One Brooklyn
“I have always believed that innovation is a good thing, and that government has been too far behind the curve in understanding the impact of disruptive technologies and creating effective regulatory structures that respond to them. To that end, I have been generally supportive of platforms for home sharing that allow homeowners to bring in some extra income, because people can and should be able to rent one- and two-family homes, private rooms in their apartments, as well as owner-occupied cooperatives or condominiums.
“What I cannot allow, what I do not support, and what I have increasingly seen, are commercial operators who make an end-run around our laws, displacing actual tenants for their own profit by illegally warehousing dozens of housing units that could be available for long-term rental. Unfortunately, many of these home sharing platforms have been co-opted by bad-acting landlords and real estate speculators who remove thousands of housing units from the marketplace, resulting in a depletion of our already scarce affordable housing supply and, in many cases, higher rents for long-standing tenants.
“Our enforcement agencies must have the basic information needed to stop illegal operators from profiting off our precious affordable housing stock. I support Council Member Rivera’s legislation because we want to pull back the curtain on illegal commercial operations that are bastardizing what the home sharing economy ought to be.”
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