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By: Benyamin Davidsons
The hotel industry, a powerful workers’ union and housing advocates have been pitted against home owners wanting to list short-term rentals, following a move by the city council to lighten up on certain short-term listings.
As reported by Crain’s NY, on Monday there was a crowded rally held at City Hall, fighting a bill put forth last month. The City Council introduced a bill which would allow small homeowners to once again host short-term home listings, lightening its landmark crackdown on Airbnbs, and reigniting the battle. The bill proposes allowing owners of one- and two-family homes to rent them out for up to one month to a maximum of four persons.
A requirement that homeowners be physically present for the renters’ entire stay would also be dropped. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is one of the bill’s sponsors, which also include council members Farah Louis, Mercedes Narcisse, Kevin C. Riley, and Selvena Brooks-Powers. All of the bill’s five sponsors represent predominantly Black outer-borough neighborhoods where its common for homeowners to have a small extra unit.
The proposed bill would lighten the city’s controversial Local Law 18 which took effect in September 2023, and which banned most rentals below 30 days. Per Crain’s, the 2023 law had caused NYC’s short-term listings on Airbnb to drop from roughly 23,000 to only 3,700 in the span of a year. Airbnb and other online rental platforms suffered financial losses, as did homeowners who formerly rented their spaces to short-term tenants. Proponents of the law had included city hotels, which said the listings hurt their bottom lines, and housing advocates, who said the short-term listings competed with much needed housing.
The newly proposed bill will reignite the battle—and needs to contend against an array of housing advocates, tenants rights groups, the hotel industry, and the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council union of hospitality workers, which have benefited financially from the Airbnb ban. A new “Tenants not Tourists” coalition funded in part by HTC and by the Hotel Association of New York City was among protesters in a rally against the bill, held outside City Hall on Monday.
“We are committed to protecting housing that exists now, for people who live here now — not for the profits of billion-dollar companies and real estate,” said Whitney Hu, director of civic engagement and research for the nonprofit Churches United for Fair Housing. Housing advocates say that Local Law 18 succeeded in adding thousands of housing units back on to the market. They will fight the proposed bill, arguing that it will turn back the progress and fuel the city’s housing shortage.
Per Crain’s, attendants at the rally also included supporters for the new bill, including a small group of homeowners who chanting phrases like “Homeownership is not a crime.” One of those home owners, Lynn Englum, said that short-term rentals “basically saved me during the pandemic” by allowing her to rent out a spare unit in the two-family house she owns in Queens. She said that she is now struggling without that extra income. “Airbnb needed to be reined in, and the law had a lot of good components to it,” Englum said.
“But sometimes there’s unintended consequences, and it was like a huge net on everybody.”
