Two years ago today, Sept. 5, 2023, New York City successfully addressed the crisis of illegal short-term rental platforms displacing tenants and worsening our housing shortage. While other cities struggled to rein in Airbnb, Vrbo and more from breaking our housing laws, Local Law 18, enacted by the City Council, went into effect. This landmark legislation cracked down on predatory short-term rental companies.
The law has been an unqualified success, giving officials the tools they need to enforce short-term rental rules already on the books and returning more than 10,000 homes back to everyday New Yorkers.
But now, Airbnb wants back in — and it’s spending millions on a misinformation campaign to overturn Local Law 18 precisely because it is working exactly as intended.
When Local Law 18 went into full effect, the number of Airbnb listings dropped from nearly 22,000 to just 3,227 — a dramatic decline that revealed how widespread the problem of illegal short-term rentals was. Manhattan saw nearly 9,000 more rentals become available overnight, up 6% from the prior month and 42% year-over-year. In Brooklyn, rentals jumped by more than 4,000 units — a three-year high that was 11% more than the previous month and 19% more when compared to September 2022.
These changes translated to big savings, too — which academic and city reports confirmed New Yorkers were being forced to pay before Local Law 18 went into effect. In 2016, the company’s pressure on the market forced renters to pay an additional $616 million in rent, and between 2014 and 2018, the average renter essentially paid an “Airbnb tax” of $380 every year that cost New Yorkers nearly $3 billion.
It’s no surprise, then, that the same company which profited from this crisis is now spending big to convince us that they can make New York City more affordable.
This year, Airbnb was the single largest spender in local elections, shelling out more than $10 million to local races and opposing candidates who support the existing short-term rental laws. But after mixed success, the company is now pushing a new campaign with all the hallmark traits of astroturf efforts they have practiced — and been exposed for — across the world.
As it has elsewhere, Airbnb is currently claiming (after other arguments failed to move the City Council) that our short-term rental law should be overturned because it has failed to lower rents or hotel rates. They argue that since changes haven’t materialized quickly, lawmakers should scrap Local Law 18 altogether — and conveniently allow them to return to the market.
To get the message out, Airbnb is deploying organizations they pay to champion their cause, omitting that these “community” groups have no real constituency behind them and are funded by Airbnb to do their bidding. They are also pushing bad-faith “polls” and vague “reports” to buy cover with lawmakers they contribute to.
This strategy isn’t new. Airbnb has long faced accusations for trying to fake local support to advance its agenda. For years, the company has routinely used its hosts to battle with California lawmakers, and just last month was caught in Los Angeles for bankrolling a shadowy “grassroots” campaign to undermine short-term rental regulations there. Outside the U.S., the company has spent millions to argue in court that cities cannot impose restrictions on short-term rentals.
But New Yorkers know that Airbnb is lying about Local Law 18 — and that their plan would only exacerbate the very issues the company claims to care about. Airbnb is one of the richest corporations in the world, desperate to protect its profits, and it will continue to lie, distort, and mislead to achieve that goal at our expense.
After more than a decade of organizing and advocating for my fellow tenants in Central Brooklyn, I’ve seen how unregulated short-term rentals hurt our communities, and how Local Law 18 is finally protecting us.
Two years on from its passage, we’re still fighting for the neighborhoods we deserve — where housing is for residents, not tourists and shareholders. But we aren’t going anywhere. Local Law 18 proves that when real tenant-led, grassroots coalitions take action, corporate giants like Airbnb don’t get the final word. And as Airbnb tries to claw its way back, we’ll make sure the Council doesn’t let them.
Girón is a member of the Crown Heights Tenant Union (CHTU) and the political director of Tenants PAC, a grassroots political action committee defending tenant rights in New York.
