A quarter of their members have incomes of less than $75,000 a year, and half are people of color, Grossman tells the Guardian: “We’re gritty New Yorkers, and we’re middle-class.” Grossman’s lobbying group is called Restore Homeowner Autonomy and Rights, or Rhoar, and claims a membership of 450 single- and two-family home owners. What does it mean for residents desperate for more housing supply – and the tourists trying to visit? Who are the hosts fighting the new law? As the law went into effect this year, Grossman and a few other New York City homeowners formed a lobbying group seeking to legalize short-term, entire-home rentals for one- and two-family homes (such as duplexes), and they claim Mayor Eric Adams is sympathetic to their cause.Ĭities around the world are watching closely to see how the fight plays out in the largest tourism market to take action against Airbnb so far. Between August and October, the number of short-term rentals plunged 85%, according to Inside Airbnb, a housing activist group that tracks the platform’s data. Local Law 18 went into effect in September. And if Airbnb processes such a transaction, it could be forced to pay hefty fines. It forces hosts to get approved by the city before they can list short-term, partial-home stays on sites like Airbnb, which means they can no longer use the platform to advertise illegal short-term, entire-home stays at all. Now far more illegal hosts could get knocks on their door, thanks to the implementation of a new regulation called Local Law 18. “Ten minutes later, I got $10,000 in fines,” she says. She suspects someone tipped off officials, who confronted the guests outside her home. Hosts only got in trouble if someone reported them directly to authorities – which is what happened to Lisa Grossman, the owner of a posh Midtown Manhattan townhouse, who was penalized in 2019 for hosting short-term guests, charging them more than $2,000 a night. But people did it anyway, because it was lucrative and the city rarely enforced the rules.

That means it’s long been illegal to buy a New York apartment building to run a secret bed-and-breakfast empire, or even rent your shoebox out to tourists when you’re gone for a few days. Short-term rentals have only been allowed for part of a home, and only for up to two guests, if the primary resident is also present the whole time.

For many decades, New York City’s residential laws and building codes have prohibited residents from renting out their entire homes to guests for stays under 30 days. Even more so because it was mostly illegal.

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