New York’s Attorney General’s office has just issued a
report on “Airbnb in the City,” studying the impact of the
service that allows humans to easily find other humans who might
want to pay to stay in their domiciles for short periods.
Since this sort of lodging service has largely heretofore been
dominated by businesses calling themselves “hotels,” regulated and
taxed in specific ways by localities and states, entrenched
interests in both business and government feel bedeviled by this
innovation of the tech-enabled “sharing economy” that makes finding
paying use for idle resources easier and cheaper for everyone.
Some of the AG’s findings, examining Airbnb from 2010-June 2014,
include a tenfold increase in Airbnb bookings, $282 million in
revenue (including both the service and the hosts), and, hmm, 72
percent of Airbnb units violating some local law or another (again,
while, overwhelmingly, making both renters and temporary tenants
happy).
Also, the AG report finds a small number of people controllling
lots of units dominate the NYC market:
Ninety-four percent of Airbnb hosts offered at
most two unique units during the Review Period. But the
remaining six percent of hosts dominated the platform during
that period, offering up to hundreds of unique units, accepting 36
percent of private short-term bookings, and receiving $168
million, 37 percent of all host revenue. ….Each of
the top 12 New York City operations on Airbnb during that period
earnedrevenue exceeding $1 million
This, naturally, makes fewer units available for long-term
lodging. This seems like an obvious bad thing, to people who have
decided more long-term lodging is better for them, or the city, or
just their sense of how things should go.
Why that value judgement should mean anything when lively demand
for that many short term rentals clearly exists is unclear, but the
AG’s office seems to think that to merely state this fact is
tantamount to some sort of call to action.
The reports details some of the specific regulations likely
being broken by Airbnb operators, and notes, again as if this
should matter to you, that:
Bookings in just three Community Districts in
Manhattan—the Lower East Side/Chinatown, Chelsea/Hell’s
Kitchen, and Greenwich Village/SoHo—accounted for
approximately $187 million in revenue to hosts, or more than
40 percent of private stay revenue to hosts during the Review
Period. By contrast, all the reservations in three boroughs
(Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx) brought hosts revenue
of $12 million—less than three percent of the New York City
total.)
I mean, the AG’s office doesn’t need to rub it in to Queens,
Staten Island, and the Bronx that way fewer people want overnight
visits there, but his office is cruel and judgmental.
The AG’s office notes it finds the growth in the use of Airbnb
“staggering.” Some might just call it useful, nice, good for them,
or who cares? (Or, sure, I’m pissed seeing a new couple stagger in
to the apartment next door every night.) But the AG is
staggered.
Mostly, I suspect, staggered by the $33 million in taxes his
office believes the city of New York should be owed on all this
making-people-happy, the vast majority of which it isn’t getting
because it’s a pretty easy tax to evade with Airbnb’s
technology.
The report goes on to groan a lot about the alleged shifting of
property use from long term rental to short term in the city, which
again may annoy someone personally or upset their sense of the “way
things ought to be.”
But Airbnb allows for people to express their true desires, as
both property controllers and property users, and needn’t be
condemned just for that reason. Unless you are the sort of civic
busybody type who just knows exactly how everyone else’s
property should be used and what choices everyone else should make.
Alas, America’s government and media are all too full of those
sorts of civic busybodies.
Gothamist joins in an attempt to make really great
things seem really bad by throwing
in arbitrary negatively valued phrases such as that
the concentration of Airbnb rentals in lower Manhattan means that
“Lower Manhattanites are taking a beating” and that it’s
“startling” that some people controlling lots of units use Airbnb
to fill them with willing guests.
A ReasonTV video from last August on Airbnb—and its enemies:
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