Amid crackdowns and crises of other kinds south of the border, several American cities are making moves against Airbnb. It's become a growing trend across the country – and really around the world – as economic, political, and safety-related issues dominate public domains. Beyond heated discussion, we're seeing a slew of new policies and laws set to shake up the short-term rental industry. Many will take effect in 2026, while others are already in place. Here's what you need to know.
Why the Crackdown?
Airbnb crackdowns have become more and more pervasive as cities grapple with mounting pressures on housing and community stability. Several key factors are driving this regulatory push.
Housing Affordability Crisis: Short-term rentals remove properties from the long-term rental market, reducing available housing stock and driving up rents. In cities like New York and San Francisco, entire apartment buildings have been converted to tourist accommodations, exacerbating affordability challenges for residents.
Neighborhood Disruption: High-turnover guest populations create noise complaints, parking issues, and safety concerns. Permanent residents report diminished quality of life as their neighborhoods transform into transient tourist zones.
Tax Evasion: Many hosts underreport income or fail to collect required occupancy taxes, costing cities millions in lost revenue that could fund schools, infrastructure, and services.
Loss of Residential Character: Neighborhoods lose their community fabric when properties become commercial enterprises rather than homes, fundamentally altering the character of residential areas.
These interconnected issues have prompted cities worldwide to implement stricter licensing requirements, occupancy limits, and enforcement mechanisms.
Why and How the Government Wants to Control Airbnb
Just like other tech companies, Airbnb is in no way immune to influence by the government. In fact, it's probably under one of lawmakers' highest-powered microscopes. That's largely because of what's at stake; economically, short-term rentals represent a huge stream of income for cities. Left unregulated, entire neighborhoods, tax bases, and housing markets can feel the effects.
The primary concern is balancing competing interests while enforcing regulations against a platform that operates globally but generates local consequences. Governments must simultaneously protect residents from neighborhood degradation and housing scarcity while preserving the economic benefits short-term rentals provide – both for hosts seeking supplemental income and for cities collecting taxes and tourism revenue.
The challenge intensifies because Airbnb operates across jurisdictions with vastly different regulatory frameworks, making uniform enforcement nearly impossible. Cities struggle to identify illegal listings, verify host compliance, and collect taxes when the platform itself operates as an intermediary. Additionally, policymakers face pressure from multiple stakeholders: residents demanding neighborhood protection, hosts arguing for entrepreneurial freedom, tourists expecting affordable accommodations, and hospitality industries protecting their market share.
Some regulations prove too restrictive, stifling legitimate hosts and reducing housing supply further. Others remain too lenient, failing to address core problems. This tension between regulation and flexibility, combined with the platform's scale and complexity, makes governing Airbnb one of the most difficult regulatory challenges cities face today.
Who's In Charge?
Airbnb is a publicly traded company, which means it's ultimately accountable to a wide network of shareholders, regulators, and public markets rather than a single owner. Its shares trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker ABNB, and ownership is distributed among large institutional investors such as asset managers and pension funds, individual retail investors, and insiders like founders and executives. However, Airbnb uses a dual‑class share structure in which Class B shares carry significantly more voting power than the widely held Class A shares, allowing founders and early insiders to maintain disproportionate influence over major corporate decisions, board elections, and long‑term strategy.
On top of internal governance, multiple layers of government exert control over how Airbnb actually operates: securities regulators oversee its disclosure and conduct as a public company, while national, provincial or state, and municipal authorities set the rules for what kinds of listings are legal, how often properties can be rented, and what taxes must be collected and remitted. In practice, this means Airbnb’s leadership must constantly negotiate between shareholder pressure for growth and profitability, regulatory demands for data sharing and enforcement, and community expectations around housing, taxation, and neighborhood character, turning North America into a proxy battleground over who gets to decide the platform’s social and economic footprint in each jurisdiction.
Where Airbnb Crackdowns are Happening Now
Every year, it seems like another municipality gets a step closer to banning Airbnb. Luckily, that worst-case-scenario hasn't played out in any major cities to date. There are still, however, many places with either existing or upcoming regulations worth noting.
Toronto Short-Term Rental Restrictions
The Canadian city of Toronto sees thousands upon thousands of tourists flock to its core for major events, vacations, and more. The most relevant example right now is the 2026 FIFA World Cup. With an expected surge in visitors on the way, Mayor Olivia Chow announced a temporary increase in the Municipal Accommodation Tax (MAT) imposed on Airbnb listings.
Other preexisting Airbnb rules in Toronto include:
- Only a primary residence can be used for short-term rentals
- Rentals must be registered with the city
- Full-home rentals can operate for a maximum of 180 nights year
- License and business numbers must appear on Airbnb listings
New York City Short-Term Rental Crackdown
New York City has introduced one of the strictest short-term rental regimes in North America, often characterized as a “de facto ban” on most unhosted Airbnbs. Under Local Law 18, entire-apartment rentals for fewer than 30 days in most residential buildings are illegal unless the permanent occupant is present and the unit is properly registered with the city.
Other preexisting Airbnb rules in New York City include:
- Only a primary residence can be used for sub‑30‑day stays
- Hosts must register with the city before accepting short stays
- Unhosted entire‑unit rentals under 30 days are generally prohibited
- Platforms cannot process bookings for unregistered listings
Barcelona Tourist Apartment Phase-Out
Barcelona has moved from strict licensing to an announced plan to phase out all tourist apartments entirely by 2028, putting intense pressure on short‑term rentals advertised on platforms like Airbnb. City officials argue that years of unchecked tourist rentals have displaced residents and pushed up housing costs, justifying an aggressive rollback of vacation apartments in residential buildings.
Vancouver Principal Residence Requirement
Vancouver has adopted a principal‑residence rule that effectively bans most investment properties from operating as short‑term rentals on Airbnb. To run a legal listing, hosts must obtain both a business liscence and a short‑term rental permit tied to the home where they live at least six months of the year. Most of these rules tie back to a short-term rental bylaw from April 2018.
Amsterdam Night Caps and Registration
Amsterdam allows Airbnb-style rentals but treats them as tightly constrained “holiday rentals” in order to preserve housing for locals. Entire‑home vacation rentals must be the host’s main residence, with strict caps on the number of nights per year, mandatory registration, and detailed safety and reporting obligations. City authorities can instruct Airbnb to block bookings exceeding the current maximum o f30 nights per calendar year.
Greece Nationwide Short-Term Rental Crackdown
Another European nation, Greece, is stepping up enforcement measures against Airbnb in 2026. Its aggressive tax and permitting changes were recently extended through the end of the year.
Rules include:
- A temporary freeze on new short-term rental registrations in central Athens and other districts where STRs exceed roughly 5% of housing stock
- A daily ‘climate resilience’ fee on short-term rentals, rising up to 8 euros per night in peak season to fund a natural disaster reserve and offset tourism impacts
- Mandatory registration in a central short-term rental registry, with fines that can reach tens of thousands of euros for unregistered or noncompliant listings
Let Airbnb rules like the ones we've covered today teach a lesson: get successful enough as a business, and the government will inevitably step in. From Barcelona's aggressive phase-out to Greece's climate resilience fees and Toronto's World Cup preparations, cities worldwide are seeking control over their housing markets and neighborhoods. So, while Airbnb's explosive growth solved a real problem for travelers and hosts alike, it's also created a need to be more informed about municipal policy than ever.
