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New York governor approves short-term apartment rental ban in NYC

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Re: New York governor approves short-term apartment rental ban in NYC

#101

Post by kiba »

kgrin wrote: post #91
kiba wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason to license and regulate if you can fine people with noise pollution and other negative externalities that come out of their property. 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 w…

"All the neighbors have to do is sue you in court..." Even for small claims court, it's a pretty big burden to file suit. This regulation may not be the best answer, but let's not pretend that short-term rentals don't engender problems for the neighbors, or that all those problems can be ameliorated with more lawsuits .

Even for small claims court, it's a pretty big burden to file suit.

Then make it less of a burden to file a lawsuit, and make it easy for people to prove and disprove that there was indeed noise pollution or whatever.

Of course, the state have a monopoly on the court system, so that might be a difficult problem.

We don't need new laws, as that will make more things complicated in a land that filled with overly complicated unclear laws.

Make it so that laws are as simple and understandable to the average citizen as possible. Make it so that competent judges are selected. Make it so that the system is efficient in handling out appropriate and fair judgement. Then make laws that make sense without allowing people to convert their dollars to political power.

In the first place, people shouldn't use the laws as solutions to every single problems that they might have.

Re: New York governor approves short-term apartment rental ban in NYC

#102

Post by mikecane »

I don't know how many of you here are native NYers. And I stress the native, because anyone who hasn't lived here for decades won't have a deep understanding of how things work here. Going out to the Hamptons (or elsewhere) for two weeks or a month and renting out your place has been going on here for decades. This has never been something hidden from the government, The Village Voice would be filled with Short-Term Sublet ads just for this purpose. Now that this has risen to the level of a nascent Internet business that can centralize, organize, and capitalize on this practice, Patterson -- faced with a crushing deficit -- slams the lid on it. Every day I wake up to find local, state, and national government tightening the noose around our necks more and more. All of you talking about liability -- hey, one of these budding Net businesses involved in this could also sell short-term insurance for such liabilities.

Re: New York governor approves short-term apartment rental ban in NYC

#103

Post by tptacek »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #68

Interesting startup lesson here. 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 happ…

You appear to have ignored every other thread and story about this issue, in which it was established pretty plainly that there is a public concern about short-term apartment rentals.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1471771

Re: New York governor approves short-term apartment rental ban in NYC

#104

Post by kiba »

mikecane wrote: post #96
kiba wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason to license and regulate if you can fine people with noise pollution and other negative externalities that come out of their property. 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 w…

>>>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. You have never had experience in NYC Housing Court. I have. Keep dreaming, though.

You have never had experience in NYC Housing Court. I have. Keep dreaming, though.

It might be rather difficult to fix the courts, but it's lot better than adding regulations that probably benefit the entrenched business interests.

Re: New York governor approves short-term apartment rental ban in NYC

#105

Post by chopsueyar »

mattmillr wrote: post #88
nphase wrote: post #15

I was in NYC with my team this past Jan, trying to raise money with a few angels in the area. The three of us decided to rent a furnished apartment to save money. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of space this decision afforded. There was plenty of desk space in the unit and while there weren't enough beds for each of us the couches made due just fine. The landlord explained that they were having trouble leas…

Another anecdote: I moved to the city in late March. Since then, I've been in five sublets while I looked for a suitable permanent place to live. (Moving in tomorrow!) 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 bu…

But how many neighbors did you piss off?

Re: New York governor approves short-term apartment rental ban in NYC

#106

Post by mikecane »

kiba wrote: post #104
mikecane wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>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. You have never had experience in NYC Housing Court. I have. Keep dreaming, though.

You have never had experience in NYC Housing Court. I have. Keep dreaming, though. It might be rather difficult to fix the courts, but it's lot better than adding regulations that probably benefit the entrenched business interests.

Yes, I totally agree with you there. I'm just saying that expecting recourse from NYC Housing Court in regard to neighbors is not something that's bound to happen. And let me just say that as a tenant, there have been times that Court has given me the slack I needed when rent fell behind years ago, so I'm not wholly against it!

Re: New York governor approves short-term apartment rental ban in NYC

#107

Post by plusbryan »

sprout wrote: post #74
shykes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more thought: the state expects this to plug a leak in tax revenue. I think they are vastly underestimating the relief these rentals represented: losing that extra income might mean foreclosure for a lot of people. Plugging a leak, really? I call it shooting the life raft.

We're still living in a world with artificially inflated housing prices. While yes, people will be foreclosed on, this is a necessity to bring the market back to reasonable levels. If hosting tourists becomes standard practice, this will be reflected in the price of housing, and even more people will be unable to afford homes in the long run as a result. Especially when you look at vacant spots in hotels, which were…

@sprout: I disagree that airbnb and ilk would increase inefficiency. In fact, it seems to me that it's hotels that bring the inefficiency into the market. They are proxies for short-term housing needs created at a time when it was difficult to arrange short-term housing in unused space in residential zones.

Imagine a world where sublets were completely unrestricted on both a governmental and leasing level. If I go on vacation, I would rent out my place. Theoretically, because my place is used 100%, the demand for these massive, overpriced hotels taking up prime real estate in our nation's cities would dwindle - and the efficiency of the city would actually improve.

Instead of locking up this prime real estate in hotels, which are seasonal and affected by economic hardship, we'd enable more people to live downtown full-time, close to their jobs - which would lower transportation costs, monthly housing costs, overnight rental costs, and in general bring efficiency to the market.

Re: New York governor approves short-term apartment rental ban in NYC

#110

Post by jim_h »

whakojacko wrote: post #14

Lots of people seem to be thinking that all the big hotel chains are being evil by lobbing this kind of anti-competitive legislature out to kill airbnb and the like. And while that maybe be true, you also have to realize that governments would much rather prefer people stay in real hotels regardless of what the hotel industry thinks. Local governments get a lot of money off of occupancy taxes, as well as tax off of t…

What about home owners convert their N family house into N+1 (or N+2) family houses and rent out the floor(s)? In fact I'm pretty sure it's very common to do. I've even seen houses with 2 floors, but 5 mailboxes. I'm sure the government would also get taxes from the increased property taxes and reported income of people doing that.

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.

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