New York Is Too Expensive to Even Visit

Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET on November 2, 2023

Tourists are like bees: I don’t want a bunch of them circling around me, but I also don’t want them to disappear. It’s a delicate balance. Tourists stick out and may not observe local norms, which can inspire petty grumblings and genuine anger from locals. But they’re a sign that the city is doing something right. Show me a city without tourists, and I’ll show you a city in decline.

In New York, this delicate balance is tipping against tourists as hostility to outsiders becomes a matter of policy. , a measure adopted last January to crack down on short-term rentals, took effect in September. It requires landlords to register their short-term rental properties with the city and prohibits platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo bans short-term dwelling units unless the permanent resident of the space is present during the rental, and it requires that the host “maintain a common household with a rentee.” In layman’s terms, that means “no locks.” Predictably, the number of short-term listings by more than 80 percent from August to October 1.