I suspect this is a case of rent-seeking by the hotels.  People renting out their apartments/condos by the night/week/whatever creates competition for business… and no one hates competition more than a capitalist.

I’m sure of it. And the ease in which our politicians allow themselves to be bought demonstrates their fealty to class war.

So this may create a new sub-industry of bullshit workarounds, making life needlessly complicated for everybody. Visitors/tourists can’t rent an apartment for less than 30 days? Okay, then they rent one on paper for 30 days, and it will be a shockingly low price because they’ll only be occupying it for the few days they’re in town; the rest of the time it will be undergoing “maintenance” and they’re not allowed to be in the unit for “liability reasons.” Or they rent it for 30 days, but there’s a “satisfaction guarantee” and the tourists are allowed to back out of the rental after a few days and get a “refund on the remainder of the month” because they declare themselves to be “dissatisfied” with the place.

It’s like the medical cannabis industry in some California cities. You can go to a quack (but licensed) doctor and pay $60 to be certified as a patient whose therapy includes cannabis for basically any malady, real or made up. Then you go to a “dispensary” and shop from a wide selection of artisanal strains grown upstate, pay by credit card, everything above-board. It’s basically legalized cannabis for everybody, but you have to go to the quack first, because it’s all under the bullshit guise of medical need.

(not to say that there aren’t legitimate medical needs for cannabis therapy, too, but the wide-open medical requirement can, and has been, a way to essentially de-criminalize it for recreational users)

(and, gee golly, society hasn’t fallen apart yet just, even though there are a fewer pot smokers in jail for possession)

Wow, what total jackassery.  I guess he really doesn’t want people visiting NYC unless they’re rich. or willing to spend like they’re rich.

The sad thing is that this is the sort of thing that makes libertarians think they’re being validated.

Well, the rich have house-sitters.  Mustn’t let the poor have apartment-sitters, lest they start thinking they’re above their station.

@ Proboscidea:  Kind of a comment/semi-rhetorical question:  With any mediated exchange of goods, the form the market takes really makes a difference.  While I haven’t used these services often, sites like Airbnb tend to have a rating system by which renters and rentees can evaluate each other (and deter abuse), whereas sites like Craigslist are strictly caveat emptor.  I imagine a similar dynamic develops with the doctor/clinic situation you describe?

@ oldfeminist:  I see PayForHouseSitting.com in your future.

I’m wondering; should renting out one’s space be regulated?

I torn over it, as renting your space kinda becomes a business, and spaces should be safe and otherwise up to snuff for the people renting it, but the space is still your own space in spirit and the practice seems pretty casual.

Making it plain illegal though, if that’s what the article indicates to me, is just more pandering to big businesses, as small businesses only matter in political rhetoric in this country.

—-
OT: Amanda, I sent you an email but I just want to confirm that you received it. I’m not confident that I didn’t mess up translating it from anti-bot to a real email address.

I’m a little surprised it isn’t forbidden by most leases, but of course enforcement of that would require landlords to give a sh*t.

But I see this more as a war of one part of the 1% against another part of the 1%—the informal arrangements will still abound, and money will still change hands (but not as much). It’s the people who run the commercial sites devoted to brokering rentals who will be hit hardest, I think.

I see plenty of other workarounds.  People can rent an apartment for a few nights, but they won’t call it renting.  They’ll stay there for free, but give the host a nice gift.  Or they’ll pay for some trinket, and get a free night in the deal.  Of course this law is meant more to target the websites that host these deals because they won’t the liability, and that really is the goal here: to just make it more painful for people to continue doing what they always do.

I’m a little surprised it isn’t forbidden by most leases, but of course enforcement of that would require landlords to give a sh*t.

ditto; American laws/traditions of renting apartments give landlords a ridiculous amount of power over how renters can and cannot use their apartments (well, at least from this German’s perspective)

This is simply moving what was a white or grey market to a black market again.  People will simply keep using these websites and then just not make a lawful agreement inside of NYC, the transaction will happen elsewhere and the actual movement of people in and about will be free and unregulated.  I do understand that apartment renters don’t want a new neighbor every few days and do deserve a certain amount of privacy.  But this is just a response by hotels to stop people from end-running their crazy pricing. 

They love the iron law of wages but the second both sides of the equation have to face it they run screaming for help from the government.

Here are some enterprising people, trying to make a little money to get by after more and more jobless recoveries, and the government is shutting them down. Somehow, I don’t think that the tea baggers will care about this, even though it fits their paranoid fears almost exactly.

The law was actually a reaction against a few shady companies, like “Hotel Toshi,” that started buying up apartments around the city in otherwise residential buildings, then renting them out to people like hotel rooms.  The actual residents of the buildings were stuck with having to deal with random people staying in their apartment building who had none of the social pressure incentives to stay quiet at night, keep the halls clean and safe, etc.

For example:

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2010/06/11/in_proud_nolita_tradition_renters_rebel_against_hotel_toshi.php

Also:

This law was passed at the state level.  Love him or hate him (and I really loathe the bastard) Bloomberg’s administration didn’t do this.

The Hotel Association has little real political clout in the state and city.  And the real estate lobby (a serious player in NY politics) never likes limitations on what you can do with your property.  You’re going to have to look elsewhere for the motivating force behind this law:

http://prospect.org/article/more-perfect-union-1

Outside of a few complaints from neighbors who really need to learn to mind their own damn business—-believe me, most of the complaints stem from jealousy and not from actual concerns about renters’ behavior,

That may be true, but there are also commonly perceived security concerns and lack of accountability from having a possible increase in short-term tenants who aren’t known by longer-term residents. 

Moreover, depending on a given lease or co-op/condo agreement, sometimes even subletting/renting to others is a violation of the lease or co-op/condo agreement…..much less short-term rentals.  IME, landlords don’t always enforce this aspect of the lease’s terms….but co-op/condo associations often do not only for real/imagined security concerns and lack of being able to hold short-term renters accountable for issues which may arise, but also because having a critical mass of renters in a given building tend to lower property values.

Wow, Libertarian, you are so right!

Somebody in the government got a law passed that puts a restriction on something that some people on the Left might not appreciate — Therefore all people on the Left should finally understand that all our brave libertarian brothers were totally right all along!  We tempted the laws of nature by arguing that some people’s bad behavior should sometimes be controlled because it was bad for society (and “society” doesn’t even really exist)!  As a result, we got what we deserved: a hellscape of Big Gummint run amuck, power-mad legislators backed by lethal government force lining up to pass laws regulating, and thereby destroying, all those things we hold precious just for the shear joy of regulating stuff.

Now that we have learned our lesson, let us all join hands and fight together to roll back all human progress over the last few hundred years and return to feudalism, which is the only social arrangement that is truly compatible with human wants and needs, and which validates Ayn Rand’s and Ron Paul’s and Rand Paul’s deep insights into the important value of human selfishness!

Thank God/Darwin we were able to recognize the extreme peril we’re in before it was too late…

(BTW, that snearing “where’s your OWS now” at the end was a great touch…)

@17: That’s true of house guests, as well, so there’s hypocrisy and bullshitting going on here.

Libertarian, the notion that it’s *impossible* to distinguish between good government regulation, which we want, and bad government regulation, which we don’t, is literally the dumbest, most childish thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Do you also struggle to tell the difference between a loving cheek stroke and being popped in the jaw?

If what we’re talking about is someone on my floor renting out their apartment to someone else for a week or two once or twice per year when they themselves are traveling, then fine. If it means that someone on my hallway is using their apartment as a hotel, with a continuous stream of random short-term guests all the time, then HELL THE FUCKE NO. Our building is our fucken HOME, and no fucken way should we residents who use it as our home have to accommodate a subset who want to use it as a hotel to house strangers for profit.

@17: That’s true of house guests, as well, so there’s hypocrisy and bullshitting going on here.

Not necessarily. 

Most houseguests tend to have greater personal ties with the renter or co-op/condo owner and not come on a frequent basis.

On the other hand, short-term tenants’ ties tend to be limited to a monetary transaction and have the potential of generation much greater traffic in and out of that particular unit/building. 

Rightly or wrongly, most residents would perceive greater accountability of a houseguest’s(’) behavior than those of a short-term tenant. 

This lack of accountability fear is especially common among co-op/condo owners/associations I’ve known of because they’ve had past issues in buildings which allowed owners to rent out their units which prompted them to ban or set extremely strict conditions on rentals(i.e. Minimum/Max time limits, association interview/approval requirements, etc).

Amanda, you’re brilliant, but you should stop dissing on Marie Antoinette. She had to endure terrible sexism and xenophobia, and according to Antonia Fraser’s bio she never said “let them eat cake” - in fact, was compassionate relative to the rest of the royalty. (Which may not be saying much, but still.) In fact, the LTEC canard existed many years before MA even came on the scene, and was used exclusively to vilify female royalty. (It’s in the intro to Fraser’s book.)

There’s an idiot in Boston government who got a city law passed limiting “students” renting together to four per unit. (there already are maximum occupancy laws, but, somehow, being a student makes you open to special treatment compared to, say, being a nurse or office worker).

Then he threw fits when he tried to force the universities to hand over address lists and they told him to stuff himself into his own asshole because those records are protected by federal privacy laws.

All it takes is one ninny on crusade to pry in private business ...

I know people who live in NYC who have had issues in their building with short-term tenants, as opposed to actual house guests or house sitters.  That’s where the distinction should have been drawn.  The international term is “paying guests” and I think it holds - if you are at home during a stay, or you are loaning your home and you live in it the rest of the time, the situation is much different than if you are one of many renters of a furnished apartment where nobody lives on a consistent basis.  If you are there and your guest is poorly behaved, you can do something about that.  If you are not there and somebody is poorly behaved in your absence, you are accountable to that.  If it is one group of idiots after another partying all night, that causes problems.

The stupidity is that there was not any distinction made.

@24

Whatever the reality of “let them eat cake” (and I’m not saying the reality doesn’t matter), the legend is still a useful shorthand for discussing the general obliviousness and lack of compassion of those in power.

@25
There’s an idiot in Boston government who got a city law passed limiting “students” renting together to four per unit. (there already are maximum occupancy laws, but, somehow, being a student makes you open to special treatment compared to, say, being a nurse or office worker).
Then he threw fits when he tried to force the universities to hand over address lists and they told him to stuff himself into his own asshole because those records are protected by federal privacy laws.

So one BIG GUBBAMINT REGULATION prevented another BIG GUBBAMINT REGULATION from being wielded abusively? It’s almost like Libertarian @18 is a simpleminded twit!

I’m sure if they could find a way to tax it reliably, the NYC gov wouldn’t really have a problem with it.  Having had to stay in NYC hotels (ok, it was out by JFK, so in Queens, and at the gov rate since I was working for the PANYNJ, But), I found a big slice goes to local room taxes.

along the line of banancat’s description @11: look up couch surfing.  You stay with people for free, but usually kick in for groceries, forget and leave some cash, bring something nice for your host, etc.  My family has had a couple of stays (a young Polish couple in the area from NYC and a businessman from CT who hates hotels).  You can meet interesting people that way.

@Helen, we have met a fair number of really interesting people travelling using the Warm Showers listserv.  It was set up for touring cyclists to find a place to throw a tent or find a bed as they travel.  They have always sent goodies or left presents.

It’s not quite as simple as Amanda described it.  Renting out your apartment as if it were a hotel is illegal in many places, not just New York, because it can easily be abused. There are hotel health and safety laws for good reasons.

The distinction between unlicensed hotels and paid house guests is useful:  If the host is not present and the renter has full use of a furnished apartment, that’s a very different thing and should be more strictly regulated than temporary paying lodgers.

Insurance doesn’t cover these AirBnB deals (in many cities and states) because the deal itself is illegal (in many cities and states).  AirBnb is fully aware of the potential for damages and liability for criminality.  Get a load of their terms and conditions at http://www.airbnb.com/terms

So it can be a good idea but must be approached with caution to make sure that everyone’s interests are considered.

No, there is no reason for these laws, Nutella.

At most you should have a management company to make sure security and deal with landlord issues should they arise while you’re gone.

But banning it?

That basically means disuse and banning simple things like having a house-sitter stay over.  And that’s plainly dumb and wasteful.

Making it illegal is a curb to penalize poor people who do have visitors who can’t afford a hotel.

When I was a kid, some of our best vacations were in time-shares - where we’d basically be housing in someone’s apartment when the owner was out.  And I made most of my money as a kid taking care of pets in vacation homes.

I’m all in favor of tenants renting out their homes on Airbnb.com while they’re out of town. The ban on rentals less than 30 days is ridiculous. And, apparently, unenforceable….

That said, there should be laws against businesses going into the absentee hotelier business in residential apartment buildings, or at least regulations on how they go about it. It’s not fair to the other tenants who end up sharing their building with flophouses instead of a relatively consistent set of neighbors. Businesses shouldn’t be allowed to externalize the security and quality of life costs at the expense of regular tenants.

What Rufustfyrfly said.

Unfortunately the lawmakers couldn’t find a way to write the legislation so it would disallow short term rentals by businesses like Hotel Toshi, but would allow me to rent it out for a few weeks once a year.

It was also not merely an issue of residents being annoyed by loud parties and a shady transient population (which is unpleasant enough). Several building owners were renting out apartments as short term rentals as a way to intimidate long term residents and residents in rent stabilized apartments to leave.

There was an additional issue where building owners involved in this were getting high temporary rental rates on warehoused apartments, but not having to pay hotel rate taxes.  Which, I could see if it was a once a year thing, but this was not a situation where your neighbor was renting out an extra bedroom for a week or two, or even an apartment vacation swap situation. It was more like one day you were living in a regular apartment building and the next you were living in a youth hostel.

Is it imperfect legislation? Yes. Is it an example of the rich attacking the poor? I believe it is the opposite, since it was the tenants in these buildings who lobbied for the change in the law.

And, apparently, unenforceable…

Not only that, but the hassle to go about enforcing it is often enough that most decent landlords IME tend to ignore tenants doing short-term rentals so long as this is an occasional thing, rentees don’t pose serious issues with other tenants/landlord, and the leaseholder has a decent - good landlord-tenant relationship. 

If such landlords do get on a tenant’s case about it….it is just an extra issue on top of more serious issues causing deterioration in that relationship such as excessive late night noise, damage to neighbors’ apartments through neglect/carelessness such as water leaking from an upstairs to the downstairs neighbor, excessively late in rent, etc. 

If anything, this is something I’ve seen more from co-op/condo associations who do not want the issues which come with renters in their buildings ranging from lack of accountability to the lowering of property values. 

Believe it or not, but the young people you apparently can’t stand live in “regular apartment buildings” as well.

A large part of that is that most “regular apartment buildings”.....especially those populated by seniors or families with children tend to strictly enforce rules many young adults…..especially those in college/fresh out of school tend to hate….such as noise laws.  Sometimes…excessively so. 

From what I’ve experienced and seen living in heavily college student/fresh college grad populated areas of Boston(i.e. Some areas in Allston, Fenway/Kenmore, Roxbury, etc).....there’s much more tolerance of noise, holding parties, and other activities associated with college students/fresh grads in those areas than in “regular apartment buildings”. 

For those very reasons, most seniors, families with children, and even some grad students go out of their way to avoid living in such neighborhoods or “student-friendly” type buildings.  Heck, that was one reason why I ended up moving to a more “regular apartment building” in the Brookline area dominated mostly by grad/med students and young families. 

Incidentally, in my current building….despite being unusually friendly to college student/fresh college grad residents/owners….it is still a “regular apartment building” with a lower tolerance for excesses commonly associated with those residents. 

It was a reason why despite being co-op/condo owners, they were tossed out for excess noise and being “nuisances” after less than a month because of numerous complaints from neighbors and police showing up because of over-the-top noisy parties at 3 am several nights in a row that clearly violated excess noise laws in NYC. 

Notable because such laws tend to not be enforced consistently as the cops tend to have “more serious matters” to deal with.

You’re not making a very good case that this isn’t just a function of oldster “get off my lawn”-ism. Believe it or not, but the young people you apparently can’t stand live in “regular apartment buildings” as well.

This all seems to fall in the same category as how I can’t rent or buy an apartment/condo/coop and hire 10 people to work at my company using my place as office space. It’s generally something one can do if it’s only a couple of people and no one notices, but once it becomes noticed by everyone else and once people start doing this kind of thing as part of their business plan, it runs afoul of zoning laws, your lease and/or your condo rules.

And in any case, coops are the rich urban person’s version of HOAs, and you always end up with these sorts of petty enforcers.

The difference isn’t old vs. young. It’s resident vs. transient. Even your rowdiest neighbors have an interest in maintaining passable relations with you and the landlord, if only to avoid getting kicked out or losing their security deposits. Chances are, most of your building’s party animals still have to get up for work or school on weekdays. Even the most exuberant ones probably don’t want to rock and roll all night at party every day.

Whereas, people who are only staying overnight have no particular incentive to be quiet. They’re just passing through and they’re on vacation. And they’ll be replaced with another group of fresh revelers.

Hotels have staffers and security guards to keep an eye on things. Many apartment buildings have neither. 

Not everyone who does Airbnb is loud. My 61-year-old mother uses the service whenever she comes to New York and if she’s throwing ragers in her room, I’m miffed that she’s never invited me.

@17: That’s true of house guests, as well, so there’s hypocrisy and bullshitting going on here.
Comment #20: Amanda Marcotte on 12/03 at 11:50 AM

Yes, it can be.  But if the houseguests are loud on Saturday night, come Monday morning, the renter will still be there to take action against.  And a responsible landlord can evict a renter for continuing to invite loud guests.  Presumably the renter wants to live there - at least ‘til the lease is up, so that renter has an incentive NOT to have those houseguests again. With Toshi or just housguests, they are gone by Monday, and the renter may well be offsite. and not care.

A former boss rented her apartment for the month that she was on vacation and out of NYC. She attended writing residencies in the summer or traveled abroad. She kept in touch with many people she met at these artists colonies and writers programs. So her renters tended to be people she’d met before and who wanted to spend some time in NYC.

She had a second bedroom which she kept plain but pleasant for people she rented the apartment to. Her bedroom was declared off limits and the rest of the apartment didn’t have much personal stuff on show. She also put things away as necessary before the renters came in. If she couldn’t rent out the apartment she probably wouldn’t have been able to attend the residencies or artists colonies.

But if the houseguests are loud on Saturday night, come Monday morning, the renter will still be there to take action against.

And if the temporary renter is loud the last week of December, come the first week of January, the renter will be there to take action against. The permanent resident doesn’t stop being responsible for what happens in their apartment. They also don’t disappear into thin air for eternity. This sounds less like an issue that needs a law and more like an issue that needs a, “Hey don’t fuck it up for the rest of us,” attitude.

And there’s no reason you can’t evict or charge the owner of the apartment any more if it’s an absentee owner or one that will live there next week.

The hypocrisy and get-off-my-lawnness is really rank here.

Of course hoteling needs security and management.  But no one here has said word one why a blanket ban is somehow more fair than regulatory requirements.

I have no problem with this law.

First, as everyone else has mentioned, transient residents can create real problems. Part of the advantage of having hotels handle them is that dealing with those problems is priced into their business model.

Second, New York has rent control, which is bad policy, but if you are going to have it subletting becomes a huge circumvention of it.

At bottom, New York should increase density, but until it does this, Manhattan is fundamentally not a place you can live in or stay in if you don’t have money. Allowing people to rent out their apartments isn’t going to solve the problem; it’s just going to create a few more of its own.

I simply can’t believe that it’s beyond the wit of legislators to draft a law that bans the kind of tax-avoiding-making-life-hell-for-residents business short term letting like the description of Hotel Toshi, and but lets go the let-your-spare-room-for-a-week-or-two idea.  Sounds more like the legislators were lazy and unimaginative.

Summary: You can have capitalism or feudalism, but in neither case can you have a free market.

SkatePony @ 36

Unfortunately the lawmakers couldn’t find a way to write the legislation so it would disallow short term rentals by businesses like Hotel Toshi, but would allow me to rent it out for a few weeks once a year.

Do you know that they didn’t write the legislation that way because they couldn’t find a way?  IANAL, but it seems to me that targetting the Hotel Toshis but not the Airbnbs by requiring the person renting out the suite to otherwise be a resident of that suite would be a fairly simple matter.

I think it would be awesome to have a lot of short term tenants as neighbors rather than permanent ones.  My upstairs neighbors are pretty annoying especially during sporting events.  In fact, every tenant who has lived in that apartment has annoyed me to some degree, mainly because the apartment is old and they insist on their right to get out of bed and walk around when I am trying to sleep.  I would love the chance to have a very annoying neighbor every once in a while, and spin that wheel often, as opposed to a consistently annoying neighbor for at least a year at a time. 

Many people seem to have trouble separating things that are annoying from things that are harmful.

“Many people seem to have trouble separating things that are annoying from things that are harmful.”

Lots of things that are annoying, but not harmful, are prevented by regulations nonetheless. ie, noise complaints. Technically, most NYC apartments that I know of “have” to have 80% of their floors covered by rugs. I know tons of people who don’t do this, but if they go clomping around in high heels on hardwood floors late at night, it’s a matter of a quick complaint rather than a “prove that I am interfering with your life! now let’s ask whose rights are more important??” fight, because there is something somewhere saying that you should be able to have reasonable expectations of noise-management accommodation. For all the people who just prefer hard floors but walk around in socks late at night, or otherwise make normal polite concessions to living in shared spaces (ie me), the regulation is really not a very big threat.

Similarly, my building prohibits pets. I am not exaggerating when I say that literally 60% of my neighbors own a pet. I have seen enormous black labs being led up the stairs. But all those people take care to manage their own pets well. A neighbor in our building got and apparently refused to train an extremely yappy, noisy dog. I’m talking months of barking, nonstop, all through the day and night, audible several floors away. Finally someone called the super, who contacted the landlord. That person had to give the dog away, and that was sad, because we all would have preferred they just freaking control the dog a little bit, but they screwed themselves by making their dog everyone else’s problem. The building regulation just made it easier to rectify the problem.

These kinds of regulations only become problematic for individuals when other individuals complain. If you are not being a selfish jerk then people are unlikely to complain.

There are all sorts of regulations that every person plausibly breaks at any given time, but that no reasonable person gets prosecuted for breaking. Maybe that is a ham-fisted, inelegant system, but I actually view this new law as a blow against companies on behalf of the individual. These companies are outsourcing their operating costs on working people and families and in a time when it too often seems that “companies are not only people, but companies are MORE PEOPE than a single individual person so they get more rights than a single individual person!”, I am encouraged to see a law that targets companies and mostly leaves normal people alone, if operating somewhat on the DL. Do I like that it’s a blanket ban? No. I wish we had finely nuanced laws that targeted the wrong things but left the okay things untouched. As that seems unlikely from any government at this point in time, I am okay with a blanket ban that in practice only actually targets the wrong things and otherwise leaves people alone.

Can we stop trashing Marie Antoinette’s name every time the 1% does something ridiculous? There’s no record of her ever saying that, and the phrase has been documented since before she was even queen.

I also don’t have a problem with this law.  As if living in an apartment in a crowded city isn’t enough of a pain in the ass.  As if there aren’t enough anti-social, inconsiderate assholes living in New York.  I support increased density for the purpose of helping the environment, but convincing Americans to move into crowded cities requires making the city a more pleasant place to live, which means cracking down on noise, pollution, and general assholery.  Tough shit if people who live in New York can’t sic a bunch of strangers on their neighbors.  If they want extra income, they can have roommates move in.

That basically means disuse and banning simple things like having a house-sitter stay over.

That’s patently false.  House sitters aren’t paying for the privilege of staying in a home; it’s often the other way around.

as the vast majority of people who use Airbnb behave decently

Wishful thinking doesn’t make it so.

Technically, most NYC apartments that I know of “have” to have 80% of their floors covered by rugs. I know tons of people who don’t do this, but if they go clomping around in high heels on hardwood floors late at night, it’s a matter of a quick complaint rather than a “prove that I am interfering with your life!

Floor carpeting also dampens general apartment noise to further enable neighbors to co-exist better.

Less echo effects and sounds carrying over into neighboring apartments which not only enable more peaceful co-existence with neighbors at night, but also make noise complaints easier to address as the threshold for noise leaking into neighboring apartments is far greater than the minimum legal threshold.