Airbnb agrees to share data with New York…but is it “useless”?
Last month, Airbnb said it was going to start sharing anonymised information about its home-sharing listings with city officials, part of a larger campaign to win over regulators. Yesterday, Airbnb made good on that promise by releasing the listing information about thousands of New York City rentals on the platform. However, in response, New York City Council members Jumaane Williams and Helen Rosenthal issued a statement calling the release “a useless disclosure” without “specific, actionable data” on users who are running “illegal hotels”. According to Airbnb, the information, made up of tens of thousands of rows of data which incidentally can only be viewed only by appointment at Airbnb’s New York City office, shows the platform’s willingness to work with cities and regulators going forward. 
Bloomberg provides a snapshot of some of the findings of the data:


	16% of hosts list their full home or apartment for more than 121 days per year and 3% for 271 days or more.
	The median annual amount of money earned by hosts in New York City is $5,110
	126 NYC hosts earn between $100,000 - $350,000 per year on Airbnb
	25% of the revenue earned by hosts renting out their whole homes in NYC goes to hosts who list more than two properties.
	The median number of nights per year the average NYC listing is rented is 42


The effort is the first time Airbnb has voluntarily shared city data on a wide scale on how its hosts use the online platform. The move follows a public pledge that the company made last month, in which the San Francisco-based startup said it wished to build an "open and transparent" community.

On Tuesday, the short-term home-rental company began sharing data on the ways people open their homes to guests in the five boroughs. The data, an anonymized compendium of the thousands of hosts in New York, includes statistics like host earnings, the types of listings, and how often people rent out their homes.

Airbnb has had a rough history with regulators in New York City. Now the company is playing nice.

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"Our hope is that people will understand 99 percent of people on Airbnb in New York City are using it as an economic lifeline," Chris Lehane, Airbnb's head of global policy and public affairs, said in an interview.

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The action is part of the company's broad effort to convince local and national regulators that Airbnb is not a platform for so-called illegal hotel operators, who use the site to skirt local housing laws and hotel restrictions to regularly rent properties to travelers.

That issue has been particularly contentious in New York, where authorities have cited the rise of Airbnb as a significant reason for an increase in overall rent prices and a lack of affordable housing. In a report last year based on Airbnb data, the New York state attorney general's office said hundreds of short-term rental units appeared to act as illegal hostels.

The back-and-forth landed Airbnb in court. Last May, after a protracted legal battle, Airbnb agreed to hand over anonymized data on the company's hosts in the city to Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York state attorney general.

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The new data set released Tuesday, which is made available only by making an appointment to visit Airbnb's New York City office, shows the majority of New York City hosts do not have large numbers of properties to rent out. Some 93 percent of revenue earned by active hosts in New York City comes from those who share their entire home and only have one or two rental listings on the platform. The typical annual host income is roughly $5,110, according to the data.

"The vast majority of the community is doing this in the right way," Lehane said.

Schneiderman was not immediately available for comment.

Airbnb, founded in 2008, has more than 2 million listings in 34,000 cities across 190 countries. The company is valued at roughly $24 billion and recently closed another $100 million in venture financing, according to two people familiar with the matter. Airbnb declined to comment on fund-raising matters.

As the company has grown, it has pushed back against regulators and fought alliances in the hotel industry, from which the startup is increasingly taking a large share of customers.

Airbnb said it will expand its data-sharing efforts beyond New York City. By sharing anonymized data with other towns, the company said it hopes regulators will work to draft more comprehensive, up-to-date legislation that deals with the short-term-rental phenomenon.

"Today is really the first example of us walking the walk," Lehane said. "It's important for us now, especially in New York, to start having this conversation."