583
Airbnb bookings dry up in New York as new short-stay rules are introduced
(www.theguardian.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
583 points (100.0% liked)
News
23274 readers
2650 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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.
That's the point.
If you and I stay in hotels, people who work there will be able to afford to live near there.
They want you back in a hotel
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.
That is still allowed though. The host can rent out a spare room with up to 2 guests at a time. The host just has to live there.
So they register? There isn't anything to indicate that hosts who plan to rent out a spare room and follow the rules won't be approved.
When you register, you must comply with hotel-level standards.
I went and looked up the regulations.
https://rules.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/FINAL-RULES-GOVERNING-REGISTRATION-AND-REQUIREMENTS-FOR-SHORT-TERM-RENTALS-1.pdf
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.
This requires personal investment from people over something they nominally may not have the means or ability to change or influence.
Fire doesn't care about limp excuses.
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
So guests should just burn then? Like we have regulations because people died before said regulations.
I'm sorry was there a rush of ABNB fires I haven't heard about or is this a total non-issue
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.
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...
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/public-safety/2023/03/16/fdny-investigates-fire-at-ues-luxury-hotel
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/manhattan-fire-at-central-park-south-hotel-sparks-major-fdny-response-what-to-know/4120852/
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/fire-prompts-evacuation-of-park-lane-hotel-along-central-park-south/
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/midtown-hotel-evacuated-amtrak-fire/
https://nypost.com/2022/09/24/rooftop-fire-erupts-at-exclusive-casa-cipriani-hotel-in-nyc/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/nyregion/fire-hotel-manhattan.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fire-injures-seven-manhattan-highrise-b1962437.html
https://www.fireengineering.com/firefighting/16-alarm-fire-brooklyn-new-york/#gref
Who'da thunk it?!?! Do you enjoy playing dumb?
These are all hotel fires lol.
Short term rental fires, yes. Which proves that....short term rentals do occasionally go up in flames with renters inside.
You don't win any awards with those powers of observation there, do ya champ?
The horror.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-05/airbnb-s-new-nyc-regulations-what-renters-and-hosts-need-to-know
Good?
Oh my god, you have to register with the city, like every other landlord? Crazy.
Yes and this requires additional restrictions on the property that many people flat-out cannot afford.
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.
You aren't running a rental business in these cases, but supplementing your income by allowing someone into your home a few times per year.
.....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.
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
If you can afford to run a business you can afford to run a business properly.
Not if onerous regulations designed to solve problems that don't exist are placed in your way by populist idiot laws.
Theoretically, any business could be legislated out of existence maliciously.
How is following basic fire code onerous?
From what I can tell this is to help make sure they follow the new rules
If those hypothetical people lose their investment houses then other people can buy them.
To live in.
People who aren't living in their home will lose the home to eviction? Listen to my violin.
Really to drop housing prices you have to address the secondary mortgage market. More supply is a band aid.
I want them back in a hotel too.
Yes, where they should be.
If you’re travelling somewhere then stay in a hotel, it’s what they’re for.
No thanks. Apartment rentals have existed for decades.
Just not nearly so many, and with so little regulation.
Regulation isn't my job though. Just like those not paying tax isn't my responsibility, but it should be sorted properly.
And why is that a bad thing?
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.
It is still cheaper.
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.