What's the contract law remedy for a tenant in a building whose unscrupulous landlord has decided to dump his spare inventory onto Airbnb as an ad hoc hostel?
One long-term solution that could emerge is for it to be common to have provisions in leases that forbid both tenants and landlords from doing such things. It might take a while for that to happen, but if what you describe becomes much of a problem, it's likely to happen.
What if you're rent-controlled and the landlord says "go ahead, break the lease! woohoo!"?
Then your bargaining power is reduced in exchange for your below-market rent. Sounds fair to me.
What's the contract law remedy for unscrupulous businesspeople who buy entire buildings and convert them into Airbnb hostels?
That's a slightly different issue. I don't think this is necessarily unscrupulous to do this, but there's certainly a potential for externalities.
"Could emerge"? Have you ever read a residential lease? I've rented (counting real quick) 8 different places in 3 different cities and every single one of them gave the landlord control over sublessors. I could not have lawfully put any of those apartments on Airbnb.
This came up last Abnb thread, and a bunch of my fellow message board nerds insisted that it was a commonplace to have leases that didn't forbid Abnb, but I don't buy it. I think the right rule of thumb is "you can't do it without breaking the promise you made when you rented the apartment and exposing yourself not only to eviction but to civil liability".
Incidentally, the case law behind landlord oversight over sublessors is very solid; this issue is some substantial fraction of every tenant dispute ever, because people very commonly want to break their leases, and expect their landlord to accept the very first person the tenant finds to occupy the apartment.
One long-term solution that could emerge is for it to be common to have provisions in leases that forbid both tenants and landlords from doing such things. It might take a while for that to happen, but if what you describe becomes much of a problem, it's likely to happen.
What if you're rent-controlled and the landlord says "go ahead, break the lease! woohoo!"?
Then your bargaining power is reduced in exchange for your below-market rent. Sounds fair to me.
What's the contract law remedy for unscrupulous businesspeople who buy entire buildings and convert them into Airbnb hostels?
That's a slightly different issue. I don't think this is necessarily unscrupulous to do this, but there's certainly a potential for externalities.