DUBLIN – In some ways, Airbnb has made cities more accessible, providing accommodation options to travellers and income to homeowners. But it has also played a role in pricing people out of the cities they live in. In Dublin, where I live, rental accommodation is in short supply and rents are sky high. Yet there are hundreds of Airbnb apartments available all around the city. People who own downtown apartments can make a small fortune renting them out, even if only for two weeks a month. Meanwhile, nurses and police officers are forced to live hours outside the city they work in. This dynamic is playing out everywhere and is a source of growing frustration in cities around the world. One city that has started to take action is New York City, which (like many other cities around the world) has imposed strict limitations on short-term rentals in the face of housing shortages and rising rents. Now, the police are raiding buildings in a bid to shut down off-book Airbnb-ers. Yet more evidence that regulation is catching up to the technology sector and, increasingly, clipping its wings.  – Felicity Duncan
New York City Raids Condo Building in Crackdown on Airbnb Rentals
By Josh Barbanel
(The Wall Street Journal) A team of New York City law-enforcement officers swarmed a Manhattan condominium last month, issuing 27 notices of violations for illegal hotel use in one of the largest crackdowns on short-term rentals such as those listed on Airbnb.
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The raid at the Atelier, a 46-story Midtown luxury tower, may be a sign of what’s to come. New York and other cities are seeking to limit short-term rentals that can run afoul of local laws designed to limit hotel-style stays in residential buildings.
The violations went to 20 different apartment owners who allegedly rented to guests from at least 15 countries including Argentina and Spain. Some guests paid $400 a night, and one group of six from Switzerland paid a total bill of $3,823 for a short-term stay, according to city records.
Two members of the Atelier condo board were among those cited for making illegal short-term rentals. They also were accused of putting up illegal partitions in their units to create extra rooms.
A group of owners who live at the Atelier blame the condo board for the problem and is seeking to oust it. The president of the board, Daniel Neiditch, says the board has taken action against hosts who rent illegally but that there is little it can do to stop the practice.
Dani Schwartz, a lawyer for the Atelier condo board, said, “Airbnb profiteering is a citywide problem.” Nonetheless, the board takes its obligations in this regard seriously, he said.
A new city law due to take effect in February could lead to a surge in the number of summonses issued. The law requires booking sites to transmit information about every short-term rental to the city. A lawsuit filed by the industry to stop the new law is pending in federal court in Manhattan.
The office of Mayor Bill de Blasio said the raid at the Atelier involved the biggest enforcement effort against individually owned units. The 20 inspectors were also the largest deployment.
“The extensive violations written show a clear need for building ownership and management to take action,” said Christian Klossner, executive director of the mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement.
Airbnb Inc., the largest player in the short-term rental industry, said New York is acting to protect the hotel industry at the expense of hosts who largely are ordinary people looking to make ends meet.
“We hope to work with the mayor to create common-sense regulations that finally distinguish these families from the few bad actors who should feel the full force of the law,” said Josh Meltzer, head of Northeast policy for Airbnb.
The New York crackdown reflects a growing conflict between apartment owners who live in their units in buildings like the Atelier and those who have purchased them as investments.
“It’s war,” said Tanya Helfand, a lawyer who bought a 14th-floor studio earlier this year. She said she was amazed to find a parade of tourists rolling suitcases through the building on weekends.
Some of the upset owners at the Atelier have followed tourists to document which apartments were made available for short-term use, according to several owners in the building. Communicating through a private WhatsApp chat, these owners say they have identified about 100 apartments and turned the list over to the city.
The disgruntled residents on Tuesday filed a legal notice with the condo board. They said they want the building to follow the city’s multiple-dwelling law, which bars the rental of residential apartments and homes for fewer than 30 days unless the host is present.
“At best the Board is grossly negligent and at worst complicit in the operation of an illegal hotel,” Massimo F. D’Angelo, a partner at law firm Adam Leitman Bailey P.C. who represents a group of Atelier owners living in the building, said in a complaint to the board.
Mr Schwartz, the board’s lawyer, attributed the complaint to “a handful of disgruntled unit owners.” He said the board denies operating any “illegal hotel enterprise.”
Some owners are calling for the resignation of Mr Neiditch, the board president who directly manages the building. He also runs a real-estate agency that rents and sells most apartments in the building.
Mr Neiditch said the board has barred some long-term tenants who have rented out their apartments on Airbnb from renewing their leases. He said he approved of the city’s raid.
Not all short-term rentals are illegal, Mr Neiditch added. For example, owner-occupants or tenants are entitled under New York law to share a second bedroom in their apartments for a fee.
Some owners who have documented the presence of short-term renters say they have been fined thousands of dollars by the condo board for allegedly harassing and assaulting people in the building.
Mr Neiditch said the board had fined several owners who opposed short-term rentals but only for intimidating or menacing people in the building.
Mr D’Angelo called the fines “trumped up charges.”
Eugenia Elliott, a 70-year-old retired lawyer, said she was fined $2,500 for what she described as chats with people in the lobby during the daily continental breakfast provided by the condominium.
On Nov. 4, the day of the TCS New York City Marathon, Ms Elliott said people she had never before seen in the building were crowding the lobby. Some were wearing the foil capes handed out to runners by race organizers—a sign, she said, that illegal short-term rentals were continuing. “It was full of people from the marathon.”
Write to Josh Barbanel at [email protected]
