NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400 • Hacker News Board

Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400

#151

Post by durango » Tue, May 21, 2013, 5:16 PM UTC

dev_jim wrote: post #80

cletus wrote: post #62

I've had this argument with several people. Their position is that "it's my house/apartment, I should be able to do what I want with it" (even when renting they use this argument). My argument is that this is not and has never been true. You can't, for example, run a tannery in your apartment. What's more, as a resident (and especially if I were an owner) I wouldn't want my building being a de facto hotel. An endless…

Agree. AirBnB is the ultimate John Galt system in NYC. Apartment renters get cash for their apartment (that they usually don't even own) and then everyone else in the building gets to deals with the fallout of a revolving set of neighbors who share the lobby, amenities, hallways, and walls. Good riddance.

When you forced to pay $300/night in Manhattan at the W hotel, Atlas Shrugged.

Not a AR fan btw, just saying both sides of the fence have their pros and cons. I'd place higher value on an apartment complex that explicitly did not allow short-term renting within their contract.

The other problem is... what's the difference between me using AirBNB and me knowing a friend who let me stayed at his place for 6 days and I just happened to give him some money as a thank you gift?

Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400

#152

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, May 21, 2013, 5:18 PM UTC

Diamons wrote: post #57

cheald wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think you have any kind of right to choose who lives next to you, or to have a say in what they do with their property? If you take Airbnb out of the equation, the assertion is ridiculous.

I have a right to say no to AirBnB. Does my individual opinion matter? Probably not. Does the collective opinion of my neighborhood matter? Yeah it kind of does. We've been saying no to AirBnB for years, this isn't anything new. NYC says yes but for some reason the rest of the world thinks we're wrong to choose how we want to live.

If your neighbor has a friend stay with them, and their lease allows it, you have no say in the matter. It's their property rights, which flow to them from upstream property/rights owners.

This is no different. Your right end where their rights begin, which I'd say start right around where their property lines/walls are.

Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400

#153

Post by Zak » Tue, May 21, 2013, 5:19 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #26

I think we shall see more and more of this, airbnb, kickstarter and many other "social clearing houses" are essentially delivering services that investment regulation and consumer protection legislation has been developed explictly to prevent Its not that this specific NYC law exists and been upheld, its that there is a whole class of such laws across the West. People will bump into these a lot more.

This may be true, but in many cases, they're also providing a replacement for the regulation. Having a reputation system, holding payments in escrow and such make it harder to get away with fraud or providing low-quality services.

It's not absolute, of course, but neither is regulation. No matter what, a few people will do bad things, and a smaller number will get away with it.

It seems like relaxing the laws about these things to see if new models provide better solutions to the old problems might be a good idea.

Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400

#154

Post by DanBlake » Tue, May 21, 2013, 5:19 PM UTC

The reason this is a issue (in san francisco, at least) is that long term, elderly and protected tenants are getting evicted from buildings with whats called a 'ellis act'.

A ellis act lets you kick everyone out of your building with the restriction that you cannot 're-rent' it for 5 years.

Since a 30 day stay is not 'renting' per sf code, unscrupulous landlords have been using BnB sites to profiteer evictions.

That is one of many reasons why its against almost all city/state codes to do this.

I thought about this before- AirBnB and VRBO themselves are not actually committing the 'crime' however they are certainly with knowledge of the use that is happening. As such, I am sure any landlord wronged by either site would have a absolutely fantastic case for tortuous interference to them (AirBnB interfered with the contract between a landlord and tenant)

I think it basically comes down to this. Certain things are illegal, like it or not. Lots of people think prostituion should be legal country wide, like nevada. But its not. Setting up a site to let you sell something that it knows is going to be illegal is riding a extremely fine line.

It reminds me of a old trick used in a terms of service for a filesharing website back in the day. "You agree that by continuing, you have received a written, expressed waiver from warner, nbc, fox, [etc...] to download their content "

The service knows that absolutely nobody has such a warning/waiver but by shifting the blame to the user, they think to be untouchable.

I am not a lawyer though, so what do I know.

Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400

#155

Post by yebyen » Tue, May 21, 2013, 5:20 PM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #146

yebyen wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure he's more interested in payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, welfare dollars, Obamacare. I won't pretend I've read the ledgers, but when he texted me yesterday to say '49 states left', I hadn't heard about the devastation in Oklahoma and I started scanning the internet tubes to find the news that Texas finally seceeded over Obamacare.

Well, those are federal issues, so it sounds like his problem is the fact that Obama's president rather than anything to do with new york state. I'd also hypothesize that he was much less upset about these issues in December 2008 than he became starting in late January 2009.

http://taxfoundation.org/article/2012-state-business-tax-cli...

There's NY, ranked right behind NJ as #49 for second least favorable state business tax climate. That's right. Worse than California for business owners. I have no idea of the legitimacy of this graph, it only took 10 seconds of Googling to find it.

Not saying anything about Upstate vs The City, but my dad has lived in NY for near to his whole life, he's actually from Long Island, and (what do you say next? we have Jewish friends?)

It's easy to say they're federal issues, but NY has reasonably high sales tax and income tax, and yes there is property tax. If you're from New York, you wouldn't argue that we're not highly taxed. I happen to be near enough to the poverty line, recent college graduate, high student loan debt, good payment record, so I only know what they want me to see insofar as taxes go. I fill out TurboTax and usually get most of it back.

I've actually received larger income tax returns than what I paid in total, once or twice, with no plausible explanation other than "Dad paid for it," so you'll have to understand, I am influenced / biased also based on that.

Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400

#156

Post by DanBlake » Tue, May 21, 2013, 5:21 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #106

tomkarlo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a landlord (at least in a low-vacancy area like NY or SF) ever accept such an amendment to the lease?

They could do it in exchange for charging an even higher rent?

In San francisco at least, no contract language can bypass rent control provisions. With that, you better hope you are in a non rent-controlled building

Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400

#157

Post by snambi » Tue, May 21, 2013, 5:22 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #62

I've had this argument with several people. Their position is that "it's my house/apartment, I should be able to do what I want with it" (even when renting they use this argument). My argument is that this is not and has never been true. You can't, for example, run a tannery in your apartment. What's more, as a resident (and especially if I were an owner) I wouldn't want my building being a de facto hotel. An endless…

if someone owns the property, they should be able to rent their house or condo. Illegal sounds like city is trying to protect other businesses such as established hotels. Define, the rules, so that people can follow them.

Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400

#158

Post by yebyen » Tue, May 21, 2013, 5:23 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #110

yebyen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I am a resident of Rochester and I understood the title intuitively. Rochester is far (6 hours+) from The City. I was from Buffalo before that, even farther away. I am used to hearing about odd laws that only apply in NYC (the boroughs), from special conditions on a learners' permit license, to bans on 16+oz fountain drinks, when I hear "now illegal in New York" I tend to think naturally, it must apply only…

Actually NYC pays for itself, and upsate sucks money from Long Island and Westchester, whether you account by where you live or where you work: (This is by where you live) $Paid $Recd Pop Capital Region 3.8% 7.0% 4.2% New York City 45.1% 40.0% 42.9% Downstate Suburbs 27.4% 17.7% 21.7% Rest of State 23.8% 35.2% 31.2%

Downvotes, if I had them...

Use two spaces before each line for pre-formatted text. Label your axes. Provide a reference for the source of your table.

I have no idea if this is sales tax, income tax, or capital gains tax.

Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400

#159

Post by DanBlake » Tue, May 21, 2013, 5:24 PM UTC

gozmike wrote: post #149

I had a really sketchy experience as a guest this winter that made me worry about AirBnB. I spent a few months living in the Haight with a delightful German woman who supported her photography career by renting her spare rooms in a gorgeous clean apartment. For a while, the arrangement worked out pretty well. That is, until I ran into one of her neighbours in the stairwell. I made friendly conversation with him and h…

And for good reason. Rent control should not allow tenants to make a /profit/ on their apartments. The current SFRB law basically states you can only 'pro rata' charge what you charge. So if you pay 1k a month for rent and you are renting it out for half the month the most you can charge is 500. Or if its a 2 bedroom and you rent 1 bedroom, you can charge 50% of that.

Not that that matters. You are basically saying you parked in a firezone while robbing a bank. You are already doing something against the law so the additional methods dont matter much.

Re: NY official: Airbnb stay illegal; host fined $2,400

#160

Post by gozmike » Tue, May 21, 2013, 5:30 PM UTC

DanBlake wrote: post #159

gozmike wrote: post #149

I had a really sketchy experience as a guest this winter that made me worry about AirBnB. I spent a few months living in the Haight with a delightful German woman who supported her photography career by renting her spare rooms in a gorgeous clean apartment. For a while, the arrangement worked out pretty well. That is, until I ran into one of her neighbours in the stairwell. I made friendly conversation with him and h…

And for good reason. Rent control should not allow tenants to make a /profit/ on their apartments. The current SFRB law basically states you can only 'pro rata' charge what you charge. So if you pay 1k a month for rent and you are renting it out for half the month the most you can charge is 500. Or if its a 2 bedroom and you rent 1 bedroom, you can charge 50% of that. Not that that matters. You are basically saying y…

Totally. It screws the landlord and drives up the overall cost of housing.

That said, this AirBnB host was supporting her (very frugal) lifestyle on the profits from this rental. It hurts to know that I may have played a part in undoing that.