Renting out your apartment still illegal

From the NY Post:

Simple question: Do you have the right to turn your apartment into a hotel room to make extra cash? Simple answer: No.

Airbnb, the 5-year-old vacation-rental business, lets you post your apartment online and snag a paying guest to stay for a night or 10. A huge chunk of the company’s business is in the city — and is illegal.

Albany and City Hall have long made a legal distinction between apartments and hotels. An apartment is for people to live in — for at least 30 days.

There’s a real difference. People tend to act differently when on vacation — drinking more and partying later, carrying more cash. Out-of-towners also accept help from the wrong person more often.

Bottom line: They’re more likely to be crime victims or perpetrators.

That’s why hotels spend big on security, and why they must comply with special fire-safety and other rules.

Airbnb makes it easy, if not legal, for both tenants and landlords to convert apartments into hotels while ignoring these risks.

Airbnb also says the money its hosts make helps them keep New York affordable. “This income is actually helping them to stay in their homes,” Airbnb policy director Molly Turner said last month.

But a landlord can get $3,000 a month for a one-bedroom legally, or $9,000 illegally. After he eventually cuts out the middleman — the tenant who thinks she’s smart in making a few extra bucks — that’s an apartment that someone can’t live in, pushing up rents for everyone.

You don’t have to believe in rent control to realize that the city should enforce laws to keep apartments as apartments.

The NY Times has more.