Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules
bloomberg.comCan't help but think of the obvious time and time again with the faux-sharing economy. Sharing is a pathetic use of neural linguistics, you're not sharing, your not doing anyone a kindness, you're making money and you're providing a service.
Uber and Airbnb will be regulated legislative or through unions. Ask yourself just wtf are cabs so much more inefficient than Uber and hotels more expensive then Airbnb?
Few drivers depend completely on Uber for their income, Airbnb is still on a legal gray zone.
This won't last forever. Uber drivers will unionise, tenants who live around Airbnb hosts will pressure the government for legislation and so will hotel providers.
Uber is pivoting to logistics. What's Airbnb doing? Wouldn't surprise me if they soon build their own hotel.
> [why] are cabs so much more inefficient than Uber...? Few drivers depend completely on Uber for their income
Also, few cab companies subsidize rides with borrowed money in the name of growth.
Sharing may not be the best name but there is clearly value to be gained by using valuable assets like cars, housing and spare time more intensively. What's fundamentally wrong with this?
Well, this is the angle that airbnb likes to push, that people are renting out a "spare" bedroom that wouldn't otherwise be used, or are renting out their place while they're on vacation. In other words, there is no displacement, there is just efficiency.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working out that way - housing that was used for permanent residence is now getting converted into airbnb rentals. People are now acquiring properties in order to have a "spare room" - ands those "spare rooms" would absolutely be occupied by a long term resident if they were not being used as short term hotel-like rentals. For instance, people are now using the anticipated income from a spare kid's bedroom to outbid a person who would have otherwise used that bedroom for, well, a kid. Kids cost a bundle, and they don't pay anything like a well heeled tourists for the right to occupy their bedrooms. In a place like SF, where everything goes to a bidding war, a family with the extra costs of kids has very little hope going up against an investor who plans to convert the house into a hotel.
BTW, I absolutely agree that some of this really is efficiency (spare rooms, people on vacation). But at this point, I think it's pretty clear that airbnb is driving displacement and conversion on a large scale.
It is immensely reasonable (yes, in my opinion) for cities to pass laws that ensure a proper mix of housing, including housing for families with children. These laws are not obsolete just because someone wrote a Rails app where you can type in an address and click a "Create Hotel" button.
I overwhelmingly agree that SF needs to build more, but I don't think this basic reality will change. SF's population of children has plummeted in my lifetime, from about 22% to below 14% now. Airbnb is hardly the only factor, but I believe it is making the problem worse.
Look, no one has a right to live in a particular city. You can buy or you can rent, and if you can pay then you can stay.
To your complaint about people factoring in future rental income - what about people betting on future price increases like during the housing bubble? Should people not do math?
As to your last stat, maybe kids just grow up and then more adults moved in to work in tech - would that explain the pct drop or are you blaming airbnb?
Sure, no-one has a right to a particular city. But cities do get to set zoning laws, and do get to say things like "no, you can't turn houses into quasi-hotels". If you don't believe there should be zoning laws or restrictions on use, make the case for that. Otherwise, this is a pragmatic question of how we best shape cities to balance individual liberties against people's reasonable expectations of quality of life.
Housing has the issue that someone who is there for a few days at most does not really have any incentive to care about their neighbors or the property they are staying in. Most people would not buy an apartment next to a hotel room.
My co-worker rents a condo on VRBO and the condo board is perfectly fine with the short-term renters as they have far more trouble with long-term renters.
The real issue is how much real estate isn't available for long term renters because short term rentals are so much more profitable and easy. It's killer on vacancy rates and drives up rents for everyone.
I'm sure the condo board is fine: short term renters are probably less demanding in terms of services provided by the condo board. I suspect the buildings fellow residents might differ: they're the ones that suffer quality of life issues from (eg) party rentals.
For reference, co-op boards tend to outright ban short term rentals.
It's not "spare" housing. People who buy apartments for use with AirBnB are reducing the housing stock available to people who want long term rents or to buy to live.
and this is wrong exactly why? My buying groceries reduces groceries available to other people.
Bad analogy. If the grocery store runs out of celery it doesn't have anywhere near the impact on your life as not being able to find a home reasonably close to other important things.
Perfectly good analogy. Not living in the exact place you want does not cause unreasonable suffering ("nearest starbucks is 2 miles away, oh horrors" ?), so it should be subject to market forces.
No, being close to Starbucks does not count. Job, family, friends, school, church. Those count.
I didn't say it was wrong.
My recollection might be off, but I think the term was popularized by the tech press not so much the tech companies described as such.
However, the argument can be made that the sharing, while not in the classical sense, does reduce the impact on resources through efficiencies. So in that sense, people are sharing resources (as in sharing a bus ride --you both pay) and making less impact on earth's resources.
Small cab companies in that sense were more inefficient, among other things, because an idle car (one without a medallion) could be put to use to taxi people around. Same for AB&B. People arguably maximize the use of a house --by renting their spare rooms (the use case has morphed since inception, granted). I think you can see where this model, whatever it's called makes more efficient use of our resources.
I would argue that Airbnb is doing the opposite. Using residential housing for tourists, reducing the supply, when perfectly good hotels are available.
The hotels's profitability will reduce, and the marginally profitable ones will be converted into apartments, increasing residential supply.
To avoid being laughed out of the room, you'll have to prove that the growth in residences due to hotel closures is greater than the loss of residences due to AirBNB.
Let me clarify, the increase in housing supply is a reaction towards an increase in AirBNB's and may not cancel out the decrease in housing supply due to those AirBNB's. I made the comment to say the decrease in long term residences is not as great as the number of residences allocated as AirBNB's.
One hotel converted into condominiums create 1100 residences,[1] out of < 30000 AirBNB rentals in NYC. It's such a "problem" the council wanted to ban it. [3]
[1] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/waldorf-astoria-hotel-to-be...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11992112
[3] http://nypost.com/2015/05/11/council-plan-would-limit-changi...
Yet, this study says that NY housing stock is down 10% down to Airbnb.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/27/airbnb-new-y...
Tech press? Where do these outfits get their talking points? Hint: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html?ref=ep
They don't have to take it and run with it. Obviously the problem is with their editorial integrity. Never the less, we can look beyond the words and discuss the actual things.
This is true given that ride sharing is actually displacing under-used personal vehicles (and/or taxis), and not higher-efficiency public transit, or other alternatives. (Suzie goes across town to a bar every Friday night now because she can take an Uber. She used to just walk up the street to the one near her house.)
I don't know whether it is or not (and I assume the answer is different in different places), but it bears mentioning.
I don't think unionization will be possible with Uber drivers. Uber doesn't own the cars and doesn't technically employ the drivers (in most states) - so there isn't any way for the Uber drivers to organize, collude, and force ranks.
Plus, its fairly well set up for "scabs" to make anything unionized ineffective. Uber will just respond: "no thanks" to any union strikes. Without the union colluding with the city or state governments to monopolize or cartel the industry... Part time drivers will just see "surge pricing" and "more pickups" to make part time easy money on.
Why should they unionize ? There are so many firms and corps and people who should do that. But they don't.
Why should they be different?
neural linguistics? Care to elaborate?
He might be thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming.
First amendment, for sure.
I'm guessing this is about this, "The new law would require Airbnb and other short-term rental websites to post registration numbers on listings or email the number and name of the host to the Office of Short-Term Rentals, The City’s agency tasked with enforcing the regulations." (From http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-poised-require-airbnb-list-regi...)
So "their" "free speech rights" are "violated" because they have to post registration numbers.
It's nothing so silly. As a counterpoint to the Examiner's piece, please read Airbnb's post about the proposed law: https://www.airbnbaction.com/an-update-for-our-community-in-...
Basically, the city wants to hold Airbnb responsible for user-generated content. The city also wants Airbnb to hand over users' personal information. Both the EFF and the Center for Democracy & Technology think that these requirements violate federal law. (Though EPIC thinks otherwise.)
> Basically, the city wants to hold Airbnb responsible for user-generated content.
Airbnb gets paid for the rentals, not for the listings. Also, they actively control the content (try putting an URL in the listing). Mistaking Airbnb for a publishing medium for user-generated content seems disingenuous at best.
I think it's a false dichotomy to say they're either/or - why cant't they be both?
If they're actively controlling user generated content, then it's obvious they benefit from better content.
That's a specious argument and AirBNB is gonna get spanked hard on that one. Also, the CDA Safe Harbor never intended to shield service providers that receive direct monetary benefit from user content itself.
Don't all sites derive a monetary benefit from the content - be it page view ads or valuation?
That's an indirect benefit.
I read it. Quite wordy. Not much difference. To call ads "user-generated content" is a bit of a stretch, no? After all, "AirBNB" is much a party to the transaction.
Read the article more carefully. Airbnb's first amendment argument is not related to having to send info to regulators, it's related to something else entirely.
If they win this case, I'm starting a betting pool on how long it is until some corporation claims that reporting employee income to the IRS violates free speech.
When does Campoes term out anyway?
There certainly is a struggle between ownership rights and the right of cities to regulate business within their jurisdiction.
As a renter, I can sympathize with wanting to avail more rental properties to renters, but I am also very uneasy with politicians dictating what you can and cannot do with your property when that act in and of itself is not otherwise illegal. It's not confiscation, but it also kerbs your ability let your property as you wish --and I say this as a renter who arguably would benefit from this politician's policies.
PS move HQ to Brisbane and take the corp taxes with you.
politicians dictating what you can and cannot do with your property
OK, let's completely legalize Airbnb-style temporary rentals... but make the host bear the full cost of it. Not the small fraction of the cost the host thinks about, but the actual cost with all the externalities factored in.
Because really the only way Airbnb works is if it offloads significant costs onto unconsenting and often unaware third parties. And all those goshdurned gubmint regulations? They bring the cost of running a hotel-like business into line with, well, the actual cost of running a hotel-like business. But we can replace them all with just a single charge if you like.
Do we want to go down the externalities rabbit hole? Do we tax people who cannot knowingly fiscally responsibly afford to have kids more because their kids cause tax externalities that people who don't have kids have to bear (school, food, health subsidies, quality of life impact, etc.)?
And then do we we tax people who benefit from the economic output of these children after someone else raises them? Figuring out the extent of these externalities is not easy, but ignoring their existence is like putting your head in the sand
How do I benefit from the economic output of other people?
We absolutely should tax the shit out of the cretins spawning more 'arrows for god' or parents so broken in the head that they push out 5 kids because they are chasing a specific gender.
You can't comment like this on HN, and I noticed you've posted another ideological rant elsewhere. Please stop doing that.
Comments here need to be both civil and substantive. Heated rhetoric is neither, so it lowers the signal/noise ratio at both ends.
But your neighbors might not want you to let out your place to an endless parade of strangers. This is a case where the government needs to listen to the people, and determine if the majority want more freedom or a nicer neighborhood.
> But your neighbors might not want you to let out your place to an endless parade of strangers.
This is the argument NIMBYs have been using against regular old renters since the beginning of time.
Once you own property, you too can be a NIMBY! That's how local property rights work.
Then your neighbors should put that in their HOA rules. The city is getting involved to protect hotels not "neighbors".
Absolutely not. There are significant negative externalities associated with transient populations.
For starters: Occupational safety (branches falling down and crushing you on a tire swing), fire safety, bedbugs, noise/loud parties, litter, criminal occupancy, secondary vice (drug dens/prostitution/craigslist orgies/etc). The problem of a bunch of sailors coming into port has been recognized since antiquity. Skeezy/short term motels have a reputation for a reason, and are regulated for even better ones. You yourself may be a perfectly upstanding citizen who just couchsurfs for a weekend to check out a cool area, but others are not.
It's unreasonable to expect neighbors to file daily lawsuits against their neighbors to keep a modicum of peace. It's a known problem and it's perfectly reasonable to preempt it by either requiring a formal lease with a minimum term of a month or more, or requiring more identification/scrutiny of the clients and some formal standards of the rentiers.
Analogously, it's perfectly fine for banks to scrutinize large cash transactions. Some of them are legit, some of them are tied to crime. But you need to look and be sure because it's high-risk activity. If you don't want that level of scrutiny, send a check/transfer/CC payment and your reputation will speak for itself.
...secondary vice (drug dens/solicitation of prostitution/craigslist orgies/etc).
Since we are regulating what people do in the privacy of their own bedroom, shall we also bring up the possibility of homosexuals engage in sodomy?
If that's somehow off limits to regulate, what distinguishes it from the private bedroom activities you bring up?
Your parent post is talking about the (already illegal) negative effects that follow from the presence of a transient population.
Orgies and drug dens can have an impact outside the bedroom, and outside the apartment.
Search 'airbnb xxx fest evicted' for details.
One occurs as a financial transaction.
I'm surprised that this argument gets so much traction without any supporting data. It just plays on fear.
First, nothing you listed is an externality but rather direct results of poor behavior. An externality would be something like 'decreases property values of neighboring properties' or 'increased rents due to lower supply'.
Second, what data do you have that proves these scenarios are more likely in an AirBnB than a long term tenant? You're only supporting evidence is inference; if people are going to behave poorly then it makes sense for them to rent an AirBnB away from home. But there's an easy counter argument: pressure from neighbors will keep these incidents to a minimum. Sure, there will always be hosts are not sensitive to neighborhood pressure, but that same logic can be applied to long term tenants who have bedbugs, throw parties with loud music, litter, engage in criminal activity, etc. Simply put, all of negative scenarios you outline can occur with long term or short term tenants, and there is no evidence that these behaviors are more common from short term tenants.
Third, comparing all AirBnB's to skeezy motels is like saying all restaurants are roach-infested mold-filled 50-point scoring health hazards. This is a classic straw man argument. What about Marriot or Hilton? Embassy Suites or DoubleTree? Do they fulfill the reputation of "skeezy/short term motels"? This is an argument for better inspections and code enforcement, not prohibiting AirBnB.
No one expects neighbors to file daily lawsuits, but neighbors can notify the police if there is a noise violation, etc. Once again, there is no difference here between long term and short term rentals. AirBnB requires more identification than any hotel I've stayed at, so this argument actually supports AirBnB as a platform.
Lastly, your bank analogy is frightfully off base. First, a bank's intrinsic motivation for monitoring large transactions is fraud and not criminal activity. Second, banks are compelled by law to monitor and report specific types of activities that are likely to be criminal activity, but this is defined by organizations like the FBI, not the banks themselves. Third, you still have yet to prove, beyond casual inference, that AirBnB promotes criminal activity any more than long term tenancy.
Decreased property values near hotels, student ghettos, and other nuisance areas are very commonly depressed, and often have elevated police dispatch rates. It's hardly an uncommon phenomenon.
Not all restaurants are roach-infested mold-filled hazards - but we have to treat them all like they potentially are, in the sense that we need to register them and inspect them to prove that they aren't hazards. Marriott and Hilton hotels get inspected all the time and they pass with flying colors because they do all the things they're supposed to do - unlike unregistered fly-by-night flophouses working under the radar.
You've obviously never gotten bedbugs from a neighboring unit or hotel. Trust me, they suck like crazy. You do not want to go bundle everything you own into trash bags, move out for a weekend while you wash everything you own, and have the house fumigated (heated to a crisp). It sucks.
Fraud/money laundering is a form of criminal activity, and (just like hotels) banks are compelled to report on specific types of activities that are likely to be criminal. Hotels don't define this; legislatures do, just as they define (or delegate) what they consider to be suspicious financial activity. The Hilton is not deciding that the guy paying in cash every night with a dozen visitors every night or the guy bringing in a bunch of drain cleaner every day is a suspicious individual, they let the FBI investigate that just like financial crime.
Sorry to break it to you but the FBI is on to your no-tell-motel dealing scheme. They're not stupid.
Ah, yes! Decreased property values are an externality! However, judging based on police dispatch or crime rates seems to rely a bit more on correlation than causation. It's pretty easy to argue that hotels are typically built in areas with increased police dispatch rates, not hotels causing the dispatches. Unless you have data that shows that the hotel itself has a higher rate than surrounding areas? Furthermore, there are plenty of examples of short term rentals (typically in the form of hotels or resorts) that are tied to increased property values.
Once again, your arguments support better inspections and code enforcement for health issues not banning short term rentals.
I'm not sure why you assume my history with bedbugs. You are correct that I have never had to deal with a bedbug infestation, but I've helped friends who have. I have lived through multiple other infestation of other insects and rodents because of my neighbors. I've also had neighbors who felt the need to party all night every weekend, and have lived across the street from meth houses and drug dens multiple times. However, all of these experiences were dealing with long term tenants, not short term rentals. I am not discounting the inconvenience of these situations, just questioning why we conclude that they are unique to short term rentals.
It seems that you're confusing the impacts of property values with short term rentals. Long term rentals can occur in very wealthy neighborhoods as well as economically depressed areas. I'm no fan of slum lords, but a slum lord can have long term or short term tenants! Furthermore, they tend to set up shop in economically depressed areas if for no other reason than the overhead is too great in nicer neighborhoods.
Regarding criminal activity, I fail to see how 1) this is isolated to or increased activity from short term vs long term rentals and 2) it assumes that the landlord/host does not care about the activity. While same may not care, it seems quite presumptuous to conclude that all AirBnB hosts will encourage criminal activity. But this presents a really interesting question: why hasn't the city of San Francisco taken steps to train hosts on potential threats if this is a concern?
I know that near the major universities in my region properly values are far lower because they're often rented to groups of students who are rowdy so their neighbours property values are lower since people are reluctant to buy a house that's for sale unless you're willing to either put up with it, or rent it out yourself.
The amount of off-campus housing needs increased dramatically through the 2000s as the universities expanded enrolment so many areas that weren't being rented now were. Many of the long time homeowners who lived in those areas long before student housing came there have been up in arms.
Wonderful point. Student housing is a great example of long term rentals with tenants that don't always respect the property or neighbors.
They're not exactly long term, though. In my city, they're turned over every 4 months or possibly 8 months. The biggest university has 4 month terms and their co-op programs alternate 4 months on 4 months off.
In SF, 32 days or more is effectively long term.
Due to intentional local policies, San Francisco is full of transient populations, litter, criminal occupancy, drug dens, and prostitution all directly on the street.
That's a pretty simplistic way of looking at it. There are a baotload of regulations on hotels for very good reasons, as other commenters have pointed out. If you turn your home into a de facto hotel then those same regulations should apply to you as well. To me, Airbnb is a case of many people wanting to have their cake and eat it too - they want the rental income, but not the downsides of adhering to short-term rental regulations.
Think if you started a bakery and went through the laborious process of getting a business license, getting your kitchen health inspected and certified, etc. and then a week later someone next door just started selling bread out of their home to undercut you on price, regulations be damned. I would be rightly pissed off and expect the local government to shut down the home operation.
"Airbnb is a case of many people wanting to have their cake and eat it too" -- in fact, considering that the whole company was founded by two bros who couldn't afford their own rent, this is a perfect summation of what Airbnb does. And now that it exists, rents are even more unaffordable than before.
Commenters who want to ignore externalities are Randians with no actual sense of human society. All they see are rules that are in their own personal way, naturally some tyranny or another. Democracy itself is a blight in their eyes, and a business plan should always trump community concerns.
That's a good point. However, I _think_ they genuinely have good intentions for renters, except they are doing it in the most knee-jerk constituency visible way, for whatever reason.
They don't need to. The city already made laws limiting short term rentals. We voted on them in a citywide referendum. They were passed. This change is merely enforcement of rules that already exist.
Who cares what your neighbors want? Seriously.
In the Seventeenth Century many American colonists were fleeing England due to religious persecution because their religion didn't happen to be the the dominant/majority held belief [1].
The idea that government should govern based on what the majority want is a fallacy. The specific topic of tyranny of the majority and ways to combat it were discussed in the Federalist papers and, in my belief, is ultimately the reason the Founding Fathers structured American government the way it did (federation, checks and balances, republic, etc.).
I am not trying to argue that AirBnB is good, but it's not bad because your neighbors don't like it.
You're conflating religious persecution with your neighbors running a hotel. There's a difference. Zoning laws have existed for a long time, and unless you're pretty far towards the libertarian extreme, nobody really has a problem with them existing (they could be better, but that's a subtle point not a blunt hammer like you're trying to use)
What I was objecting to was the idea that the government should dictate what you do with your own "property" based on what the majority of your neighbors want.
Zoning laws and city planning is not exactly the same as what is being implied by the comment I specifically responded to.
I also was not intending to conflate religious persecution, only provide an example of where the opinion of the majority breaks down. In reference to the Federalist Papers, I meant to imply that it was my belief that these mob rule tendencies was why the Constitution specifically doesn't structure the U.S. as a Direct Democracy. And discussions on how to combat these tendencies via education and related points are particularly insightful.
There is a fine line to walk with government regulation protecting greater social good (pollution laws, etc.) and the government restricting property rights as proxy for the desires of the many. If you buy a condo, I have not been convinced that you should not be able to rent it out short or long term. But I am definitely opposed to the idea that you be restricted from doing so because your neighbors don't want you to.
There's a reason for commercial and residential zoning. There's a reason your landlord and HOA do not permit short term rentals.
The idea that government should govern based on what the majority want is a fallacy.
That's why I said "this is a case". Maybe it's a problem for a certain set of people and maybe it isn't. You have to listen to them.
This is the fallacy I am objecting to.
If the majority of the people want to abolish the First Amendment in order to silence hate speech, the government absolutely should not listen the them.
Tyranny of the majority and mob rule are discussed from various angles in the Federalist Papers and I believe were considered carefully when structuring the American government (in order to prevent them).
Last I checked, the ability to rent out your house wasn't a human right or a constitutional one. Are you against every kind of property zoning?
Arguably, the ability to rent your house is a constitutional one:
* https://fee.org/articles/private-property-and-government-und...
There seems to be a common misconception about zoning laws. Zoning laws fall under city planning where placement of certain types of buildings in organized locations leads to a more efficient city. These laws typically address traffic flow, utilities, etc.
So to forward the AirBnB context, the city zones an area as residential, a developer builds residences, and a private owner (again AirBnB context) purchases the property. From there I would contest that the city should have limited (if any) ability to limit or dictate how the now private owner choses to "use and dispose" of their personal property. Renting of the property does not violate the residential zoning...this would be as opposed to the owner tearing down their home to build an office sky scraper.
But if a private owner buys a house, they should be able to choose how to use that house. And again, this is off topic from the original thing I objected to: whether or not your neighbors should be able to dictate through government how you can/should use/dispose of your personal property.
Do my neighbors own my place, pay my mortgage or my bills?
True enough. They might also only want single family homes to be owner or family occupied only. I think there can be compromises people come to.
Using laws to bias housing stock towards owner-occupancy is explicit economic segregation. Owning a home requires wealth that many families don't have, and they should have an equal right to all neighborhoods.
Segregation is the default in American housing policy to the point that most people treat segregation laws as normal, justifiable things. Every time we make a decision about homes, we should consider the impact it has on different kinds of people.
Yes, that was my implicit point. We can go to extremes, but we don't have to. We can be reasonable about things. (I am, by the way, such a renter).
> but I am also very uneasy with politicians dictating what you can and cannot do with your property when that act in and of itself is not otherwise illegal
The list of things you cannot do is already extremely lengthy and much to the chagrin of homeowners. I assume you've only rented and never owned, but wait until you see what your property taxes go to, what you are allowed to build, not build, must maintain, must pay for on behalf of citizens that do not own (Denver is currently trying to raise property taxes to subsidize builders and ease purchase pain of new homeowners who currently cannot afford to buy for example). I think people are up in arms over this because Airbnb is a large player in the startup community, but the uproar of politicians creating policy for it's citizens is not absurd.
Yes, renter so, far. And I am vaguely aware of the control/ordinances, etc. government impose on property owners --many for the greater and one's own good. But at some point it becomes too much. My favorite is the old window tax they used to collect in France, among other places, centuries? ago. People boarded up their windows.
I also am very wary of the Chavezist instinct to blame property owners and businesses for the faults and failings of bad government planning and policies.
> But at some point it becomes too much
Yes you are correct, the point it usually becomes too much is when you, as an individual, have to begin paying it. Or in this case when a business feels it's paycheck is being affected.
>Denver is currently trying to raise property taxes to subsidize builders and ease purchase pain of new homeowners who currently cannot afford to buy for example
Sadly there is nothing new in politicians coming to take away more of your money & rights
Your rental agreement (or HOA regs) almost certainly forbids short term rentals.
Speaking entirely out of ignorance, how might these policies benefit someone like yourself?
People who buy housing just to rent out on AirBnB would find it more economical to rent out to a long term renter (because the licensing is actually less onerous), thereby increasing the rental supply and lowering rents.
Am I misunderstanding you?
SF's legendary rent control creates a clear incentive for landlords to use a service like Airbnb to continually rent at market rate (though lower occupancy rate) while maintaining control to allocate the unit as they see fit. Renting a unit in sf both freezes rental revenue and removes the owners control to reallocate the unit.
Did you mean something else?
Even with rent control it's still better to be a landlord of a long term tenant than follow the licensing restrictions. The license 1) Costs money and 2) limits the number of days you can rent.
#2 is the big issue. Even with rent control, at least you can rent the place out for the whole year. With the license you can only rent the place out for 90 days a year. You must live in the unit the other 275 days of the year. So your rent controlled rate would have to be 25% of market rate for the legal short term rental to make sense, and you'd have to live there when it isn't rented.
Why don't more people rail against rent control like they do airbnb?
How many people live in rent controlled units in SF?
> Why don't more people rail against rent control like they do airbnb?
I've seen more people -- on HN and in real life -- railing against rent control than against AirBnB.
By disallowing properties which would otherwise be put on the rental market strictly on ab&b thus arguably subtracting this unit out from the rental market.
No legal expertise, but the thing that struck me is Campos' extremely flawed analogy. If we want to make comparisons to rental cars, the hosts are the rental companies. There is no third party platform to compare to AirBnB.
how about something like Getaround? https://www.getaround.com
I was thinking the same thing -- this law is more like a hypothetical law requiring people who rent out their cars (not the renters themselves) to register with the city, and requiring Getaround to police that registration.
Not currently no. In an unrelated note, I have an idea that just might disrupt the automotive rental industry...
So basically SF wants companies like Airbnb to do their police/enforcement work for them. The city should be going after the unregistered renters themselves. Sure, that's potentially harder, but I can see that it'd be a burden to order a company to do it for them.
Who would pay for all this extra enforcement? My guess is that a large portion of this short term rental income is untaxed. Can't have both sides, no regulation and no tax. I pay my share when I rent a hotel. (Apologies if airbnb renters are paying the appropriate city, state, and federal taxes).
Airbnb takes the appropriate local taxes automatically as part of the booking
San Francisco collects no shortage of taxes.
So basically SF wants companies like Airbnb to do their police/enforcement work for them.
Because it's the most cost-effective way of doing things, and -- in this ethically-challeneged startup culture of ours -- it gets the message across.
It's also no different from how regulations are applied to most all other industries in that regard. Liquor stores are required to card anyone who looks like they might possibly be under 21 (and are fined for not doing so). You can argue that the city "should be going after the underage drinkers themselves" -- but decades of empirical evidence suggest this would lead to the laws being widely unenforced.
Airbnb is an unlimited well of bad PR. They need to start whacking people with a clue-stick.
They'd probably do well to just fire their PR person. This is one of the most unprofessional responses I've ever heard from a company to a reporter:
> We emailed Airbnb spokesman Christopher Nulty to ask whether the library ad was "real." He responded by email, "as opposed to a fake one :)"
A follow up email, explaining that we were in fact seeking confirmation as to whether the ads are actually from Airbnb received the following response: "Are you seriously writing on this?"
Nulty did not respond to another follow up email.
http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/10/21/passive-aggress...
They'd probably do well to just fire their PR person.
No, it's not "the PR person" who's at fault.
One way or another, these decisions (and the mentality and ethos that drive them) always trickle down from the top.
They must be extremely dependent on these commercial operators listing multiple units, else they wouldn't be fighting this so hard.
It kind of makes their whole "helping the middle class" shtick even more nauseating.
Regardless of how strong Airbnb's legal standing is or isn't, they are the definition of a company who believes it better to ask forgiveness then permission. I believe that maxim is all fine and good when you're a person who cares about the well being of others, but when it's a corporation whose only goal is profit or growth it has the potential to be extremely detrimental to society.
Depends on your point of view. It's also detrimental to society if every new idea has to prove its viability while following the rules written for (and often purchased by) the previous generation of technology. It'd be a lot easier to get stuck in local maxima that way. Some ideas would never get traction, because getting the rules changed requires power and traction in the first place.
I would submit that this maxim does not well apply to the business model of AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, and the like.
They do not IMO represent an interesting application of technology. Just the profits of exploiting lag time between what is possible, and what is 'burdened' by consumer and labor protections.
I.e.: the industries they have moved into are highly regulated for pretty transparent reasons. Their MO works well until the regulators catch up.
Seriously?
Uber had not proven how much of a quality-of-life improvement it was for users, there is absolutely 0% chance that any city councils would have reformed taxi laws and made explicit exceptions for them, sight-unseen.
They are only BARELY at the point where their critical mass of users can force city governments to give them a legal path (see: de Blasio in NYC), and even that doesn't always work (see: Austin).
A quality of life built on relabeling employees as "contractors" to avoid paying them a fair wage with appropriate benefits. But yes, the medallion system was also very broken.
>Regardless of how strong Airbnb's legal standing is or isn't, they are the definition of a company who believes it better to ask forgiveness then permission.
not really. they were caught, and their response is f* you, rather than to ask forgiveness. whether or not you agree with their behavior, they are very much NOT asking for forgiveness.
Don't forget the butthurt ads they plastered the city with once they were finally made to pay their taxes. "Dear SF, Hope you are putting our tax $$ to good use! Love Airbnb!"
> David Campos, a supervisor who has been harshly critical of Airbnb, called the ordinance a "modest piece of legislation," according to the San Francisco Chronicle, adding "If you are a rental car agency, you have to make sure the person that you rent that vehicle to has a license before you rent them a car. That is exactly what we are asking the short-term platforms to do here."
This analogy is obnoxiously flawed.
rental car agency:consumer != (airbnb:host or host:guest)
How is the analogy flawed?
Rental car agencies ensure drivers (who use the agency's cars) are licensed.
AirBnB is being asked to ensure hosts (who use AirBnB's platform) are licensed.
There are two parties in the rental car transaction:
The AirBnB transaction has three parties:Hertz <-> Driver
While you can construct sentences that look similar for both cases, and the word "license" is used in both contexts, it's a fundamentally different dynamic.AirBnB <-> Host <-> Guest"The AirBnB transaction has three parties"
That's incorrect. AirBnB provides a platform on which hosts can list their properties. There are two parties to that transaction.
In case you're talking about the subsequent 'rental' transaction, AirBnB is pretty clear that that's between the host and the guest. See section 5 of their ToS: https://www.airbnb.com/terms
You seem to ask us to pretend those two transactions are unrelated, but I don't understand why.
The transaction is more like
Host <-> Airbnb <-> Guest
All the communication (and the billing) happens through the platform.
Agreed. I wanted to draw a circle, but I don't have the Ascii Art skills.
The post is about requirements on AirBnB when a property is listed. There is no guest involved when that happens. There is only AirBnB and the host.
Driving car requires license for various other reason all of us agree with. I don't see why hosts need a license.
Also there is potential stupidity of passing regulations that people wont respect any ways.
You're being downvoted because you are not considering land use and zoning issues. Hosts need to register to ensure that they don't convert their properties into full time hotels in buildings designed for residential use.
> You're being downvoted because you are not considering land use and zoning issues.
Don't care about downvotes but I care about arguments.
Uber and Lyft will check the drivers license even if government does not make it mandatory because a licensed and well experienced driver is in in the interest of Uber and Lyft.
I could not care less about "zoning laws" which serve no purpose to most sensible people and I dont see why AirBnB should give a damn about zoning laws. Also I would oppose government move to force these laws down people throats by forcing AirBnB hosts to have licenses.
>Hosts need to register to ensure that they don't convert their properties into full time hotels in buildings designed for residential use.
But that is the whole "innovation" in AirBnB. The very fact that AirBnB is cool because one does not have to comply the mountain of regulations that Motel 6 has to comply with.
I will be very happy to live in a residential property that is converted into defacto hotel through AirBnB.
But mostly the city wants to ensure they get paid and keep the lodging industry off their backs. Hotels pay occupancy taxes and want AirBnBs to have that encumbrance.
I have a property in an area that has it all figured out and I had to get it certified by an inspector, pay some fees, and submit occupancy taxes. Most skirt the laws.
Chicago did it right in my opinion by requiring AirBnB to manage and submit the taxes and fees.
The city is facing huge pressure from local residents because the price of housing has gone up dramatically in the past few years. Property owners taking rental properties off the market to turn them into unlicensed full-time hotels through Airbnb further reduces housing stock, in addition to forcing a bunch of negative externalities onto neighbors who have little recourse. Most local residents who aren’t themselves Airbnb hosts are on the city’s side here.
The hotel industry is certainly unhappy with Airbnb, but they’re far from the only ones.
Yes but citizens and activist groups aren't flushing policy makers and the city with money. They're enraged, and rightfully so in many areas.
My point was - if the city can get their $ from their policies they will enable airbnbs like Chicago recently did.
At the same time - Airbnb is just one small piece of the puzzle for the rise in housing prices. I don't understand why some people think they are entitled to live in an area in demand?
If someone wants to start scooping up real estate and homeowners are selling at higher prices, comps go up, everyone's values go up along with property taxes. That's how it works.
Now - homeowners whose values go up should be enraged about property tax increases. The city's budget shouldn't vary much from year to year, but if home prices go up substantially they get more property tax revenue. Why? And then if they go down - they don't help you out.
Genuinely curious why the agency:consumer::host:guest is flawed. (agency|host) temporarily allows use of their property by (consumer|guest) in exchange for money.
Driving a car is a complex and potentially dangerous activity, hence the license. A license to rent a place to sleep makes no sense.
Edit: Instead of responding to every single sub comment I will just add that car accidents kill 30,000 people a year. Whether or not you think AirBnB should be regulated, the analogy pairing their activity to the commonly fatal activity of driving is unambiguously on a different level. A more appropriate analogy is perhaps a fishing license.
Licenses aren't just for ensuring competence (as in the case of driver's licenses). Sometimes, they're to make sure that the government knows about the people doing it (as in the case of car registrations), either to collect tax or to be able to find people associated with an activity. And sometimes they exist to limit the number of people who can do something (as in the case of liquor licenses in many areas).
In this case, it seems like SF wants to "license" rental activity in order to tax it, and it wants to tax rental activity in part to limit it. Zoning could do this, too, but a tax is more flexible on an individual basis.
This is especially meaningful in a city in the midst of an affordable housing crisis.
The license is not to ensure you know how to host. It is designed to limit the impact of hosting on neighbors and the housing supply. People didn't sign up to live next to a hotel when they move into a residential neighborhood.
The license is to rent out your place. Does renting your property on a short term basis suddenly release you from requirements like making sure you have heat and water in the unit or meet zoning regulations? There's and argument to be made that this level of regulation is uneeded or causes more problems than it solves, but the regulation is still there and AirBnB I'd doing there best to avoid having it affect their business
Plenty of things can go wrong with a place to sleep. Bedbugs, for example.
Under your analogy, the host has to make sure the guest is licensed, which is different from the law, which is about the host.
The agency:consumer ~= airbnb:host analogy makes more sense.
See my post above
Hm. Okay, perhaps a better analogy might be the way gun manufacturers are expected to ensure they're selling to licensed gun dealers.
The analogy would imply that hosts should verify that guests have a license to rent. Last I checked, there is no license to rent.
A much better analogy would be a franchisor has a responsibility to ensure a franchisee has appropriate business licensure. However, I do not know where the liability lies in this scenario.
If that analogy (sensible, imo) is too much for you then pretend he was talking about GetAround.
To substitute a p2p car sharing service in place of car rental agency completely changes the meaning...
Driving a vehicle (your own or renting someone else's) is an activity requiring a license for the agency to validate.
I'm unaware of any place in the world requiring a license to sleep and eat breakfast.
> I'm unaware of any place in the world requiring a license to sleep and eat breakfast.
This was the third Google hit for "are hotels licensed": http://www.myfloridalicense.com/dbpr/hr/Servicesthatrequirea...
Restaurants, too: https://www.sfdph.org/dph/eh/Food/Permits/default.asp
Anyway, it's a completely bogus assumption that licensing is only about ensuring competence.
I said [of the guest]: "to sleep and eat breakfast"
Not [of the host]: to provide a place to sleep and serve breakfast.
The article's analogy uses rental agency <--> customer.
It's the hosts they're talking about, not the guests, which would need licenses.
I'm fairly sure you have to have a license to serve breakfast as a business. You also have to be inspected by the health department. Same goes for running a hotel. That stuff all costs money, and it's not up to a private business (AirBnB) to determine how to enforce such laws, even though their existence does change the landscape.
It seems my phrasing was unclear. With "to sleep and eat breakfast", my intent was: a customer to sleep somewhere and eat breakfast there (as the end user), not for a business to serve that customer.
I made this point to the article's literal analogy of the car rental agency's need to validate a consumer to drive a car (as the end user). There is no license needed to sleep and breakfast.
You're phrasing was clear. The person making the analogy was comparing the drivers to the hosts.
David Campos' poor analogy has pretty much zero relevance to the case at hand.
Would love to hear an opinion on this one from a legal mind, the case does not seem strong for Airbnb from my laymen's couch.
Free speech rights are a stretch here. I wonder if you could make a viable case for the 3rd amendment though (to my knowledge it has never been done).
Strictly interpreted, the 3rd amendment prevents the government from being able to force homeowners to quarter soldiers. If you think about the real intent of the bill though, it's obvious that the mindset is "you are free to use your own house without government interference."
Realize that at the time, HUGE numbers of homeowners informally had a room or two for boarders to supplement their income. It would have been considered ridiculous at the time for the government to say you couldn't lend a room out for money, which is probably why this interpretation was not formally codified.
It's a stretch, but amendments have been interpreted in more creative ways to accomplish personal-freedom goals (think, right to privacy -- interpreted as an implied constitutional right, but not mentioned anywhere).
>Strictly interpreted, the 3rd amendment prevents the government from being able to force homeowners to quarter soldiers. If you think about the real intent of the bill though, it's obvious that the mindset is "you are free to use your own house without government interference."
that's a real stretch. that would nullify all zoning ...
It is a stretch. If the Founding Fathers had meant to say you are free to use your property without government interference they would have done that.
They had tanneries then, and there is more than a gradual difference between operating a tannery and quartering a bunch of soldiers in someone's house. One interferes with the life of the householder. The other interferes mostly with the life of the neighbours.
Maybe? But then again, the 2nd amendment doesn't allow nuclear weapons, as interpreted by the Supreme Court.
Would be easy to interpret it as, the right to use residential properties for lodging purposes (hotel, apartments, B&Bs) cannot be violated, without letting you set up industrial operations.
What does "easy" mean here? It is easy to say, "the third amendment really means that A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Amendments." In fact I just did. However, to actually believe that original meaning of the third amendment as believed by the people who negotiated it was to prohibit the federal government from banning boarding houses strains credulity. It similarly strains credulity to believe that those who negotiated the 15th amendment had a genuine meeting of minds over their belief that the due process clause implied that states and municipalities could not regulate boarding houses.
Dot get me wrong: If it wasn't for Airbnb I probably wouldn't be married and I too share a geeky desire to see the 3rd amendment used in anger.
Well, I doubt that the people who wrote the Commerce Clause would have dreamed up Wickard v. Filburn in their worst nightmare, either, yet here we are. So, at this point, the majority of federal laws are based on an interpretation of the Constitution that strains credulity far more.
"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
I think it'd be safe to say that Airbnb would have a tough row to hoe trying to base their case on the Third Amendment.
I think the 3rd amendment is about as clear as it gets. Unlikely.
Kinda surprised that no one is debating jurisdiction here. Why federal and not state courts? Are federal judges more friendly to this type of case?
Good point. And the Federal court may actually stipulate that by saying "this is not a matter of Constitutional rights -- it is merely a challenge to a local ordinance and must therefore be contested in that jurisdiction."
AirBnB probably knew they'd lose locally, so either they thought "we'll end up appealing anyway, let's go right to the Feds" or "let's make a longshot stab at a 1st Amendment rights claim and avoid the local court."
They stand to lose at either level, because the SCOTUS has already weighed in on "the local government took unlawful control over my real property" -- a rent-controlled NYC landlord's case was turned down by the Justices a couple years back from even being considered in the Supreme Court.
And there are standing regulations already in place for hotels and motels.
AirBnb doesn't have a chance here, really.
The faux taxi services are somehow skating from being held to the bar for being illegal taxi services, but probably not for long.
Isn't it federal law that they are using to defend against this?
Yes, but there is a tactical decision at play here. AirBnB seems to believe that it has a better chance of winning on privacy and user-generated content issues then state/local laws.
This is the biggest problem of sharing economy. To solve this problem we have to make new system not to fight with established system.
I love to see individuals and companies step up and fight against the psychopaths that run San Francisco.
Most tech grunts will never admit that the idea of 'central planning', or 'regulations', are flawed beyond benefit, as far as we yet are able to implement them, especially in the 'motherland'. When you we start shaking this idea that these restrictions actually benefit anybody besides the ones making the restrictions.
100% agree.
The "control them, tax them, make them lick our boots, what can they do?, they can't do anything about it" mentality is heavy in the SF city leadership.
Believe it or not, some people -- lots of people, actually - are 1000% okay with that. Too many in SF, that's for sure.
Campos wants:
- to be seen as someone who helped the City make more money from the fines and registration requirents
- to appease the vast majority of renters in San Francisco who feel that no owner has a right to their property, the City must be in control -- Campos' voting bloc consists of that group
The problem with objectively dictatorial behavior from government is no one has the guts to stand up to them.
EXCEPT AirBnB!!!
GO AIRBNB !!
Britain just told Merkel and Hollande (who are the real string-pullers in the EU) to scrap off and die.
Tyrannical behavior from people "who tell you what to do and you can't do anything about it" usually ends badly for the perps.
See Nicolae Ceausescu for example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD-XNTVgDW0
Sometimes people who abuse their power do not lose it gracefully.
Many of us are watching what becomes of Maduro in Venezuela. The entire population there is out of food and rioting and eating dogs and cats.