Airbnb Reaches Agreement With New York Attorney General

What's This?

By Jessica Plautz and Jason Abbruzzese2014-05-21 16:10:16 UTC

Airbnb has reached a deal with the New York attorney general in which the rental startup will turn over anonymized records for analysis.

The company announced the deal in a blog post on Wednesday, noting that no names or addresses will be provided to the authorities. The attorney general's office has one year to look over Airbnb's data, which could spur investigators to acquire further information about particular hosts that may have broken state housing laws.

See also: New York Goes to War Against Airbnb for Disrupting Hotel Business

According to New York's housing law, it is illegal to rent out an entire apartment for less than 30 days. Potentially thousands of the New York City listings on Airbnb's website are in violation.

Additional details of the agreement:

Under the terms of the agreement we announced today:

• 
  

  Airbnb will provide the Attorney General with anonymized data about our hosts in New York. This data will not include names, addresses or other personally-identifiable information.

  
  


• 
  

  The Attorney General’s Office will have one year to review the anonymized data and receive information from us about individual hosts who may be subject to further investigation. We believe the Attorney General’s Office is focused on large corporate property managers and hosts who take apartments off the market and disrupt communities. We have already removed more than 2,000 listings in New York and believe that many of the hosts the Attorney General is concerned about are no longer a part of Airbnb.

  
  


• 
  

  We will provide even more information to hosts about the laws in New York. Hosts will see additional information before they list their space and we’ll email every host in New York with information about the law.

  
  

Last week, a judge threw out the attorney general's subpoena for Airbnb's host records, saying that the request was too broad. Although Airbnb touted the decision as a win, the subpoena was quickly reissued with a smaller scope.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Topics: AirBNB, Lifestyle, new york city, travel, Travel & Leisure, U.S.