Beginning November 1, individuals in New York City who rent out multiple homes will be assigned to follow a new rule where they will be allowed to list one apartment for rent to Airbnb.
Airbnb is a peer-to-peer online marketplace and home-stay network that enables people to list or rent short-term lodging in residential properties. The company faced pressures from politicians and tenants’ rights groups saying the company has worsened affordable housing issues in the city. The company also said, in a proposal to city officials, that it was willing to create a registry of hosts to make it easier for the state to enforce housing rules and that it would create a hotline for neighbours’ complaints.
According to the new rules, the short-term rentals in public housing will also be prohibited.
In rent-controlled units, tenants would only be able to rent up to the level of their rents, or a portion of the income would be reinvested into upkeep of their building. A “three strikes” policy will be instituted which will permanently ban the rule breakers. The online system will be set up for the hosts to register the rentals.
Airbnb has cast the rules as aiming to make sure New Yorkers who are sharing their homes occasionally to make ends meet should be protected as to those who commercial operators who run illegal hotels and take the housing off the market. New York lawmakers called the proposal “a Hail Mary” attempt to get around a bill that went to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. The bill would fine illegal Airbnb operators in the state.
New York state senator Liz Krueger said that the proposal is an attempt to do the same thing in New York which has failed in San Francisco. Registration and taxation has not worked in any city where Airbnb as nobody actually registered.
The San Francisco-based company’s money doesn’t come from people living in their own homes renting out a room or a bed while they’re there, which is legal, said New York Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal.
The 2010 New York law was written prior to their platform’s wide scale use and represented “horse and buggy laws” in an age of automobiles. But it focused on the fact that the middle class hosts using the platform to make ends meet in a legal way during a time of growing income inequality.
New York is not the only place where regulators are attempting to change Airbnb’s business practices. In the company’s hometown of San Francisco, there were new discussions on legislation would limit short-term rentals to no more than 60 days a year. Hosts who had complied with the city’s registration requirements, who the city believes are in the minority, would continue to be able to offer 90 days of unhosted rentals a year and unlimited hosted ones.
Buy2Greece.com 
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