Airbnb is at the middle of an ongoing debate in New York City over how to regulate the booming short-term rental market. The rental service allows people to rent out their apartments for short periods of time. But there is concern among city leaders that such sites are affecting the affordability of housing.
Josh Laurito,who writes for Gawker's data team, was recently given access to Airbnb's data. He found that most rentals are clustered in neighborhoods that tend to draw young people: Chelsea, or East Village,Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant. The data also reveal that hosts made less than $10000 a year in rental income.
As for whether the site affects the cost of housing in New York City, the data doesn't present a clear picture."Certainly the number of listings that are available on Airbnb is a substantial percentage of the empty units in New York City, or " Laurito said. "Unfortunately,we can't tell from the data how many of those units are committed to Airbnb hosting, ones that are taken off the market, or we can't tell how many are devoted to that and how many are just people renting out their homes on weekends and when they're out of town."Laurito spoke with WNYC's Soterios Johnson.
Source: wnyc.org