Advocates Bring Anti-Airbnb Fight To Albany

At a rally against the use of illegal hotels, New York City elected officials targeted public safety and housing affordability as the two major reasons why New York needs to crackdown on companies like Airbnb, which has been accused of having operators of illegal hotels use their website to book guests.

Despite New York City and state law, a report conducted by the state Attorney General’s office in October found there are currently more than 27,000 listings in the city, up from about 3,000 in 2010 and it is estimated by some that as many as 72 percent of those listings were illegal hotels.

“Airbnb likes to call this the ‘sharing economy.’ To me, I call it profiteering at the expense of your neighbors. If that’s sharing, they went to a very different kindergarten than I did,” Assemblyman Richard Gottfried said the rally. “We’re here to protect the illegal hotel law, to stop Airbnb and their efforts to destroy that law and grind it into pieces.”

Housing affordability is a particularly hot-button topic this year, as New York’s rent regulation laws are set to expire this June. Additionally, Mayor Bill de Blasio has vowed to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing.

A couple lawmakers made it clear they are not against the renting out of one or two family homes, but argued when a landlord or tenant converts an apartment into an illegal hotel, it creates a safety hazard for neighbors.

“Your own home in New York City means you’re sharing it with everyone who is above you, below you and next to you. So when someone says, ‘Well I have the right to do what I want with this apartment, this is my home.’ The answer is if it’s a private house or a two family house, okay,” state Sen. Liz Krueger said. “But if you’re living in the same building with all of us it’s not okay. We all live there, all of our rights matter.”

Airbnb has repeatedly claimed it has safety crews who monitor the listings and told City & State last month that they are focused on trying to get a law passed to exempt people from permanently renting out their primary homes through Airbnb or other online services. 

“Thousands of regular New Yorkers share their home each year because they need help to make ends meet. It's misleading to lump regular New Yorkers who occasionally share the home in which they live with large scale illegal hotels,” Nick Papas, Airbnb spokesman, said in a statement. “We strongly oppose large scale illegal hotels and the vast majority of Airbnb hosts share only the home in which they live and use the money they earn to pay the bills.”

For more information on the issues surrounding illegal hotels and Airbnb, check out City & State’s article from our Feb. 23 issue here.