The most common situation seems to be one where it is legal for Airbnb, the business, to exist and do what it does, but where the majority of the people listing their places to rent on it are violating some law/regulation or clause of their lease by doing so.
Sort of like how running a user-generated content site is legal, but people who upload movies/albums/etc. to it in violation of copyright are on the wrong side of the law.
Short term rentals have been illegal in San Fran since (I believe) the 80s.
Running a hotel without paying hotel taxes and following other regulations is generally illegal.
It surely is also is against local zoning regulations. I think zoning regulations are generally a good idea but in practice they are often harmful (except in older downtown areas which are generally friendly to mixed use).
I was simply commenting on the semantic nature of "it wasn't illegal, but it wasn't legal."
That said, "unlicensed hotel" is a quandary that has been argued a thousand times over. A hotel and a boarding house are legally distinct. Legally speaking, hotels have separate rooms for guests which is distinct from subletting either a single room as well as from subletting the entirety of the property. Legally speaking, an AirBNB rental most closely correlates to a "lodging house", which does not provide food for its guests, which is a requirement for a hotel, or inn (per Black's, anyway).
Legally speaking, what we are likely talking about is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of all AirBNB rentals that are now being lumped together into a single term, which only muddies the argument even further.
The idea that a sublet, lodging house, or boarding house is "close enough" to a hotel to be considered under the purview of hotel licensure is ... optimistic, and to me, smacks of the state's unwillingness to let some revenue go uncaptured.
But, that's just my opinion, and I appreciate that the argument is nuanced, and there are potentially safety concerns as well.
I think that weird semantic nature is because there's more than one entity involved here.
AirBnB is just a platform. It is, by itself, legal. However, virtually everyone who uses AirBnB uses it illegally.
Thus, it's not illegal (because AirBnB the service is not forbidden) but it's not legal (because it's hard to use the service without breaking the law, and in practice almost nobody does what's required).
But it wasn't unregulated. It was just poorly regulated. You could legally AirBnB your place by getting a "conditional-use permit" and notifying all your neighbors.
Well,obviously if a laboratory creates a new drug,and that drug is not approved by the FDA,that drug is illegal.
The problem with Airbnb business,is that Airbnb soclializes the risk.Airbnb doesnt risk anything,hosts do.Of course it is in the interest of Airbnb to make sure its users risk the minimum.But Airbnb as a plateform is legal.Airbnb can argue it's just like Ebay or Paypal.
All these "disruption" plateforms Airbnb,Kickstarter,Uber and such,they pretty much work the same way.They are the new middlemen,that bypass former middlemen,collect a fee and wash their hand of any wrong doing when things turn south.
My only problem is with Airbnb, it can really drive prices up for long-term renters,that have others things to do than running illegal hotels.
> The problem with Airbnb business,is that Airbnb soclializes the risk.Airbnb doesnt risk anything,hosts do.
Like Craigslist. And Ebay. And Etsy. And all these other fantastic platforms that let people generate money / increase productivity without the old gate keepers getting in the way. Not a new problem, and one that many consumers -- like me -- are happy to deal with versus the alternative.
I'd argue that being ripped off a couple hundred $ on an auction platform, or an e-commerce site is in a somewhat different category than getting your apartment ransacked by speed freaks, or you being attacked by a mentally volatile driver with a hammer.
> Well,obviously if a laboratory creates a new drug,and that drug is not approved by the FDA,that drug is illegal.
Is that true? I thought the FDA could only regulate drugs that made a claim to treat or cure a disease. If it wasn't specifically illegal or if it isn't making a claim to treat a disease, the FDA doesn't have jurisdiction to regulate it.
The FDA only has jurisdiction over things that are intended to "diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent" an illness. Witness the incredible boom in dietary supplements, (nearly) all of which disclaim exactly the quoted verbiage. (Those that don't disclaim doing those things tend to get a lawyergram from the FDA in short order. See what happened to 23andMe's service a while back as one case in point.)
Uh, was it illegal before?