The Gothamist reports from New York. "Activists often argue that Airbnb is driving up New York City rents by allowing fly-by-night hoteliers to illegally rent out whole apartments year-round, thus taking much-needed housing off the market. The data news site FiveThirtyEight commissioned data from the for-profit Airbnb data-scraping service Airdna to understand the prevalence of whole-apartment rentals in cities nationwide. The data for New York shows that between June 2015 and May 2016 about 8 percent, or 2,464 of the city's 30,800 Airbnb listings offered whole apartments for more than 180 days out of the year."

"A city housing survey in 2014 found that just 3.45 percent, or 75,900 of New York's 2.2 million apartments were vacant at a given time. Last month, data compiled by the firm Citi Habitats showed that just 1.92 percent, or 16,500 of Manhattan's about 854,000 apartments were available. In this context, 2,400 apartments (more or less) is kind of a big deal."

"A recent report by MFY Legal Services and Housing Conservation Coordinators defined 'impact listings' as whole apartment listings that are rented for less than 30 days, booked more than once a month, and listed more than either 3 or 6 months out of the year. Their analysis found 8,058 such units in New York, and determined that if all else remained equal and those apartments were returned to the rental market, the citywide vacancy rate would rise to 4 percent."

"Murray Cox, an activist with the group Inside Airbnb, said that the startup's resistance to turning over even anonymized data shows that it doesn't care about concerns that it is adding pressure to an already extremely tight housing market."

"'If they were really interested in accountability, they would be trying to work within the intent of [government] regulations and working with cities to protect affordable housing, and addressing what is abuse of the platform and what it is people are interested in protecting about neighborhoods,' he said. 'I think that Airbnb isn’t interested in doing that at all. I think they’re interested in defending anything that they see as an attack on their revenue.'"

The Tampa Bay Times in Florida. "Large parties are continuing in a Tierra Verde mansion rented through Airbnb, even as the host faces drug trafficking charges and a Pinellas County commissioner is looking at ways to eliminate abuses of the popular home-sharing site. As the Tampa Bay Times reported in June, the house has been in foreclosure for several years. The elderly widow who lived there deeded the property to Tampa real estate broker Kevin Byrne, who has been renting it for about $3,000 a month since January."

"With a home in foreclosure, 'who do you hold responsible in that scenario?' said County Commissioner Janet C. Long. 'People spend their hard-earned dollars to live in a lovely neighborhood and they have to deal with that kind of thing and there's no law against it.'"

Fusion on California. "In the teeny-tiny village of Joshua Tree, California, population 7,000, there are more than 200 vacation rentals on Airbnb. In recent years, visitors to Joshua Tree National Park have soared, and last year the number of visitors hit a record high, surging by more than 27 percent to over 2 million. 'The short-term rental market is out of control right now,' said Mark Lundquist, the local field representative for the village from the San Bernardino County government."

"Over the past year, Lundquist told me, feeding that demand has put a strain on local resources. The local home buyers’ market has all but dried up as property owners put their places on short-term rental sites instead of up for sale. Long-term rental units are scant. And in Joshua Tree, it’s not even peak tourism season—that isn’t until the fall."

"In May, I worked with the technologist and Airbnb data guru Tom Slee to investigate Airbnb’s effect on the small Icelandic capital of Reykjavik. In Reykjavik, which has a population of 120,000, five percent of the local rental market now belongs to Airbnb. It has made finding a place to live there next to impossible. Since then, both Slee and I have heard from even smaller communities reeling from the impact of sharing economy startups."

The Williamette Week in Oregon. "When Rebecca Rosenfelt moved to Portland from San Francisco last summer, she and her husband paid $1.6 million for two Boise neighborhood townhouses and almost immediately began renting one of them out on Airbnb for as much as $350 a night. The four-bedroom townhouse is one of six properties Rosenfelt listed on the short-term rental marketplace Airbnb—three in Portland, one in San Francisco, and two in Northern California's Sonoma County."

"When Portland began allowing short-term rentals in 2014, City Hall created rules to ensure that Airbnb's clients wouldn't add to a citywide housing crunch by taking apartments and homes off the market and renting them out to tourists. San Francisco passed similar restrictions. Among those rules: People can list only properties where they live for at least nine months a year."

"Rosenfelt's six properties violate the spirit of those rules—and at least two of her rentals, the San Francisco condo and Northeast Portland townhouse, flout the letter of the law by not having the required city permits and safety inspections."

"And Rosenfelt should know the law: She's an Airbnb manager at the tech company's Portland headquarters."

"Critics have long complained that Portland's short-term rental regulations are toothless—two years after the rules were adopted, less than a quarter of Airbnb clients have bothered to get the required $178 permit and safety inspection. Now those skeptics say the rules have become such a joke that even an Airbnb employee ignores them."

"'It just makes it look like those rules were only ever for show,' says Margot Black, an organizer with Portland Tenants United. 'Even an Airbnb manager is blatantly flouting them. The fact that it's in the midst of a housing crisis makes it all the more obscene.'"

"An analysis commissioned by WW shows that if illegal short-term rentals were removed from the Airbnb website, as many as 1,718 homes could be made available to Portland residents instead of tourists. Some leaders say the city's housing supply is being drained by short-term rental scofflaws. 'If you take thousands of units off the market, it's going to have an impact,' says Commissioner Nick Fish. 'People now have the option of making more money renting to short-term rather than long-term tenants.'"

"About 79 percent of the 3,500 Portland listings on Airbnb don't have city permits, according to data provided by the city and Murray Cox of the tech website Inside Airbnb. In 2015, WW reported that dozens of Airbnb clients were ignoring city rules by listing multiple short-term rentals—sometimes while living out of state ("Hotel California," WW, Feb. 17, 2015). A recent examination by Cox shows the problem has persisted even after repeated deadlines from the city and the threat of fines to the company."

"In one example, one woman has 22 listings all clustered near Northeast Alberta Street, none of them giving a city permit number, according to data from Inside Airbnb. Rosenfelt has worked as a product manager for Airbnb since 2012, according to her LinkedIn profile.

"Rosenfelt's condo in San Francisco remained listed on Airbnb. She can't get a legitimate Airbnb permit for the San Francisco address as long as she lives in Portland, because San Francisco also requires Airbnb clients to live in the units they rent out. There's no record of a permit ever being issued to Rosenfelt, officials with San Francisco's short-term rentals office say."

"She's not the first Airbnb employee to run afoul of the rules. The company's CEO, Brian Chesky, was busted in January for failing to register his apartment in San Francisco, but he easily rectified the situation by registering his couch, for which he asks $50 a night."

"But unlike Chesky, Rosenfelt can't fix her mistake with paperwork—she's breaking the rules in two cities, including residency requirements. The Boise townhouses Rosenfelt purchased were built just last year. Nearly three years ago, a developer purchased a modest house on Northeast Rodney Avenue for $259,000, demolishing it to make way for Rosenfelt's two, 3,000-square-foot townhouses."

"Those new units might have increased the city's housing supply—but it appears one of them is partly being used as a bootleg hotel. (Airbnb officials say Rosenfelt is renting at least a portion of her second townhouse to a long-term tenant, as well as advertising it as a short-term rental.) Airbnb spokeswoman Alison Schumer defends the company's record in working with Portland, blaming the city's 'complex' process for getting permits."

"Schumer declined to comment on why Rosenfelt was allowed to list six properties on Airbnb. 'We are working with this employee to help her navigate the registration process,' Schumer says."