Dear Editor:
We have two groups of people in Jersey City: Don’t Ban Airbnb VS Ban Airbnb.
Voting No: Jersey City is a spectacular, inclusive, fun city. Why don’t you visit us, eat at our restaurants, stay in our homes, shop at our stores?
Voting Yes – I hope to God that will be over soon.
After doing research, Mayor Fulop’s Voting Yes argument reminds me of one of those “Read the fine print” scams. Mayor Fulop labels his ordinance “Sensible Regulations” to make it look cool. Slick politician move. Despite the label, it’s still a BAN. This BAN will stop the majority of Jersey City residents from making extra income by sharing their homes. 70 percent of Jersey City residents rent their homes. Under this new ordinance, they won’t be able share their apartment on Airbnb under any circumstance – no matter if their landlord approves it or not. Many Jersey City residents Airbnb their place when they go on vacation. I do. Travelling is expensive and i want to make up for the cost of it by Airbnb-ing my own home. After all it’s 2019 and we live in a sharing economy.
Retired homeowners who like to live in warmer climates during winters (e.g., Florida) are getting bamboozled by this ordinance if they want to Airbnb their home. They are allowed to Airbnb their house for only 60 days and they have to pay $800 in registration fees which makes it basically not worth it to Airbnb.
It’s important to understand why Mayor Fulop is scrapping his own 2015 ordinance to replace it with this ban. The answer is HOTEL MONEY. Hotels would rather use lobby money to stop innovation rather than compete with new players. That’s why hotels are so obsessed with stopping Jersey City residents from sharing their homes. They want to keep hotel room prices artificially high so that they keep developing new hotels. Fulop received heavy donations to his Superpac from hotel developers like David Barry (Ironstate Development) Joe Panepinto (Panepinto properties).
The Yes campaign is ran from the NYC Hotel Trade on 8th Avenue in Manhattan. Their Vote Yes mailers come from NYC, not even New Jersey!!!! They are so removed from Jersey City, that they couldn’t even find Jersey City residents to run their campaign. They had to outsource it to NYC, because that’s where their special interests are.
Why should we Vote No? We should VOTE NO to make sure that Jersey City residents aren’t stripped of their rights in favor of Big Hotel Corporations. Hotel Corporations shouldn’t control the mayor just because they have more influence and money than the residents. The whole point of #VoteNo is to force the mayor to sit at the table with ALL PARTIES and come up with Reasonable Regulations, not a BAN.
Mayor Fulop, STOP trying to return us to prohibition times. STOP BANNING us from the sharing economy. STOP taking our rights away. Please choose the right side in the fight of Jersey City Residents VS BIG HOTEL CORPORATIONS fight. VOTE NO!
Michael B
