Introduction
New York City’s short-term rental laws have evolved from direct bans into a comprehensive framework of registration, access, and enforcement. The City’s current regime originally spawned from a 2016 prohibition on the advertising of unlawful transient stays (less than 30 days) that was later replaced by Local Law 18’s registration-and-verification system. Registration is intended to prioritize the preservation of the City’s affordable housing stock while channeling tourism into lawful accommodations in the interest of life safety. Against this backdrop, two pending bills—Int 0948-2024 and Int 1107-2024 (collectively, the Proposed Bills)—would recalibrate critical elements of short-term rental laws for one-family and two-family homes, ranging from guest access and privacy to host presence and occupancy caps. Incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani has already stated publicly that he will oppose the Proposed Bills because they do not promote the interests of affordable housing.
A Brief History
In 2016, during former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Administration, New York City, through legislation passed by the state, adopted an amendment to the Multiple Dwelling Law (“MDL”), which prohibited and imposed escalating civil penalties for the advertising of occupancy of Class A multiple dwellings for less than thirty days. Although the MDL had long-limited Class A dwellings – apartment buildings, condos, or co-ops – to permanent residence use, the advertising ban made enforcement more controllable by targeting the promotional backbone (i.e., Airbnb, Vrbo, etc.) of the market. The measure coincided with mounting concerns about illegal hotels, the deepening of the City’s affordable housing crisis by the depletion of the available housing stock, and safety issues. It should be noted that the authors of this article worked, along with the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, the New York Attorney General’s Office, and the Manhattan District Attorney in connection with the City’s raid of the Atelier Condominium in Hell’s Kitchen, one of the largest enforcement actions against illegal short-term rentals in New York City history. (The Lawyer Who Investigated a Tourist Takeover of an NYC Condo| Law.com).
In the ensuing years since 2016, the City has shifted from enforcement focused on illegal hotels or widespread illegal short-term rental operations over multiple properties to more systematized oversight. Local Law 18 and its rules built a registration-and-verification mechanism, tethering short-term rental platform obligations to city registration and narrowing lawful pathways to host-present, primary-residence activity in a “common household” setting also known as an “unlocked doors” expectation.
The arc of policy thus moved from state-level prohibition at the point of advertising to the city-level programmatic compliance: hosts must register, platforms must verify, and occupancy and access rules now run through a uniform set of definitions cross-referencing housing, building, and fire safety codes. This tiered architecture reflects a persistent policy consensus: whole-home short-term rentals in multifamily housing conflict with the City’s affordability priorities by taking away needed housing. While short term rentals are significantly limited in New York City which has some of the strictest regulations in the country, supervised transiency within a primary residence is tolerated subject to specific registration and safety compliance.
The Proposed Bills
The Proposed Bills now before the City Council would not displace the registration regime but would materially adjust how compliant short term rental properties may operate in one-family and two-family dwellings.
First, Int 1107-2024 is a narrow, operational measure that addresses the “common household” requirement—colloquially, the “unlocked doors” rule—by clarifying that registered hosts in one-family and two-family dwellings must provide short-term guests “reasonable access” to shared areas, while expressly preserving privacy in bedrooms, offices, and similar spaces. The bill does not expand the number of permissible adult guests, nor does it authorize host-absent rentals. It threads its access standard through the City Building Code’s “family” definition and the Administrative Code’s parallel provisions, without changing baseline occupancy limits or the expectation of host presence in private dwellings.
Int 0948-2024 is more sweeping. It seeks to do the following: raise the cap on adult occupants to four (excluding children from the count), permit host-absent short term rental units in registered one-family and two-family dwellings, codify the same “reasonable access” rule and privacy carve-outs present in Int 1107-2024, add a uniform “adult” definition (18+), and revise the dwelling definitions from “exclusively” to “primarily” long-term residential use. This signals more leniency for some short-term rental activity insofar as the principal use remains long-term residential, a legal threshold that is much easier to meet than the total ban under the “exclusive” standard, as it may be difficult to prove that a host does not have plans to use the unit for residential purposes at some later time in the future.
Int 0948-2024 expressly allows privacy locks on bedrooms and bathrooms and locks on doors to closets, pantries, or storage areas, provided that required means of egress remain unobstructed and available at all times. Both bills define “private access” as the domain of permanent occupants’ intimate or personal-use spaces—bedrooms, offices, and similar rooms used for sleeping, working, or highly personal activities—where guest access need not be provided.
Currently, both measures are marked “Laid Over in Committee” and would take effect one year after enactment if they are passed into law. While the Council’s Committee on Housing and Buildings held a public hearing on the Proposed Bills on Nov. 20, 2025, where testimony was taken and fiscal impact statements were generated and convened again on Dec. 11, 2025, to discuss suggested minor technical amendments to the legislation, no vote was taken. Discussions on the Proposed Bills will likely extend into 2026, after Mamdani’s Administration takes power, with any vote taking place thereafter.
Per the City Charter and Council Rules, the mayor does not vote in the Council but has a formal role after passage: upon transmittal, the mayor has 30 days to sign the bill, veto it, or take no action. A veto returns the bill to the Council, which may override the mayor by two-thirds (at least 34 votes) within 30 days. If the mayor takes no action within 30 days, the bill becomes law.
Policy Analysis: Affordability, Habitability, and Fairness
Any evaluation of the Proposed Bills should be anchored in the same concerns that drove the 2016 advertising ban and the registration regime: affordability, habitability, and fairness which have historically been enshrined by the City as the triad of tenant protections.
Affordability
The research that accompanied the 2016 MDL amendment suggested that commercialized short-term rentals can significantly depress vacancy rates at the margin and contribute to upward rent pressure in high-listing neighborhoods, particularly where many units are diverted from the long-term market such as in larger structures like condominiums, cooperatives, and free market rental buildings. The core policy thrust, then, has been to distinguish supplemental income by primary residents from “bad actor” commercialization that functions akin to an illegal hotel. Proponents of scaled regulations as opposed to outright bans argued that eliminating commercial operators, limiting listings, and coupling strict safety requirements could preserve the economic lifeline of primary residents without exacerbating the scarcity of much needed affordable housing.
Habitability and Safety
Concerns long catalogued by fire safety standards—guests unfamiliar with exits and evacuation procedures, transient traffic in buildings not configured for hotel-like turnover—animate the insistence that the MDL, Building Code, and Fire Code requirements be observed in any relaxation. Both of the Proposed Bills preserve those requirements and, through “reasonable access,” aim to harmonize safety with privacy.
That balance becomes more sensitive if host-absent hosting is permitted. In that scenario, the City would be prudent to tie registration to demonstrable compliance with egress, occupancy, and life-safety disclosures by, for example, requiring specific safety attestations by the short-term rental platforms or hosts. If the Council pursues the broader path of Int 0948-2024, additional process safeguards—e.g., notice to insurers or mortgagees, uniform house rules for common areas, and limits tailored to high-complaint precincts—could mitigate spillover effects on neighboring residents.
Legal Implications
The far-reaching implications of these Proposed Bills will be felt across several domains.
Housing Supply and Neighborhood Dynamics
Host-absent allowances and increased headcount could marginally increase transient use in one-family and two-family areas, with localized effects on noise, parking, and turnover. That flexibility could also provide meaningful supplemental income to owner-occupants in high-cost neighborhoods, potentially supporting mortgage stability and maintenance. Impacts will vary block by block, warranting careful geographic monitoring and, if necessary, more specific localized corrective measures in historically high activity areas (certain areas in Brooklyn with brownstones and rowhouses and Hell’s Kitchen).
Enforcement and Compliance
If host absence is legalized in registered one-family and two-family homes, enforcement emphasis will shift from detecting presence to verifying registration, headcount, and egress/sanitary conformity. That likely calls for stronger data interfaces with platforms and periodic audits keyed to complaint patterns—tasks the City can pursue without re-architecting its overall enforcement program, particularly with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) which New York City government agencies are increasingly using.
Safety and Egress
Raising adult headcount makes egress, fire safety, and sanitary capacity a more acute operational constraint. The “reasonable access” rule must be harmonized with practical requirements to ensure that exits are unobstructed and that guests can access necessary facilities without compromising the safety and privacy of permanent occupants. In a host-absent setting, registration should contemplate explicit safety disclosures as a condition of listing.
Litigation Risk and Potential Economy
The broader political context matters. The Mamdani Administration’s agenda centers around affordability and may face significant litigation on large-scale policies such as rent freezes or COPA. Predictably, Int 0948-2024’s host-absent allowance and higher adult cap will encounter sharper pushback from tenant and housing advocates concerned about the long-term affordable housing supply.
Conclusion
New York City’s regulatory posture on short-term rentals reflects a decade of metamorphosis: blunt bans are administrable but over-inclusive, unregulated proliferation strains affordability and safety, while regulated registration, platform accountability, and clear household norms may be the answer to deliver a workable equilibrium. The Proposed Bills offer two paths. Int 1107-2024 provides a surgical clarification of the “unlocked doors” rule, reducing friction in compliant, registered hosting. Int 0948-2024 would go further, permitting host-absent rentals in registered one-family and two-family homes, increasing adult guest capacity to four, and discarding the “exclusive” long-term use standard that acted as an absolute prohibition in favor of a looser “primary” long-term use standard that would now permit short-term rentals where they qualify. The second path may be harder to accomplish, especially given Mamdani’s opposition. It will be interesting to follow the legislative process of the Proposed Bills, whether it be through liberalization of the short-term rental market through enactment of one (or both) of the Proposed Bills, or, alternatively, preserving the more stringent existing short-term rental laws.
"The Metamorphosis of NYC’s Short-Term Rental Laws," by Massimo F. D'Angelo and William M. Pekarsky was published in the New York Law Journal on January 7, 2026.
Reprinted with permission from the January 7, 2026, edition of the New York Law Journal © 2026 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited.
