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


NEW YORK CITY -- "Have him call Peter when he gets here and we'll show him the data."

With that message emailed to my editor, I was cast out on the rainy streets of New York in search of Airbnb's long-awaited treasure trove of data shedding light on the usage habits, financial impact and maybe, just maybe, the legality of its thousands of apartment listings throughout the five boroughs.

Airbnb agreed to release The Data, as it will henceforth be known, on Tuesday after a pledge last month to work "collaboratively" rather than combatively with cities (forget about that whole "army" thing) by paying its fair share of taxes and disclosing more information about its customers to help policymakers.

The goal, according to Airbnb: "Build an open and transparent community." But transparency has its limits.

Airbnb could have put all The Data online, like a civilized technology company in 2015. Instead it chose to tease snippets by posting a cheery memo(opens in a new tab) on its website and forcing curious reporters to trek to a special location on Fifth Avenue if they wanted more. The reason, cited by sources close to the company, is to protect the privacy of that open and transparent community.

And so it was that this reporter walked into a palatial office building, crept past a lone, distracted security guard and slinked along the front stairwell up one flight into a shared office space called Civic Hall, for "civic tech innovators," where Airbnb had temporarily set up shop for the day.

"We needed additional space for today's meeting," a representative explained later when asked about its pop-up data shop. After today, The Data will be moved to another location in New York's trendy SoHo neighborhood.

Peter, one of the keepers of The Data, rushed in from the street wearing a top coat and suit -- unusual attire in Silicon Valley -- to greet me after I called the number. He and another representative briskly walked me back past a makeshift war room that appeared to include more suits, some delicious looking bagels and someone who looked an awful lot like Chris Lehane, a former political strategist and current Airbnb policy head.

Then we kept walking on to a small, plain white room, empty except for half a dozen MacBook laptops, each crashing under the weight of the incredibly large file holding The Data.

Brian Chesky speaks at the Airbnb Open in Paris on Nov. 12, 2015. Credit: Airbnb

The Data: Revealed

Any data set can tell multiple stories -- especially one that includes raw, but anonymized data on 59,242 listings.

The story that Airbnb tries to tell is one of a startup that helps middle class Americans make a meaningful amount of extra money -- $5,100 from rentals in New York City each year on average -- while earnestly working with lawmakers to ensure that more homeowners and customers can benefit.

In particular, Airbnb highlights the fact that 95% of hosts renting out their entire home to guests in New York City only have one listing, an attempt to refute the notion that Airbnb hosts are snatching up multiple apartments to become quasi hotel chains and potentially driving up rent for other New Yorkers.

But another possible story, based on the same data and conversations with sources close to Airbnb, once again paints the picture of a $25 billion technology company that bristles at regulations it does not agree with and only reluctantly adapts to them, not unlike peers in the market like Uber.

Of Airbnb's nearly 36,000 active listings in the city, well over half -- 19,742 -- are entire homes rather than just a private room or shared space. Under New York law, it is illegal in many housing facilities to rent out an entire apartment or home for less than 30 days at a time. Based on the data, however, many are likely doing just that.

For all the data Airbnb did provide, it conveniently left out the average length of stays per session. Instead, it simply provided the total number of nights booked for the year-long period ending Nov. 1, 2015. More than half (53%) of all Airbnb listings in the city had guests stay between 1-30 nights in total throughout the year, making it likely some flouted the law.

Only 8% of Airbnb's New York City listings require stays of 30 days or longer, according to the company's data, suggesting that many others are at risk of violating the law.

The Data did little to appease some of Airbnb's staunchest critics in the city.

"We met with Airbnb today, and they refused to disclose specific, actionable data," New York council members Helen Rosenthal and Jumaane Williams, two of the most vocal critics who led questioning of Airbnb during a council hearing earlier this year, said in a joint statement. "Airbnb only provided 'anonymized' data of its users who break the law -- in other words, a useless disclosure that will do nothing to curb illegal hotels and tenant harassment."