Airbnb, the pioneering home rental service, presents itself as useful and virtuous, but the reality is far less benign, according to a report that Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, released on Thursday.
The report will say nearly three-quarters of all Airbnb rentals in the city are illegal, violating zoning or other laws. Commercial operators, not hard-luck residents, supply more than a third of the units and generate more than a third of the revenue. At least a handful of landlords are running what amount to illegal hostels.
Property owners on Airbnb are indeed making money, but it is not being spread around. Most rentals are in three high-profile Manhattan neighborhoods. Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island barely figure.
Airbnb declined to aggressively dispute the numbers in the report, which draws on four years of data it provided to the attorney general after a court fight.
We need to move forward, an Airbnb spokesman, Nick Papas, said. We need to work together on some sensible rules that stop bad actors and protect regular people who simply want to share the home in which they live.
Airbnb, which is most likely contemplating a public offering in the next few years, seemed eager to avoid another fight. Its latest round of fund-raising put its valuation at $10 billion.
The housing broker and its imitators, like the taxi service Uber and its clones, have been prompting upheaval just about everywhere they go.
Admirers say these stars of the so-called sharing economy are breaking up monopolies that have grown greedy and lazy. They are empowering individuals. Critics say that the start-ups are unsavory efforts to avoid regulation and taxes, and that the very term sharing economy is ridiculous.
