Airbnb Says Rent Report Concocted By 'Special Interests'

NEW YORK, NY — Airbnb thinks City Comptroller Scott Stringer cooked up a report to make the company look bad at the behest of "special interests" — and it wants to find out how.

The firm filed a Freedom of Information request Thursday for communications leading to Stringer's analysis of Airbnb's effect on New York City rents.

Airbnb believes the hotel industry helped concoct the report showing the company's presence costs New Yorkers millions of dollars in extra rent, company spokeswoman Liz DeBold Fusco said. Stringer's office denies the claim.

"This report was paid for with taxpayer dollars and the public has the right to know about who participated in this snow job," Chris Lehane, Airbnb's head of global policy, said in a statement.

Stringer's report, published Thursday, says Airbnb created price pressure that forced New York City tenants to pay $616 million in extra rent in 2016. The report attributed about 9 percent of the total increase in rents citywide to the company.

Airbnb fired back, saying the comptroller's office used a flawed methodology and drew illogical conclusions. Lehane said the report assumes Airbnb hosts are filling their rooms or apartments every night of the year, which is "akin to conducting a traffic study that assumes all cars in New York are on the road all day, every day."

AirDNA, the Airbnb analytics website that Stringer's report cited, also said the comptroller misinterpreted its data. The report incorrectly conflates all types of Airbnb listings — entire homes, private rooms and shared rooms — and didn't distinguish between active and inactive listings, AirDNA said.

Roughly 5,300 entire homes — or 0.2 percent of the city's housing stock — were rented for at least six months in the past year through Airbnb, the company said. More than half the city's Airbnb apartments were rented for one to three months in the last year, suggesting they were "part-time, seasonal rentals," according to AirDNA.

"The Comptroller is once again using Airbnb as a scapegoat for a housing affordability crisis that has been growing for decades," said AirDNA CEO Scott Shatford, who is described as an "Airbnb entrepreneur" in his bio.

Airbnb argues Stringer's report was a hit job pushed by the hotel industry, which "has invested millions into attacking our host community," Fusco said.

The American Hotel and Lodging Association, a hotel trade group, has made a concerted effort to kneecap Airbnb with state legislation and political rhetoric, The New York Times reported last year. That included a 2016 New York State law allowing hefty fines for illegal Airbnb hosts.

Locally, the 35,000-member Hotel Trades Council, a union representing hotel workers, pushed for that law and also wants city and state lawmakers to require the company to disclose hosts' addresses, according to Crain's New York. The union gave $9,700 to Stringer's political campaign from 2010 to 2015, city records show.

A spokeswoman for Stringer said hotel industry groups were not involved in developing the report. The comptroller's office took a "non-biased, data-driven approach" to the available data to draw conclusions about Airbnb's irrefutable effects on the city's economy, the spokeswoman said.

Based on information from AirDNA, those conclusions would have been the same regardless of whether apartments were listed on Airbnb full-time or part-time, the spokeswoman said.

"The company’s attempt to politicize our analysis – no different in process or methodology from all our work – is a disgrace," the spokeswoman for Stringer said in a statement. "Airbnb should be using their platform to promote fair policies and include all New Yorkers in their gains. Instead, they are coming after a fair, precise report from government professionals."

The Hotel Trades Council did not respond to a request for comment.

(Lead image: Photo by Tero Vesalainen/Shutterstock)