Comment by hapless | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hapless | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

* He is defrauding his landlords. They rented him property on the understanding that it was a legal and low-risk engagement.

* He is hurting the neighbors to the properties he re-rents. They arranged to live in residential neighborhoods adjacent to other semi-permanent residents, not an illegal hotel. Hotels are not found in charming residential neighborhoods for a reason: nobody wants to live next to them.

* He is evading taxes that are used to improve new yorkers' quality of life at little/no expense to local residents.

* Insurance fraud is a probable consequence of his business. Since it's hard to get commercial insurance for your illegal venture, if he has ANY insurance, it would be a renter's policy and maybe a personal umbrella policy. Any claims he made would be fraudulent.

"used to improve new yorkers' quality of life at little/no expense to local residents"

Well, except for the losses from non-visitors who avoid cities with outrageously high "let's rip off our guests" taxes.

Those people may not be directly visible, but I assure you they are real.

if a 15% hotel tax is what steers you away from one of the world's preeminent tourist destinations, I'm not sure that you were going to add much to the local economy.

(To be a little less snarky, the microeconomics of the situation indicate it's probably not that damaging. Your hotel stay is probably less than half of your costs of visiting, so a 15% markup on that component alone doesn't raise the overall price of a trip very much.)

There are more premier tourist destinations in the world than I'll ever have time to visit in my lifespan.

It's not like there's a shortage of people who want to go to new york and can spare the extra 15% though, is it? The city was packed to the rafters long before Air BnB came along to 'disrupt' everything.

Heh, I'm surprised there have been no New Yorkers yet chiming in to say "good riddance". Most New Yorkers -- in my experience -- seem to share the sentiment that there are too many tourists already.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com