Indeed, New York is Airbnb’s third-largest market and home to tens of thousands of hosts. “There’s more Airbnb than ever,” she said. While Cames is out of the Airbnb business, she’s frustrated that many others have managed to continue. Ultimately she paid the fine and shuttered all Airbnb operations, in the process losing the estimated 30 percent portion of her income she had earned through house sharing. Cames was one of the first to be targeted, racking up five violations and a $5,000 fine. The mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement had just begun to enforce a new state law designed to stop people from illegally advertising transient rentals. “They decided to find a slew of reasons why wasn’t justifiable,” she said, “Because even though we lived there, it was a multi-family building.” (The New York State Multiple Dwelling Law has been interpreted to prohibit such buildings from being rented as separate Airbnb units.) After a neighbor complained about Airbnb operations on the block, the city inspectors came. Her ex-husband and daughter kept apartments there, while offering five Airbnb listings throughout the home. “That’s when everything went to chaos,” she said. In 2015, Cames and her ex-husband decided to purchase another townhouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where they expanded their Airbnb operations. “A lot of people enjoy being in a real neighborhood, coming home to somewhere quiet.” “It was immediately popular,” she told The Bridge. But Cames quickly realized how many tourists, charmed by the townhouse and the neighborhood, wanted to stay in her house. She was skeptical, since the home-sharing website, founded in California just three years earlier, was barely out of its startup phase.

Instead, a friend recommended she try Airbnb. However, Cames, who is a real-estate agent, was unable to rent the two-bedroom, floor-through apartment at the price she had hoped for. Five years ago, Tatiana Cames renovated her recently-purchased townhouse in Clinton Hill with the hope of producing rental income from part of the building.

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