I wish the article explored the penalties associated with continued rentals in violation of the new regulations. Obviously there could be tax penalties but I'm curious if there are additional civil fines, potential criminal violations, or hell maybe civil forfeiture laws might apply (I saw that tounge and cheek but after another front page post that may be a reality?). Would airbnb pay costs and lawyers fees like Uber has done?
I would like to know if AirBnB is covering the $2,400 assessed penalty on behalf of Nigel Warren.
I am also curious about the immediate steps AirBnB is taking to address this, not the long term lobbying effort mentioned at the end of the article. For example, will AirBnB disallow NYC listings under 29 days until this is resolved? Or will they let people roll the dice with disclaimers that such rentals may violate local law and result court assessed fines.
As naive as this may sound, especially for a company that is likely already valued over $1 billion, this is a golden opportunity for AirBnB to gain unparallelled media and bolster main stream support.
$10 billion valuation for a company based on asking people to blatantly break legal agreements or the local law. I bet a huge part of that raise is for lobbying and legal. Im not saying AirBnB shouldn't have better legal standing BTW, but they are operating in a huge grey area.
AirBnb has recently been made illegal in my state (New York State) for stays under 30 days. Of course a lot of people don't know or don't care about the law, but they're giving out fines left and right. This is likely true with other states as well.
I think the punishment needs to continue to flow uphill, and start hitting AirBnB directly. If I run an operation that continuously provides safe harbor to people knowingly and willfully breaking the rules, I get in trouble.
All of this discussion about what airbnb should or shouldn't do is ultimately moot now. Unless they can prove "EJ" is totally fictional and/or an insane liar the company is essentially dead in the water already (at least as a US operation). Not just because of the PR hit (though that is substantial), but because of the inevitability of media, lawyers & politicians circling the wagons around this story.
Airbnb's business will be explicitly illegal throughout much of the US by year's end, and honestly in its current incarnation I'm not convinced that it is a bad thing (for obvious reasons this is clearly a market which needs more regulation and process than they provide).
Nice experiment... too bad about all of that flushed away money though.
The more I look at AirBnb, it reality it seems like a conspiracy to enable illegal activity (illegal listings, not collecting taxes). I wonder if in the future, a US Attorney or State Attorney General will attempt to bring criminal charges against the principals of the company. The threat of real jail time would do wonders to get their attention.
The overall implication here seems to be that the majority (just about) are using AirBnb in the way that AirBnb says they do. But there is a minority that are using it heavily for commercial enterprises, and there's a potential that AirBnb could be tripped up by them, legally.
The easiest thing to do would be to enforce stricter rules to push the commercial entities out of the AirBnb system... but those are also probably the people who make AirBnb the most money.
AirBnB profits from illegal activity and they have deep pockets for a settlement _and_ want to avoid negative publicity which leads to explicit regulation of STRs. It makes a lot of sense.
How has Airbnb not been sanctioned by more local governments seeking to curb this behavior? Just like Napster, Uber, and all of the other "sharing economy" apps that have popped up in the past 20 years, Airbnb's profit model hinges on the ability of its users to skirt local laws and operate in this very gray area.
It seems like very short-sighted planning by city councils who impose some nominal license/approval fee in exchange for the long-term health of their own communities. I don't see how this is sustainable.
I think AirBnB et al need to make it clear that they are attempting to BE the regulatory system. The major argument behind bills like this is that regulation is a nightmare, and it's not an unreasonable one. Unless of course you understand how AirBnB works, and the kind of regulation it provides.
If the penalties come to pass, which they probably won't, I wonder how it will actually affect usage.
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