NYC Demands Details About 20K Airbnb Apartments

NEW YORK — New York City demanded Airbnb fork over details about thousands of apartments Monday despite an ongoing lawsuit over the city's tough rules for home-sharing services.

The city issued a subpoena to the firm seeking information about roughly 20,000 apartments that are part of Airbnb's New York City listings, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

The city wants to use the information to better regulate a relatively new industry in which property owners are improperly renting apartments or turning entire buildings into illegal hotels, the Democratic mayor said on NY1 Monday night.

"People are worried about the loss of housing, the loss of affordable housing," he said. "They’re worried about security — you got all sorts of strangers in your building. People want to know what the hell’s going on."

The subpoena came about seven weeks after a federal judge blocked a new city law requiring Airbnb and similar firms to disclose information about their hosts. The judge said the city could subpoena for the information while the lawsuit proceeds despite his questions about it, de Blasio said.

In a Tuesday letter responding to the mayor, Airbnb argued New York should take a more collaborative approach to an industry that serves as a financial lifeline for many hosts.

In San Francisco, for example, listings must be registered and approved by the city so hosts can make money and local officials can enforce their laws, wrote Chris Lehane, Airbnb's head of global policy. The firm supports state legislation that would create a similar registration system in New York, the letter says.

"We have faced a tremendous amount of adversity so that New York’s 40,000 hosts can make it here -- and rather than taking our ball and heading home, we want to find a way to play ball so that everyone can be a winner," Lehane wrote. "We hope you’ll work with us to find a path that allows them to keep their doors open while closing the doors of illegal hotel operators."

Airbnb persistently fought the city's law requiring home-sharing services to hand over troves of information about their hosts to the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement, which has cracked down on illegal short-term rentals.

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled last month that Airbnb and HomeAway, another home-sharing firm, were likely to succeed on their claim that the law violates the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits illegal searches and seizures.

But de Blasio argued more information about Airbnb's listings would further empower the Office of Special Enforcement to find and shut down illegal hotels that endanger the city's affordable housing stock.

Airbnb's letter said the firm has taken down more than 5,000 listings that violate its so-called "One Host, One Home" policy in the city. But de Blasio said the company should hand over the information in the name of transparency.

"If you got nothing to hide, why are you not coming forward with the information?" he said. "If Airbnb believes that all of the people it’s working with are doing things right, then why not be transparent?"

(Lead image: A sculpture of Airbnb's logo is seen in Los Angeles in November 2016. Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for Airbnb)