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rfmcdonaldLawyers, Guns and Money's Scott Lemieux linked. David Roberts' article in The New York Times, "Our Year of Living Airbnb". There, Roberts and his wife described how they spent a year living in different places in New York City found on Airbnb.
As Lemieux points out, this sort of mobility is not open to everyone, not at all. The three thousand dollars a month spent on rent speaks to a total combined income that's certainly a multiple of what I and most of the people I know make in a week, for instance.
We initially focused on the downtown name-brand neighborhoods — Chelsea, West Village, SoHo — which happily also seemed to have the most Airbnb listings. We read the reviews closely, screening for noise and other potentially nasty surprises, from among the listings for places within our budget, which we based on the median rent in New York — roughly $100 a night, or $3,000 a month.
Our intent, actually, was to stay at least 30 days at each place, so our hosts would be on the right side of the law. Rental of a private room in the city for less than 30 days is legal only when a permanent resident is present during the stay, and we wanted the places to ourselves.
A handful of hosts denied us, presumably because we were new to the Airbnb system and there were no host reviews of us as guests, another Airbnb feature. But finally, after a week of back and forth with hosts, we found a place just a few days before the date we wanted to move in.
As winter set in, and while the bulk of our belongings made their languorous journey across the Pacific from Bangkok, we took our three suitcases to Chelsea for our maiden Airbnb foray.
Here was artsy New York, where Sid and Nancy became Sid and Nancy, and from which an imposing branch of the Gagosian Gallery presides over the art world today. A residential neighborhood of walk-ups, cafes and rats, right in the center of it all, Chelsea epitomized our image of city living, a fitting first stop on our home-free journey.
As Lemieux points out, this sort of mobility is not open to everyone, not at all. The three thousand dollars a month spent on rent speaks to a total combined income that's certainly a multiple of what I and most of the people I know make in a week, for instance.
