It's a shame it's come to this, but I'm sympathetic to NYC here. AirBnB had the time, resources, and advance notice to modify their policies and offerings in ways that allowed real homeowners to use the system but keep greedy land owners from running unregulated hotel chains.
AirBnB chose to keep the money hose pouring instead. They implicitly encouraged owners to operate in a way that violated the spirit of moderate, sensible couch sharing.
Agreed -- I even tried to contact them as the legal representative for our building to give them a chance to "fix" the situation and they refused to take down rental ads in our building after we stated it was both against building by-laws and NYC law.
"Although we are unable to evaluate private contract terms and cannot arbitrate these disputes, we will share your letter with the user responsible for the listing."
Gee, thanks. Notice -- no mention of violation of NYC law in the response.
AirBnB chose to keep the money hose pouring instead. They implicitly encouraged owners to operate in a way that violated the spirit of moderate, sensible couch sharing.
This is well deserved.