The long-running struggle between the New York City government and Airbnb reached new heights on Wednesday as the City Council passed a law requiring the company to disclose its hosts and the company bankrolled a lawsuit filed on behalf of one of its hosts. On Wednesday, the City Council passed a bill that would require Airbnb to report the names and addresses of its hosts to the city's Office of Special Enforcement; failure to comply could be punishable by fines ranging from $5,000 to $25,000. The bill has been sent to Mayor Bill de Blasio's desk for his signature. Since 2010, it has been illegal under the state's multiple dwelling law to rent out dwellings in New York City for less than 30 days, effectively outlawing Airbnb in the city. Council members and affordable housing advocates have argued that Airbnb has allowed some New Yorkers to use their apartments as year-round hotels, jeopardizing residents' safety, jacking up rents and in some cases placing rent-regulated and rent-stabilized apartments out of reach of low-income tenants. Addressing the council before it gave the green light to the new regulations, Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, the bill's prime sponsor and a Democrat who represents the Lower East Side of Manhattan and other East Side neighborhoods, said the “crackdown” on Airbnb was a “long time coming.” “They exacerbated our housing crisis and starved neighborhoods of deeply needed low-income housing,” Rivera said. Her bill attracted 43 co-sponsors, which could override a veto from de Blasio. The vote is a blow in the yearslong struggle between Airbnb, which has 50,000 units listed in New York City, and the city government. In 2016, the company sued the city for vowing to enforce a state law that prohibited listing rentals for less than 30 days and imposing $7,500 fines. Airbnb and the city settled that suit, with the city agreeing that it would not impose fines for listings. Since then, the company has lobbied lawmakers in Albany to change the law. Meanwhile, city judges have tended to take a hard line against tenants and property owners who violated the law, particularly against those who list rent-regulated apartments on the sharing platform. In 2015, for example, a Housing Court judge awarded a final judgment of possession against a tenant who rented out her rent-regulated West Village apartment at a market-rate price. With regard to new regulations being imposed by the city, Christopher Nulty, a spokesman for Airbnb, said in an email that the company is still considering its next steps. “After taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the hotel industry, we're not surprised the City Council refused to meet with their own constituents who rely on home sharing to pay the bills and then voted to protect the profits of big hotels,” Nulty said. “The fix was in from the start and now New Yorkers will be subject to unchecked, aggressive harassment and privacy violations, rubber stamped by the City Council.” Enforcement actions under existing law had been modest against relatively small-time hosts renting out space in their one- and two-family homes, usually in the form of citations for violating a city code requiring fire alarm systems in hotels, but this has reportedly changed in recent weeks as hosts have come forward with reports that they have been hit with exorbitant fines. Among them is Stanley Karol, a 58-year-old disabled man who shares space in his home in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn to help supplement his limited disability income. In June, while the legislation to increase regulation on Airbnb was pending, he testified at a council meeting to protest the city's enforcement practices and that small operators like him are being unfairly lumped in with 100-unit apartment buildings. In a lawsuit he filed against the city on Wednesday, a legal fight that Airbnb is paying for, he alleges that, a week after his testimony, he was hit with $32,000 in fines for building code violations, apparently in retaliation for speaking out against the city. Andrew Celli Jr., a name partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, confirmed that AirBnb is paying his retainer to represent Karol. Celli said the fact that the suit was filed on the same day that the council passed the measure was coincidental, but said Airbnb had been contacting hosts in New York City with regard to the new regulations, and that the company referred Karol to him. “This is a case where politics is interfering with law enforcement,” Celli said. “The enforcement authority of the city is being used to punish someone who is speaking out on a public issue.” Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for the city's Law Department, said city lawyers are reviewing the complaint and “ will respond accordingly in the litigation.”