Airbnb is making a big push to loosen the regulatory noose around its neck in the Big Apple – before it’s too late and a Mamdani administration potentially takes over.
The home-sharing giant wants the City Council to change a 2023 law that effectively shut down most Airbnb listings in the city.
Under the proposed legislation, owners of single-family homes would be allowed to offer rentals without the hosts being present for less than 30 days. The city’s limit on guests would also be lifted, from two to four.
The new legislation targets Local Law 18, a two year-old bill that has decimated Airbnb and the rest of the short-term rental market in New York City.
After faltering earlier this year, the latest bill was quietly amended last week to also undo the existing law’s “unlocked doors provision,” which requires hosts to keep all doors accessible to guests.
The proposed legislation stands to affect homeowners in Brooklyn and Queens the most. Airbnb hosts in those boroughs have said they are financially squeezed by not being able to rent to families and guests who don’t want to share their vacation with a host.
A draft bill loosening the Airbnb restrictions was scrapped in February amid strong opposition from the hotel industry and other groups.
The same sectors are crying foul again – even as hotel rates in the city have steadily climbed since Local Law 18 was enacted.
The new legislation comes “as Airbnb tries to salvage their multi-million dollar campaign to undermine our housing laws before New Yorkers and a new pro-tenant mayor can stop them,” read a statement from Tenants Not Tourists, a coalition of housing advocates that is supported by the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council union.
Opponents of the latest bill say Airbnb will later try to go further and free up all hosts — including apartments in Manhattan that have largely disappeared from Airbnb’s platforms.
Airbnb has spent millions on a political action committee supporting City Council members who have been willing to revisit some of the most stringent requirements of Local Law 18. Those include the sponsor of the new bill, Brooklyn Dem Mercedes Narcisse.
Neither Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani nor independent Andrew Cuomo, who’s been catching up to the lefty in the polls, has publicly commented on the proposed change to the city’s Airbnb law.
However, Mamdani, who’s made housing affordability the centerpiece of his campaign, is widely expected to oppose loosening the restrictions.
A Mamdani spokesperson did not immediately answer a request for comment.
Cuomo’s supporters see him as being amenable to changing the law’s tight grip on the home sharing industry in New York, sources said, pointing to the fact deep-pocketed Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia is one of the largest single donors to a pro-Cuomo super PAC.
A spokesperson for the ex-governor did not immediately answer a request for comment.
Airbnb has slammed the city’s current law as failing “to deliver on its promise to improve housing affordability.”
“Homeowners are struggling even as short-term rentals have all but disappeared,” Michael Blaustein, the company’s Northeast Atlantic policy lead, said in a statement.
Airbnb believes the new bill will get a vote before the end of the year, according to a source close to the company.
The next step is a Council Housing Committee hearing scheduled for Nov. 13.
The current rules require hosts to register with the city and certify that their homes meet rigorous building, zoning and other codes — or face fines of up to $5,000.
In June, the city sent warning letters to 500 of the 3,000 registered short-term rental hosts here, while another five were threatened with having their licenses revoked, according to Office of Special Enforcement, which regulates the home sharing industry in the city.
