Airbnb Sues New York City Over Short-Term Rental Registration Rules (June 2023)

From the record. This is a look back at June 2023. The desk wrote it on 11 October 2026 from sources published at the time; Stay Gazette opened in July 2026 and did not report this as it happened.

On 1 June 2023, Airbnb sued the City of New York in the state's Supreme Court, and three of its New York City hosts filed a suit of their own the same day. Both suits asked the court to stop the rules that carried out Local Law 18, the city's short-term rental registration law. In an email to its New York hosts that day, Airbnb said the law and the rules amounted to a de facto ban on short-term rentals.

Reuters reported Airbnb as saying that more than 5,500 short-term rentals in the city held bookings, for more than 10,000 guests, from the first week of July, the month enforcement was due to begin. Airbnb's court filing, Reuters reported, put the company's 2022 net revenue from New York City at $85 million. On 9 June the city told the court it would wait until 5 September to enforce.

What the registration law required

The New York City Council adopted Local Law 18, the Short-Term Rental Registration Law, in January 2022, according to the hosts' court petition. It required hosts who rented their homes for fewer than 30 consecutive days to register with the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement, known as OSE. OSE adopted its final rules on 3 February 2023 and they took effect in March. The petition cited OSE's website as saying enforcement would not begin until July 2023.

Gothamist reported what a host had to do: apply to the city for a registration, describe the property in detail and resolve any open building violations. For stays under 30 days a host could rent out only rooms within the home where the host lived, and had to be there during the guests' stay.

The rules reached the platforms too. THE CITY reported that both the host and the booking service faced penalties when the law was broken, and that platforms had to carry out their own verification. 6sqft, citing the New York Times, reported that hosts could be penalized up to $5,000, and Airbnb up to $1,500 for a transaction on a rental that had not been verified.

What Airbnb argued

Airbnb's email to hosts was signed by Theo Yedinsky, its global policy director. It listed objections: OSE guidance that, by Airbnb's account, barred internal locks on bedroom doors, and a ban on hosts in private homes letting the whole home while they were away.

“Today’s filing comes only after exhausting all available paths for a sensible solution with the City,” Yedinsky wrote.

Reuters reported the filing as saying that the City Council, with the law it passed in 2022, had put in place its most severe regulatory scheme to date. THE CITY reported that Christian Klossner, OSE's executive director, said on 3 May that nine Airbnb registrations had been approved. According to the lawsuit, it reported, those hosts accounted for fewer than 0.04% of Airbnb's active non-hotel listings in the city.

Karen Dunn of the law firm Paul, Weiss, who represented Airbnb, said the rules were impossible on two levels, for the host and for the platform, THE CITY reported. It also reported Airbnb's claim that it would have to turn away even applicants OSE had cleared if the city's record and the listing differed in some small way, such as Avenue in one and Ave. in the other. Once enforcement started in July, Dunn said, the company would cancel thousands of summer vacation rentals that guests had already booked.

“We are here today because we have no choice. These new rules amount to a de facto ban on short-term rentals in New York City,” she said, as THE CITY reported.

The three hosts' petition

The hosts' suit was a verified petition by Rupi Arora, Sarah Brezavar and Gia Briscoe, filed with the New York County Clerk on 1 June 2023 under Index No. 154868/2023. The petition said each rented part of the home she owned and lived in, and that none was a real estate investor or a corporate host. Arora, 74 and retired, hosted at her house in Forest Hills, Queens. Brezavar, 81, hosted in the Upper West Side house she and her husband bought in 1972. Briscoe hosted in a brownstone in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

The petition said the final rules made applicants report how many people unrelated to them lived in the unit and file an amendment within 15 business days when that number changed, which the hosts argued the Fourth Amendment did not permit. It said hosts had to certify that they understood and would comply with zoning, multiple dwelling, housing maintenance and construction codes and other laws and rules. The hosts asked the court to declare the challenged rules arbitrary and capricious and to bar the city from enforcing them against the three.

What the city and the law's backers said

Jonah Allon, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams, said the City Council had properly adopted the registration law and that the city had kept working with hosts and platforms so that they knew what the law required of them, THE CITY reported.

“The rules governing short-term rentals, codified in both city and state law, have been clear for years,” Allon said in a written statement quoted by Gothamist.

THE CITY reported a reminder from OSE to hosts: under New York law it was still illegal to rent out a whole apartment for less than 30 days unless an occupant was present. Some tenant groups had backed the bill, THE CITY reported, saying short-term rentals had made affordable housing scarcer in their neighborhoods. Councilmember Carlina Rivera, a co-sponsor, said there were more than 10,000 illegal short-term rentals operating in the city, Gothamist reported.

Enforcement moved to 5 September

On Friday 9 June 2023, OSE informed the court that it had delayed enforcement, Gothamist reported. Enforcement had first been scheduled for 9 May and then postponed to 1 July. The new date was 5 September. Quartz reported that, according to the court filing, neither hosts nor booking services would be fined before then. It carried a statement from Allon, quoted by Reuters on 12 June, that the two sides had agreed to pause enforcement for a time so that each could brief the court in full.

As of 5 June, Gothamist reported, citing Klossner, OSE had accepted 36 of the 781 applications that had come in since registration opened in March and had fully reviewed only 13% of applications. In mid-May the office had 28 of the 60 positions in its budget filled, Gothamist reported, citing the director of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice. In mid-June 2023, when these reports ran, both suits were before the court and enforcement was set for 5 September.

Since then

On 8 August 2023, Commercial Observer reported that a New York Supreme Court judge had dismissed both lawsuits, Airbnb's and the hosts', reasoning that Airbnb had been given plenty of time to prepare and that the city was within its rights to require registration. Short Term Rentalz reported on 9 August 2023 that the judge, Arlene Bluth, had said the city acted within its authority.

The Gazette Verdict, looking back

Airbnb's suit bought its New York hosts one more summer, and in June 2023 that was all it had bought. The delay to 5 September covered the summer bookings that Airbnb said more than 5,500 rentals held from the first week of July, in a city where its own filing put its 2022 net revenue at $85 million. It left alone the rule that mattered most to whole-home hosts: the city's enforcement office said renting an entire apartment for under 30 days with no occupant present was already illegal under New York law. The hosts at risk were those who treated the lawsuit as a reason to wait, with fines of up to $5,000 reported for violations. A host should read a platform's lawsuit as a delay at best, and file the registration while the lawyers argue.

The other side

By Airbnb's account the suit was the only tool left, and it worked where it could. On 3 May the head of the city's enforcement office said nine registrations had been approved. By 5 June the office had accepted 36 of 781 applications, with 28 of its 60 budgeted positions filled in mid-May. At that pace a host who lived in the home and applied in good faith could not count on an answer before July. The filing moved the date past the peak season and, on Airbnb's numbers, kept thousands of guest trips intact. It also put the objections of resident hosts, a 74-year-old retiree among them, on the court record.

What it meant for hosts

For a New York host in June 2023, the lawsuits changed the calendar and left the requirements where they were. Airbnb's own email told hosts that, per OSE, they had to register to go on hosting.

Summer bookings stood. Quartz reported that neither hosts nor booking services would be fined before 5 September.
Registration stayed the route to hosting legally: an application, detailed information about the property and no outstanding building violations.
Only hosted stays could register. A host could rent rooms in the home where they lived, and had to be present. Stays longer than 30 days were not affected by the rule.
The cost of getting it wrong was on the record: fines that ranged from $100 to $5,000 for violations, Gothamist reported.
Hosts in apartment buildings had one more check to make. Owners had applied to put about 8,000 buildings on the city's prohibited building list, according to city officials cited by Gothamist.

With 36 of 781 applications accepted by 5 June, the practical move was to apply early.

Sources

Airbnb Newsroom, An update about our community in New York City (1 June 2023).
Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County (verified petition, Index No. 154868/2023, copy posted by the petitioners' law firm), Arora, Brezavar and Briscoe v. New York City Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement, Verified Petition (1 June 2023).
Reuters (Wayback Machine capture of 1 June 2023), Airbnb sues New York City for short-term rental restrictions (1 June 2023).
Gothamist (Wayback Machine capture of 1 June 2023), Airbnb sues NYC over new rules requiring hosts to register their homes as short-term rentals (1 June 2023).
THE CITY (Wayback Machine capture of 2 June 2023), Airbnb and Hosts Sue City, Calling New Registration Rules a Virtual Ban (1 June 2023).
Gothamist (Wayback Machine capture of 12 June 2023), 'Alarming' staffing shortage raises concerns over NYC’s new Airbnb registration rule (12 June 2023).
6sqft, NYC delays enforcement of new Airbnb short-term rental rules (13 June 2023).
Quartz, Airbnb hosts in New York City won one more summer of renting (14 June 2023).
Commercial Observer, State Court Dismisses Airbnb Registration Lawsuit Against NYC (8 August 2023).
Short Term Rentalz, Judge dismisses Airbnb lawsuit against New York City legislation (9 August 2023).

Airbnb Sues New York City Over Short-Term Rental Registration Rules