October 27, 2016
I really do think enabling people to rent out their dwellings when they’re not in them is a positive thing. There just happen to be two major complications in New York City. One is that most New Yorkers live in buildings with lots of other New Yorkers; the other is that New York doesn’t have enough apartments for the people who want to live here, let alone visitors. No matter how much the company huffs and puffs, this seems likely to stay illegal in New York, Airbnb’s biggest market. As Politico New York’s Dana Rubinstein wrote Thursday, Airbnb is in an entirely different political situation from Uber. The ride-hailing service is a boon to all New Yorkers who pay for rides in cabs or cars. Airbnb benefits about 40,000 hosts in the city, but the far-more-numerous guests “come from elsewhere and are therefore politically irrelevant.” There is unlikely to be any kind of political groundswell to back Airbnb up. And maybe there shouldn’t be. More efficient use of real estate is good. But other things matter, too….
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-27/new-york-is-too-crowded-for-airbnb
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