I have friends who’ve run an AirBnB for nearly a decade. They they rent out a room to cover their property taxes. Our city imposed all of those rules mentioned, plus a few others, like regular inspections, several years ago. There were some initial problems as the city administration worked out how to implement the new rules, but overall it had very little effect on them and did not change the volume of their business.

The AirBnB hosts who are likely to have real problems under the new rules probably should. AirBnB runs the full range from responsible people trying to provide an honest service to opportunists looking for ways to take advantage of loopholes and gaps in the rules for profit. This will be inconvenient for the former and may put the later out of business. And I am okay with that.

Some areas like taxis and hotels may be over-regulated, but there are still good reasons for them to be regulated. Any business model that relies on avoidance of existing regulation deserves the inevitable changes it will cause.