Judge Grants Airbnb Temporary Block of NYC Data Law
A federal judge on Thursday blocked a New York City ordinance aimed at cracking down on home-sharing companies like Airbnb.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer granted a request by Airbnb Inc. and HomeAway Inc. to issue a temporary injunction against the city ordinance, which was set to take effect Feb. 2.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio signed the Homesharing Surveillance Ordinance in August, which was due to take effect in February. The ordinance requires Airbnb and similar sites to turn over host names, addresses, listing URLs and other information to the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement, which goes after illegal short-term rentals.
Companies would face fines of up to $1,500 for each listing they fail to disclose, down from the $25,000 originally proposed.
Under state law, it is illegal in most buildings for an apartment to be rented out for less than 30 days unless the permanent tenant is residing in the apartment at the same time.
New York and other cities such as San Francisco, New Orleans, Barcelona (Spain) and Vancouver (British Columbia) have sought to regulate companies that profit from facilitating short-term rentals.
In April, the city's comptroller's office issued a report saying that the rising popularity of homesharing websites such as Airbnb's were adding to the city's affordable housing problems.
"The trendy replacement for hotels and hostels in effect removes housing units from the overall supply - units that might otherwise be available to rent to New Yorkers looking to rent an apartment," the report said.
Lawmakers said the regulation was a way to protect the city's affordable housing stock, but Airbnb challenged it in federal court in August, calling the law "an extraordinary act of government overreach."
"It is also the product of a multi-million dollar campaign funded by the City's powerful hotel lobby, which is intent on intimidating New Yorkers into abandoning homesharing," the company said in its complaint.
Airbnb also said city council members and other state and city officials "claim that this extreme governmental surveillance is somehow necessary because housing is being taken off the market illegally for use as short-term rentals and thereby driving up housing costs."
However, Airbnb said that as of June 1, 2018, there are only about 28,000 "entire home" Airbnb listings spread across New York City -about 0.8% of New York City homes. Moreover, the complaint said, "95% of hosts listing an entire home on Airbnb have only a single home offered - hardly a threat to the City's housing stock."
The New York City Mayor's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Vijay Dandapani, president and CEO of the Hotel Association of New York, said in an email that "there are merits to the new law and the 4th amendment issues suggested will be litigated."
"Homes that are commercial enterprises by virtue of becoming de-facto hotels cannot be entitled to the same privacy protections homeowners living in their own homes have," he wrote. "Airbnb and other short term rental platforms are facing pushback from cities around the world because of the innumerable problems caused by the mushroom growth of illegal hotels which subvert zoning and other residential rules put in place to keep society safe while bringing in valuable hospitality and commercial real estate taxes from the legitimate hotel industry."
