NEW YORK (AP) — Airbnb announced it has stopped accepting some reservations in New York City as new regulations on short-term rentals take effect Tuesday, making big changes for travelers hoping to avoid the high cost of hotels in the metropolis.
The new rules are aimed at ending a situation in which landlords and residents of the city rented out their apartments by the week or night to tourists or other people who are in the city for short stays.
Under the new system, stays of less than 30 days are only allowed if hosts register with the city. Hosts must agree to be physically present in the house for the duration of the rental, sharing the home with their guest. There are also no more than two guests allowed at a time, so families are excluded.
Platforms like Airbnb, VRBO and others are not allowed to process rentals for unregistered hosts, and earlier this week few had managed to register. The city said it has approved just under 300 of the more than 3,800 applications received.
Housing officials and advocates who had pushed for the restrictions said they were necessary to prevent apartments from becoming de facto hotels.
“In New York City, residential apartments must be for residential use,” said Murray Cox of Inside Airbnb, a housing advocacy group that collects data on the company’s presence in cities around the world.
Airbnb has fought the rules in court, arguing that they were essentially a ban, and would affect tourists looking for cheap accommodation.
But as of Aug. 21, the company — which had 38,500 active listings in New York City as of January — said it had stopped accepting short-term reservations from any host who had not provided their city registration number. or documents showing that you were in the process of obtaining one. He noted that once the city’s verification system is up and running, no short-term stay ads would be allowed on its website without a registration number.
Some owners of smaller homes claimed they were being treated unfairly and equated with larger apartment buildings.
“I think this is a big sign that our elected officials have let us down,” said Krystal Payne, who lives in a two-family home in Brooklyn and had been renting one of the apartments to help pay her mortgage.
