Airbnb and the NY Attorney General will meet in court in New York this week. Both sides will provide their oral arguments related to a subpoena filed by the state.
New York’s Attorney General issued a subpoena for thousands of records from the rental agency. The subpoena was issued to determine if Airbnb was allowing “bad actors” to remain on its network.
Officials for the massively expanding rental agency claim the request is “unreasonably broad.”
The Attorney General claims that a disproportionate number of listings on Airbnb’s platform arrive by way of agencies that rent multiple locations. Under current law New York only allows individuals to rent out rooms in their own homes.
Data extraction company Connotate, found in January that of the 19,522 listings in New York City, only 15,677 were from unique hosts. 1,849 hosts control 5,964 listings in New York City. The largest company, Metro, Inc! operates 134 rentals. According to the study, 12% of hosts make up 30% of the city’s listings.
The team at Airbnb says it is working to weed out bad actors. The state says the number of “bad actor” listings has actually increased since the subpoena was issued last fall.
While many Airbnb operations involve multiple locations, many others are setup to earn extra cash, or even to help renters make their own rent or pay their mortgage.
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