn’t fit their needs. They would be better served by downsizing to a smaller, more affordable place instead of heaping their financial problems onto the rest of society. Alternatively they could sublet the room(s) which would better serve their community instead of catering to tourists.
Host requirements start on the bottom of page 16. The requirements boil down to posting a fire exit diagram of the unit, keeping records, and not violating building or fire codes. Nothing in there that really seems that onerous, and is stuff that obviously protects the guests.
Oh look, here’s a list of fires that happened in buildings with short-term rentals, where egress, fire alarms, and sprinkler systems saved actual lives…
Yea you’re not really arguing in good faith here. You know fires happen and the lack of basic alerting systems is a concern. These regulations aren’t costing folks 10 grand to do. There is a cost of doing business and New York has stated this is that cost. Take it up with your state assembly if you don’t like it.
It is quite firmly my stance that none of the people barking up this “fire bad” tree are engaging in good faith at all, since none of these AirBnBs demonstrate undue risk worthy of their own fire code ordinances
Asking a person to install their own fire door to rent a room out is absurd.
Then I guess they shouldn’t be opening living spaces to other people for commercial purposes. Almost like doing that implies you have a responsibility to your guests
It’s the same as ride-sharing … which, when it started, was advertised as a cheaper alternative to taxis/cabs but that’s no longer the case.
I use taxis instead od ride-share because taxis are regulated and they have to buy licenses. Does this make them better? Not really, but they are contributing to the local economy through the tax base … and that alone does make them better.
I’ve stayed in plenty of Airbnb’s that the owners were on-site the whole time. It’s not bad at all. I even used Airbnb to rent out a spare room for a couple years and it wasn’t weird at all (except for the people who were much more comfortable with nudity than I was).
The time I visited NYC, the Airbnb I rented was a small apartment divided up into three rooms with other renters staying there. Same as if the owner was there, wasn’t a problem or creepy.
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