#138: New York's Crackdown on Airbnb

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2016

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

New York has dealt a major blow to Airbnb, HomeAway and other short-term rental platforms. Recently, Governor Cuomo signed a law banning platforms from advertising whole apartments that rent for fewer than 30 days. The bill’s supporters have claimed that the short-term rental ban is necessary to maintain housing affordability and quality of life. But is that really what’s going on? Is this just another giveaway to the hotel industry and labor unions, which have long held sway in New York politics? Is Airbnb really to blame for high rents in New York? Are there better ways to address legitimate concerns over short-term rentals? Joining Evan is Jared Meyer, research fellow at the Manhattan Institute. For more, see his op-ed in the NY Post.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Sportsdriver. On today's show, Airbnb is in a bitter battle with New York, as the Empire State recently passed to build banning platforms from advertising whole apartments for rent if it's for fewer than 30 days, if the host is not present. This most notably affects
0:23.2	Airbnb, but there are other websites like Home Away and, of course, any platform that allows
0:30.1	you to advertise a short-term rental would be affected by this. This follows up on a 2010 law that
0:34.9	banned the actual act of renting, but this law now ups the ante
0:38.4	and bans the advertising itself, which poses concerns for free speech, among others.
0:43.7	Joining me to discuss this is Jared Meyer, Research Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
0:47.4	He usually appears on this podcast to talk about Uber, but it seems like anything involving
0:50.9	the sharing economy Jared has an opinion about. So Jared, thanks for joining the show. Hey, thanks for having me, Evan. So, Jared, what the hell is going on
0:59.2	in New York? I mentioned briefly what the law does, but can you elaborate a little bit more on
1:02.9	what we're talking about? This is a bill that was on the governor's desk, Governor Cuomo, for a long
1:07.7	time, and he finally passed it or signed it at the last possible time
1:12.6	that he was allowed to sign bills that were kind of just lingering.
1:15.6	Yeah, what this is is New York just having a blatant giveaway to the hotel industry.
1:20.6	If you look, this has been a push for a while now to limit Airbnb because New York's its most lucrative market in the United States.
1:27.7	They've seen a lot of growth there because hotels are expensive.
1:31.1	There's not that many of them.
1:32.1	They tend to be in downtown or midtown where a lot of people don't want to stay.
1:36.0	And as Airbnb grew in popularity, the hotels felt threatened and pushed this bill through.
1:40.7	And now Cuomo just decided to prove that New York, contrary to its slogan,
1:45.6	that we're open for business, is closed for business when it comes to anything having to do with
1:49.9	technology. So when it comes to the enforcement problem, I mentioned the 2010 law, and that only
1:54.5	banned the actual renting. So that would affect the host and or the renter.
	...

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