The public conversation about short-term rentals in New York was framed, from the beginning, as a fight between platforms and hotels. Airbnb on one side, the Hotel Trades Council on the other, and city government in the middle refereeing an argument about a technology company.

That framing was convenient. It was also wrong. The people who actually lost the most when Local Law 18 took effect were not platforms and not hotels. They were homeowners — mostly in the outer boroughs, mostly in owner-occupied one- and two-family homes — who had used a spare room or a basement unit to help cover a mortgage, a parent's medical bill, or a child's tuition.

Those homeowners were never party to the deal. They were the collateral consequence of a fight the city framed as being about somebody else.

The platform changed. Our rights did not.

Whatever you believe about platforms, hotels, or the housing market, the underlying question this page asks is narrower and older than any of that: what should a homeowner be allowed to do inside a home they own and live in? The False Choice is the framing that made it possible to answer that question without ever really asking it.