For a heady year, cash and friendly faces flowed into my apartment, paying my rent while I scraped together money to build a startup I had dreamed about for months. My apartment photographed well and tourists love Brooklyn; before long the two spare rooms in my place were grossing a thousand bucks over the cost of my rent onAirbnb.com, the vacation-rental sitethatranked 19 on FastCompany’s list Most Innovative Companieslist this year. The future seemed so sweet and easy that another host in my building rented a second apartment around the block just to host Bnb’rs. We wondered if our landlords had any inkling of the margins.
数千美元的动机迫使我购买酒店质量的床单，考虑风水并清洁淋浴。一个来自澳大利亚的女孩带着素食的礼物到达。一个来自波特兰的家伙飞进去为他的全身纹身增添了一些补充。来自旧金山的一名妇女在非常奇特的笔迹中留下了长期的感谢信。我和一位英国客人一起去了纽约红牛比赛，获得了适当的heck脚课，并辩论了凯特·米德尔顿的吸引力。在九个月内，my Airbnb profile我赚了近20,000美元。
When my reservation requests started to trail off, I got onto Airbnb to find dozens more hosts had popped up nearby, undercutting my nightly rate. Then I spotted something else: an Airbnb listing in a building nearby, hosted by a guy I recognized as my landlord’s right-hand man. My landlord had caught on. When I delivered my rent at the beginning of the next month, I found the management company’s office under construction. It’s now a hotel. The “loft-style” rooms are now listed on Airbnb for $169 a night.
On Monday, June 4, about 10 days before my cofounders and I planned to push our first product into the iTunes App Store, a stranger in a blue blazer served me with a restraining order filed by my landlord. There was language requiring me to kick out my guests (a German couple) immediately after being served, but the judge had crossed out that section and initialed in the margin; I guess he found that part punitive. My lawyer later told me I would probably be forbidden to have roommates again, which in the pricey New York rental market is tantamount to eviction. Attached to the order was a complete printout of my Airbnb listing and all my reviews, included as evidence I had violated clauses in my lease. (Some leases, I have since learned, have evolved specific language prohibiting tenants from listing their pads on vacation-rental sites such as Airbnb.) I had flouted the same clauses back when I found roommates through Craigslist, but there I was just another anonymous roommate-to-be with grainy, sideways pictures of my kitchen.
相比之下，Airbnb打印输出看起来很愚蠢。限制顺序的一页显示了我的Airbnb个人资料旁边的Facebook照片的大型图像。我在社交网络上看到了使世界上的NARC非常容易追踪我的问题。然后我tweeted @airbnb about my predicamentand immediately received an email that restored my faith: They graciously offered to re-book my remaining guests until I got my legal situation sorted out. I quickly wrote back: Yes, please.
Jun 05 17:48 (PDT):
Not a problem. Our team will take care of them.
Best,
conor，airbnb.com/help
I’m due in Kings County Court on June 7th, Thursday morning.
Read the conclusion of this story here:My Airbnb Biz Got Me Evicted; Here’s What I Learned.
[Image: Flickr userAlex E. Proimos]