Hundreds in Prospect Heights, Crown Heights Hosting on AirBnB

Last week, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman demanded that AirBnB, the temporary apartment sharing site, turnover information on its users — specificially those renting out their homes on a temporary basis. 

The attorney general gave the site until Today, Oct. 14 to do so, as the site is operating against the New York State occupancy code,based on a judge's decision from earlier this year. 

As AirBnB fights to stay alive in the five boroughs, there are quite a few extra dollars at stake for residents of almost every neighborhood, who have been using their apartments as occasional cash cows.

A petition has been circulating on peers.org to force the city to allow apartment sharing on sites that facilitate transactions. AirBnB users who post their apartments can charge what they like for their rooms, and the Attorney General says it's costing the state hundreds of thousands in unpaid hotel taxes in the tourism capital of the country. 

How prevalent is the practice of posting a site on AirBnB in Brooklyn. It depends on where you live.

In Bed-Stuy, a search of the site for local AirBnB lodgings returned over 1,000 results, with prices ranging from $80 to more than $1,500 per night. 

Meanwhile in Prospect Heights, there were fewer participants, 303, and the prices were a bit lower — though the outliers still existed. One user in Crown Heights had listed their entire apartment for $1,400 per night. 

What do you think? Is AirBnB a problem for the city's tourism industry? Should people be allowed to do what they want with their apartments? Let us know what you think in the comments.