Airbnb has agreed to start remitting hotel taxes to the city of Los Angeles on behalf of its hosts in the area, the company said on Monday. As part of the deal, the home-sharing company will collect lodging taxes from its Los Angeles hosts and hand the proceeds over to the city, similar to its existing agreements with San Francisco and nearly 200 other cities worldwide. The deal will go into effect in August, according to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported about the agreement….

Few cities have taken such a hardline against Airbnb as Berlin. In May, a new law went into effect there that makes renting out entire apartments on sites like Airbnb illegal. Two months later, though, there are still hundreds of “entire homes” available to rent within the city’s borders on Airbnb. So Berlin residents who blame the city’s rising rental prices on Airbnb’s growth have launched a #BoycottAirbnb movement, placing graphic ads around the city urging tourists not to use the site. The ads feature Airbnb’s logo transformed into a noose and naughty parts of the human anatomy….

The Mirador 1000 is a massive, white condominium building fronted by palm trees in Miami’s South Beach neighborhood. It’s got a pool that looks directly out onto the ocean, a beautiful lobby and its own workout room. It’s within walking distance of South Beach’s best restaurants, shopping and clubs. A unit in the building is, in other words, a prime find on Airbnb if you’re booking a weekend trip to Miami. The problem though is that short-term rentals aren’t allowed, both due to condo rules and because the building is in an illegal zone for such rentals, says Arianna Aguero, president of the Mirador 1000’s condominium association. Aguero says that the 400-plus-unit building doesn’t like short-term renters through Airbnb, VRBO, or HomeAway because you have people coming into the building “with no information about who they are,” as opposed to long-term renters who have filled out applications and had background checks. Plus, the people who vacation in South Beach for the weekend are the type of party people likely to disrupt the community of year-round residents….

Airbnb has been getting a lot of criticism with complaints also escalating on several issues —from taxes, to security to hygiene and now, discrimination. Critics say Airbnb’s business has gone beyond the simple act of mostly middle class homeowners renting out their homes (or rooms) to strangers and earning extra income in the process, because home sharing has become a highly commercialized enterprise….

Under the Los Angeles rule, rental hosts who fail to register with the city or otherwise
break the rules would face $200 in fines per day of rental. However, this should be made steeper in order to act as a serious deterrence. For example, the city’s $2,000 per day penalty for hosts who rent their properties beyond the maximum number of days allowed
is much more intimidating and would act as a serious financial disincentive. Before Los Angeles enacts new short-term rental regulation, it needs to make sure it’s able to back up strict new rules with equally strict penalties….

If you’ve been thinking that your side-hustle running an unlicensed apartment
rental ring on Airbnb would fly under the radar of The Man, it might be time to think again. Santa Monica has just booked their first criminal conviction of an Airbnb host who refused to play by the city’s rules. Put into place last year, Santa Monica’s restrictions
on Airbnb are considered among the most stringent of any city….

Want to list your Vancouver home on AirBnB? You might soon need a business license for that. The city is crafting a new short-term-rental bylaw which could go into effect by the
end of the year. Councillor Geoff Meggs says the city has growing concerns the rentals are eating into already scarce rental housing stock. “It’s been doubling every year since 2013. It’s incredibly easy to register as a host, and AirBnB is very, very aggressive
in encouraging its hosts to rent and rent and rent again. We’ve known for some time that this market for AirBnB alone is one of the 10 most important in North America.”…

Airbnb will not be sharing information on Amsterdam residents not complying to the city’s rules on renting your house to holiday-goers, the rental
site said in a blog post. The information Airbnb is giving to the Amsterdam municipality has been made anonymous. “We want to protect the privacy of guests and owners.”…

ALBANY — Airbnb on Friday is set to unleash an ad campaign opposing a bill designed to crack down on the home-sharing industry in New York City. Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, the Manhattan Democrat who sponsored the legislation, questioned why Airbnb is fighting so hard to kill a bill dealing with the illegal posting of housing units. “Obviously if they’re willing to spend seven figures to urge the governor to veto the bill, it just shows what an integral part of their business model the advertising of illegal units is,” Rosenthal said….

An Airbnb listing in Broadway-Flushing had state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) and residents up in arms over zoning violations at a July 1 news conference. Now Avella has issued a letter to the city Department of Buildings demanding that the agency enforce the law requiring single-family dwellings and non-commercial use within the neighborhood….