New York City Council Passes Housing Sharing Bill

It may be time for Airbnb to check.

"This has earned us a lot of complaints," said City Council President Corey Johnson.

The culmination of a month-long battle between the hotel City Council cracked down on sharing the house on Wednesday, which could be a blow to the operation of D & # 39; 39; Airbnb in the city.

The board voted unanimously to force sites like Airbnb to disclose addresses and hosts for each list – information currently hidden. If the site does not comply, it could be punishable by fines of thousands of dollars.

For years, site critics, fueled and backed by the hospitality industry, said many of its listings were illegal. [19659002] It is against the law of the state to rent an entire apartment for less than 30 days if a guest is not in residence. Officials say the shady owners operate apartments like illegal hotels.

Meanwhile, Airbnb sees the bill as an attack on its hosts, some of whom even cast their vote on Wednesday

. tell people what they can do with their homes, "said guest Lee Thomas." They work hard for their homes. "

The hospitality industry and Airbnb have fought for months, each spending more than a million dollars to attract board members.

Airbnb claims that it's more than that.After Wednesday's vote, Airbnb company said: "After taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from the hospitality industry, we are not surprised that the city council has refused to meet their own constituents who are dependent on paying the bills and then voted to protect the profits of the big hotels. "

"This was done on the merits. The board has been talking about these issues for a very long time," Johnson said. "The number of complaints we receive for short-term rentals is overwhelming."

Last year, the hotel workers union spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for municipal campaigns and supported Johnson as a speaker.

A spokesman for Airbnb told NY1 that the fight was not over.

We asked the company if it planned to sue the city. The spokesman told us that he kept all his options open.