Posted on 10/30/2016 12:12:37 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Last Friday Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York signed a new bill seeking to crackdown on citizens offering their homes for short term rental through Airbnb. The law would impose fines of up to $7,500 simply for listing a rental on the popular site for travelers. Why would the state of New York pass this law attacking people seeking to earn some extra money to help afford living in one of the most expensive cities in the country? The answer lies with the hotel companies, one of whose CEOs openly celebrated that his company would be able to raise prices in the wake of this law suppressing his competition.
Airbnb is one of the biggest stars of the so-called new economy, industries and companies which have gotten their start since the internet became ubiquitous. The Airbnb website allows average individuals to offer their homes, apartments, or even just a single room for rent for short periods. The service has proven popular across a wide range of ages and countries, especially so in tourist hubs like New York City where hotel rooms are expensive and often hard to find. Tens of thousands of Airbnb listings are offered in New York City alone, often by individuals looking to earn some extra money from an empty room or apartment when they are out of town.
In the face of this innovative competition, the hotel industry reached for the favored tool of a dominant incumbent: regulation. In the New York government, where they have never met a regulation they didn’t like, the hotel industry found a willing partner. This hotel industry-government alliance first tried to suppress Airbnb in 2010 with a law banning short term rentals. However, that failed to adequately stifle the hotels’ competition, hence last week’s new law.
The attack on Airbnb is not an isolated incident for New York. Just last year New York City attempted to crush Uber with regulations, another internet-based company offering aggressive competition to an established incumbent (in that case the taxi cartels). That attempt failed in New York City, but Uber remains banned in the rest of New York state thanks to the power incumbent taxi firms wield over the state government in Albany.
Airbnb immediately filed a lawsuit against the new regulations, and they may succeed in getting them eliminated, but this story exposes the ongoing danger of regulation, at the state level no different than the federal level. The regulatory process is manipulated by special interests at every step to protect their industry or profits from competition.
Regulators are not detached wise men acting solely in the public interest free from pressure. And it is not surprising that an industry or special interest would seek to protect itself from new regulations. Those factors mean that the answer to a situation like this is not “more regulation” or “better regulation.” The only answer to this capture of the regulatory process is less regulation entirely.
PING!
So glad I live in the middle of nowhere in flyover country.
This is constitutionally protected free speech, not a crime. It amazes me the variety of speech that the left would like to criminalize.
When I was in chaplaincy training, an uber-lib lesbian co-trainee (long story) was renting her apartment through airbnb in order to get enough cash to survive on.
Wonder what she thinks of this now.
How dare the little entrepreneur try to make some money while the criminal elitist politicians can steal money from you
Just a note: There are many sites exactly the same as Airbnb. I don’t see how they have the manpower to monitor all of them.
3... 2... 1... “Trump’s fault!”
Life in the Marxist State.
The commissars get the dachas, the peons get the KGB.
There are apartment owners kicking out all of their tenants and turning their apartments intended for long term leases into short term rental hotels.
These apartments are located in parts of the city not zoned for hotels.
Constant turnover of vacation rentals who tend to be noisier and less responsible than the residents are suffered by the residents and not the often absentee landlords.
So it's not all black and white.
In the short run it might be nice for this guy or that guy to get away without paying all the taxes and adhering to all the regulations voted in by the populous and enacted by their representatives.
However, in the long run if everyone is required to pay all the taxes and adhere to all the regulations then there will be a groundswell to lower taxes and regulations.
For cynics, it will never be the case that taxes are too low or regulations are too few. So they believe that anyone that can get away being a scofflaw should do so.
Cynicism goes against the grain of American optimism.
Hotel, restaurant and taxi companies are trying to crush the competition, ie, destroy freedom, with the help of politicians.
New Yorkers need to stand up and say, “Hell no!”. New Yorkers need to vote with their dollars and make the crony capitalists back down.
if AirBnB cracked down on all of these their business model would collapse. So they occasionally pretend to crack down on misusers, but not so much to hurt their bottom line.
Serious litigation ahead. That is what rats enjoy. Billable hours. Will eventually be in the Supreme Court.
Not from New York, but curious if Cuomo, and company of NY is as corrupt as the Clintons.
I know a condo manager in South Florida who runs his addresses through 6 English language sites once a month to make sure no one is renting AirBNB style. Didn’t work — he had two Austrian stewardesses that would have gotten away with it but for their propensity for topless sunbathing.
The world is changing.
1. If a New York City property owner advertises his home on a website that blocks New York IP addresses, would New York even have any jurisdiction over it anyway?
2. The law is probably pointless to a large degree, since most of the housing units in NYC are either rentals, condominiums, or co-ops ... which means they'd be governed by lease or deed restrictions anyway.
I agree with your post. I sure as hell wouldn’t want someone running a short-term rental operation next door to me.
That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that these companies are simply asking everyone operating in these industries to be held to the same standards under the law.
If a hotel is forced to collect a hotel/tourist tax from customers, and is subject to regular inspections by the health department, doesn't it seem fair that an Airbnb property should, too?
You could not pay me to go to New York State.
For any reason.
Are you arguing in favor of prosecuting people who write “My house is for rent” on the internet?
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