Hotel union: Airbnb removes thousands of apartments from rental market

A new report, funded by the Hotel Trades Council, claims that Airbnb removed between 7,000 and 13,500 apartments from the long-term rental market in the last three years.

The report states that Airbnb hosts are driving up rent and contributing to the city’s housing shortage, Politico reported. The analysis is based on data from September 2014 to August 2017.

The study notes that many of the apartments removed from the long-term rental market are in neighborhoods that are expected to see a surge in new development, like East New York. Bedford-Stuyvesant is another popular neighborhood. The report points out that these areas are predominately occupied by black residents, but the Airbnb hosts profiting off the neighborhood are mostly white.

A representative for Airbnb noted that properties rent for a median of 47 nights per year in the city.

“What that signals and what we believe is that most folks in New York are using it as an occasional source of supplemental income,” the representative told Politico. “That unit is not being lost to the long-term rental market. It’s being used.”

Meanwhile, the city has continued to crackdown on landlords accused of running illegal Airbnb hotels.

In 2015, The Real Deal performed its own data analysis and found that Airbnb pushed up rents in some neighborhoods by as much as $69 a month. [Politico] — Kathryn Brenzel