Notice that the person doing this illegal business is the only one benefiting from it. The community will not get any of the taxes that it is supposed to get which are in turn used to maintain the streets, pick the trash, pay police officers patrolling the area, etc. etc. Essentially, the community is paying for an illegal business.
In fact, tolerating the rental of a single room per household strikes me as a good way of separating the wheat from the chaff.
Ironically, even Cuba has such an exception: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_particular
Plugging a leak, really? I call it shooting the life raft.
Regardless of the savings in money, the big difference was the proximity.
Now that will be illegal and she will either visit less often or not stay as long.
The landlord/property owner is still paying property taxes, and their utility bills.
Also, as a previous commenter mentioned (jim_h)...
"A tourist who stays at a hotel ($100/night) might only have budgeted $50/day to spend outside of hotel costs."
"A cheap tourist could budget $100/day, stay at a temp place and still get more out of NYC than someone who budgeted $150/day and stayed at a hotel."
But, most importantly, mrtron says...
"I would agree - the money spent on hotels probably doesn't stay as local as money spent on food and entertainment."
Also, you mentioned "what is supposed to be a residential area" - but most of NYC seems to be mixed-use zoning, where you have a commercial entity attached to a multi-family residence, or even have commercial entities at the base of the building.
City planning is something complicated where I'm not so sure a pure market-driven solution would be optimal. Markets only allocate resources well when there are no externalities. They do nothing towards a fair distribution of wealth. A good example of poor city planning caused by the market is the housing bubble.
I don't know the situation in New York, but if hotels were in fact crowding out the poor from the city, it would be perfectly legitimate to ask if this is desirable.
I always thought that the market was created by two people engaging in a voluntary exchange of goods and services.
I'm not 100% sure about the "laws are created by politicians" bit, either, seeing as most politicians scarcely even read most legislation, much less understand it. Although I suppose you did qualify that as the way things should work.
What is the "fair distribution of wealth"? I personally believe that you are only entitled to the wealth you yourself created (or which someone voluntary gave you).
Isn't that a fair distribution of wealth? Or what other metrics do you use?
I don't believe your example is a good one, because the housing bubble was not caused by the market. It was caused by irrational expansion of credit. Of course the market is the expression of what people want, but those "wants" are heavily distorted or encouraged by monetary policy. There is no market in the money making business (it's a government controlled monopoly).
That's how a representative democracy works, but that's only one form of democracy (and unfortunately ours).
Now add to that the fact there are external costs to short term rentals (random renters through more wild party's) and banning these seems reasonable to me.
If people are causing noise disturbance to others. it's reasonable that there be legislation that covers that specific case, regardless of how long the people are staying in the apartment. Because otherwise you're penalising all short term letters for the misdeeds of a few, which is wrong.
Really? Can you back that up. Data please.
It's an anecdote, not data (but still more than you've got): In my four months being a random renter I've thrown exactly one party. It was a brunch, and two people came. Not wild at all.
I've been to a number of parties that were much "wilder." All thrown by regular tenants. The wildest was attended by the building's doorman.
But the problem is when most voters don't care about a particular issue, and a small minority (in this instance hoteliers) do. I would introduce reforms to partially overcome these problems:
1. politicians can only make something illegal with a super-majority (say 55 or 60%). This means there is an automatic bias towards liberty.
2. recall elections for politicians at all levels
3. ban businesses from donating money to politicians. It just creates too many opportunities for corruption.
4. all legislative assemblies to be elected by proportional representation. This would mean genuine voter choice rather than 2 monolithic big parties.
5. all assemblies at lower than the country level (which in the US, means state governments and below) are allowed to legalise any activity made illegal by a higher government on a straight 50% of the vote. As with (1) this is also a bias towards liberty.
6. any law passed by any assembly must be subject to a referendum if enough people want it.
I've met some very interesting and friendly people in 'short-term apartments'. Mostly foreign students/travelers on vacation, people moving to NYC for work and using it as temporary housing until they find a real place, or just regular Americans visiting another city on a budget.
They make it seem like these places are unclean or unsafe, but they're not any more dirty or dangerous than any other apartment.
But that is a valid concern I suppose -- does NYC benefit from tourists on a budget? If it doesn't then it might make sense to keep them out so tourists "not on a budget" can have more space, visit more often, and consequently spend more money.
I can see how tourists on a budget would not be welcome in many cities. Some places rely on selling overpriced services and items to tourists and rely on tourists coming in and just throwing money around. So making legislation to accommodate certain visitors, but discourage others, kind of makes sense.
Any tourists will bring tax revenues into the city by eating at restaurants, visiting museums and events and generally purchasing goods and services.
"not on a budget" can have more space, visit more often, and consequently spend more money.
If any place in the world operated purely under this assumption, then you would never have urban centers like New York to begin with. Consider that if the demand for hotels was so high that there was no longer enough rooms for tourists that more hotels would be built.
Some places rely on selling overpriced services and items to tourists and rely on tourists coming in and just throwing money around. So making legislation to accommodate certain visitors, but discourage others, kind of makes sense.
It really makes sense for hotel firms, who are likely the ones behind the vast lobbying efforts that helped to implement this law in the first place. They are the ones who stand to garner the extra revenues to be had from tourists who no longer have the option to AirBnB and must instead pay for high priced hotels.
The only way in which this should improve New York's revenues as a government entity is through the room taxes assessed on hotels as opposed to AirBnB-style operations.
This problem, however, could have been remedied without outright outlawing of the practice which seems to infringe on the rights of many property owners who AirBnB in a reasonable fashion (i.e. not purpose built illegal hotels).
A tourist who stays at a hotel ($100/night) might only have budgeted $50/day to spend outside of hotel costs.
A cheap tourist could budget $100/day, stay at a temp place and still get more out of NYC than someone who budgeted $150/day and stayed at a hotel.
At the point you are doing that with any sort of regularity you should be subject to licensing, insurance, etc.
Whomever downvoted me, you are telling me that you wouldn't mind a constant rotation of complete strangers taking residence in the apartment across the hall from you with no recourse for liability?
If you disrupt the neighbors with loud musics, wild partying, etc, you will pay a fine. All the neighbors have to do is sue you in court and it should be easy to prove it so.
That will kill many birds with one stone and eliminate vectors that allows people to choose winner and losers for political reasons.
NYC -- famous for high cost-of-living. So folks start micro-leasing as a way to recoup costs. Several startups are created as a way to coordinate these micro-leases.
Response? Government steps in and shuts it down.
The reason social problems, like housing shortages and the political responses, are important to talk about on HN is that big companies solve big problems, and nothing happens in a vacuum. Sometimes your biggest competitor can be the political status quo.
I find the governor's remarks true, yet unconvincing. Kind of like a lot of politician-speak. Politicians (of all stripes) learn from the legal, public relations, and polling professions how to take any position on any side of an argument and make it sound somewhat plausible and reasonable for Joe Six Pack giving the entire matter 5 minutes thought.
In the absence of public uproar, this was done for commercial reasons. Dig deep enough and you'll find somebody with a checkbook.
It's pretty simple.
If these things should be regulated because they are of a type of thing to be regulated? Then we haven't really advanced the discussion much, have we?
Maybe you want to have a "big government" argument, but forget all of that. I'll assume you are correct. This is a type of thing that of necessity needs regulation. There are other enterprises just like this one who were not regulated. So why now? Why this? Certainly you don't feel like the actions were just random -- somebody rolls a dice and picks these guys out. I mean, as good and as wonderful and as healthy as all these restrictions are, they have to come from somewhere, right?
Pick your favorite thing you wanted the government to do or not do over the last 20 years that never happened. Why did the government do some things and not others? Is there some secret logic or calculus that is used to determine which things to fix and which not to fix? Or is it just votes?
I mean, you understand the reason for political parties, right? The use of force to protect interests. The speeches are all about bunnies and apple pie and protecting orphans, but bunnies and apple pies and orphans don't vote or make campaign contributions, do they?
Sorry about the cynicism, but there's a very interesting economic lesson going on here that has to do with startups, so I thought it worthwhile to point out.
Not trying to get in an argument, although I have no doubt that I've gotten into one. So I'm done here.
Your worship of government is misguided.
Yep. Nothing happens without a member of some good old boys' club benefiting from it somehow.
The landlord explained that they were having trouble leasing the apartment, and that they were falling back on relying on this sort of rental to help cover the cost of the space. It's a shame this won't be an option in the future, both for poor entrepreneurs and landlords.
One of those sublets would have been legal under this new law.
The first was a vacation rental business, very well run by the owner of the building. I stayed there two months, so it wouldn't fall under this rule, but I was the exception: most of his business would.
Another was a young professional who rented out her tiny one-bedroom in the East Village to help pay for her vacation.
A third was a friend of mine who was out of the country for a few weeks. A win-win situation, I paid her rent and got a place to live.
The fourth was a room in a shared loft with three roommates. The guy renting the room was a photographer who spent the two weeks in Haiti documenting the recovery. The rent money helped fund his trip.
The fifth, the one I'm in right now, was another friend's place. She moved out at the first of the month (due to the availability of her new apartment and her new roommates' schedules) but was obligated to pay the rent through the end of the month. Again, win-win. I help with her rent and have a place to live.
Tomorrow, I move into an apartment of my own. There is a specific no-subletting clause in the contract, and I'll honor that. But I wouldn't have made it moving to the city if this law had been in effect four months ago.
Doesn't stop anyone from in-town either. I lived for a year in a place that the upstairs neighbor stomped everywhere as he was morbidly obese and had to use the toilet frequently. The neighbor on the right played rap and hip-hop at max blast from midnight til 6 am, often leaving it on all day when he left to work. And the couple on the other side had rough sex nightly. And even more interesting is that this place was in a decent part of town, not some slumhole.
> frequently moving in and out as neighbors You mean, like a hotel? There is one two blocks away from my house. Never been a problem. Or, are you more refering to something like transients? My subdivision has a lot of them, Bosnian families moving in extended family, finally getting their gov't grant, and moving out. Hasn't been a problem either... well, except for this one guy, but that was resolved and he wasn't a transient, he owned the home. Is your stance from a fear of strangers and foreigners?
I don't see your arguemenst fit into the equation at all.
It would be great if more people knew that.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Theres+nothing+liberal+about+r...
http://www.nber.org/~luttmer/rentcontrol.pdf
Search http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/02/10/nycs-rent-stabilized-p... for "rent control"
Im going to guess that these laws will become more prevalent soon unless airbnb & co start become proactive about keeping track of all the relevant taxation.
The hotel chains aren't evil, but they have their interests and I don't doubt they're giving the extra push for this to go through.
In which case, what's to stop AirBNB from adding a "trip purpose" selector to their site which would default to "business" when a property in NYC is selected.
And if it does stop business short-lets, why isn't that industry up in arms about this?
I was going to AirBnB a few separate places in different parts of NYC for a month or so, but now it looks like I should do just one. If all of the daily-rentals have to convert to 30+ day rentals, it should increase supply by a lot more than the number of people willing to switch from short stays to longer stays.
Combine AirBnB w/ Zipcar, but for RVs.
