Is San Francisco Friendlier to Short Term Travelers than NY?

03 Jul 2010

us outline 300x189 Is San Francisco Friendlier to Short Term Travelers than NY?

People who have extra room to spare in their homes have started to take advantage of that fact to earn a little bit of income. They rent out their space to short-term travelers, offering them better deals than local hotels with the added touch of a personal stay in someone else’s home. This works best for people living in tourist destinations because there is an endless stream of visitors who want to pay to stay with them. It also works best in cities like San Francisco and New York where many of the visitors are from foreign countries as staying with locals seems to be something that Europeans and other foreigners find more appealing than other Americans do.

Two new bits of news came out about this recently that show off the differences when it comes to doing this in New York and doing it in San Francisco:

  1. AirBnB founder staying in others’ homes throughout 2010. The first bit of news is that the founder of the website AirBnB has decided to spend the rest of the year staying in the homes that are listed on his site. AirBnB is a San Francisco based website that allows people with space to connect with travelers. It’s a great site that I’ve used myself. It offers some measure of safety and security for connecting strangers from different locations and many of the homes on the site are homes that are ideal for visitors to stay in. The guy who runs the site is going to test it out himself by staying in various homes throughout San Francisco for the rest of the year and reporting back on his experiences. Most people that I’ve heard comment on this think it’s an interesting, fun experiment.
  2. New York may legislate against short-term vacation rentals. The second bit of news comes from New York and is about new legislation there that may stop people from being able to use sites like AirBnB. If it passes, this bill would ban all short-term rentals that are for less than one month at a time. This means that individuals who are interested in renting out their room to travelers aren’t legally going to be able to do so. Plenty of people in New York are riled up about the controversial legislation but it does point to a difference in general between how this type of thing is dealt with in NY as compared to CA.
In fairness, there are some definitely problems with short-term rentals. For one thing, a lot of the people who are subletting their rooms out aren’t actually allowed to do so according to their lease agreements. More importantly, perhaps, is that a safety issue is posed for the people who live in the building with these folks. It’s one thing to open yourself up to safety concerns by opening your doors to strangers but it’s another thing for your neighbors to be doing it without your permission in buildings that are supposed to be secure.
Nevertheless, the option of renting out rooms this way has a lot of upsides. In expensive cities like these it’s one way of keeping your rent affordable. It’s a great way to meet people whether you’re hosting travelers or are the traveler yourself. And it helps to keep travel costs down for visitors who may not otherwise be able to afford to come to these cities. So there are pros and cons. I just found it interesting that the two opposite-coast news stories came out around the same time. I just can’t see San Francisco following suit with a ban similar to the potential ban in New York. Can you?
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