S.F. ballot measure would severely limit short-term rentals • Hacker News Board

Re: S.F. ballot measure would severely limit short-term rentals

#11

Post by dougmccune » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 5:52 PM UTC

As an SF resident, I'd support something that allowed short-term rentals only if the host is present and the host is the owner. Permanent AirBnB units don't help the housing market in the city.

I find it funny that AirBnB's justification is that their users rely on the money to make ends meet. But at the same time, if you're taking a unit off the legit long-term rental market to put it on the permanent short-term AirBnB market you are by definition driving up rents for everyone in the city by reducing the supply of rentals. So the justification is: "San Francisco is so expensive, our customers need the ability to drive up rents even more because rents are so high!"

Re: S.F. ballot measure would severely limit short-term rentals

#12

Post by protomyth » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 5:58 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #9

protomyth wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I submitted because I liked how it was summarized and linked to the new york story. Original sources don't seem to be valued by folks up voting. [edit] can moderators change the submitter to the person who originally submitted this article?

Haha. Don't worry about it. I was just pointing out why someone might not have submitted the original. (One of these days I might be able to trade in my karma points for the really big stuffed animal, but for now, it's just mustache combs...)

I was hoping for a go cart, I remember those from the back of comics.....

On the article, Reason Magazine's article is http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/30/san-francisco-new-airbnb-s... "San Francisco May Wind Up Paying Residents to Snitch on Neighbors Using Airbnb" - nice for the headline to be the tldr

Re: S.F. ballot measure would severely limit short-term rentals

#13

Post by frandroid » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:04 PM UTC

dvcc wrote: post #2

I still think it is crazy that Airbnb has an evaluation of $10 Billion, when in its most active markets it is against the law. If the penalties come to pass, which they probably won't, I wonder how it will actually affect usage.

If the law is not enforced at all when there are rampant, clear violations, then it's irrelevant whether it's technically illegal or not. Now the game's about to change though...

Re: S.F. ballot measure would severely limit short-term rentals

#14

Post by enjo » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:10 PM UTC

dougmccune wrote: post #11

As an SF resident, I'd support something that allowed short-term rentals only if the host is present and the host is the owner. Permanent AirBnB units don't help the housing market in the city. I find it funny that AirBnB's justification is that their users rely on the money to make ends meet. But at the same time, if you're taking a unit off the legit long-term rental market to put it on the permanent short-term Air…

Permanent AirBnB units don't help the housing market in the city.

I could see that it might not help, but does it hurt?

Re: S.F. ballot measure would severely limit short-term rentals

#15

Post by dang » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:10 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #7

dang wrote: post #3

We changed the url from [1]. Submitters: please double-check what you post for links to more original sources. 1. http://gigaom.com/2014/04/30/a-reward-for-turning-in-airbnb-...

I submitted this yesterday under the current URL, so that probably would have failed. I think a lot of people submit alternate URLs for articles that failed to get traction due to bad timing or whatever.

Yes, that's an issue. We've got a bunch of ideas for working on this, and related problems with story quality and original sources. Perhaps one day I'll even be able to write a line of code again. :)

Re: S.F. ballot measure would severely limit short-term rentals

#16

Post by rdl » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:14 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #5

I predict this will make it onto the ballot easily and give it a 60% chance of passage. EDIT: Downvoters, a prediction is not the same thing as an endorsement.

What happens if both this and the Chiu proposition pass?

Re: S.F. ballot measure would severely limit short-term rentals

#17

Post by alwaysdoit » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:14 PM UTC

dougmccune wrote: post #11

As an SF resident, I'd support something that allowed short-term rentals only if the host is present and the host is the owner. Permanent AirBnB units don't help the housing market in the city. I find it funny that AirBnB's justification is that their users rely on the money to make ends meet. But at the same time, if you're taking a unit off the legit long-term rental market to put it on the permanent short-term Air…

I guess the question I have is, should someone be able to do a housing swap? Say, let someone trade use their home in SF for a week in exchange for use of the other party's home in NY? Does that need to be regulated?

Re: S.F. ballot measure would severely limit short-term rentals

#18

Post by dougmccune » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:15 PM UTC

enjo wrote: post #14

dougmccune wrote: post #11

As an SF resident, I'd support something that allowed short-term rentals only if the host is present and the host is the owner. Permanent AirBnB units don't help the housing market in the city. I find it funny that AirBnB's justification is that their users rely on the money to make ends meet. But at the same time, if you're taking a unit off the legit long-term rental market to put it on the permanent short-term Air…

Permanent AirBnB units don't help the housing market in the city. I could see that it might not help, but does it hurt?

It takes what would otherwise be rental units for SF residents off the market and instead provides them to tourists. So my opinion is that yeah, that hurts the residents of the city.

You could make the argument that increasing tourism, or increasing the available footprint of where tourists stay (ie not just downtown where all the hotels are) is beneficial. I would actually love to see legit bed and breakfasts open in many more parts of the city. As it is your hotel choices are basically limited to downtown and Fisherman's Wharf. But I don't think helping tourism in SF should come at the cost of making the city less affordable for residents.

Re: S.F. ballot measure would severely limit short-term rentals

#19

Post by dougmccune » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

alwaysdoit wrote: post #17

dougmccune wrote: post #11

As an SF resident, I'd support something that allowed short-term rentals only if the host is present and the host is the owner. Permanent AirBnB units don't help the housing market in the city. I find it funny that AirBnB's justification is that their users rely on the money to make ends meet. But at the same time, if you're taking a unit off the legit long-term rental market to put it on the permanent short-term Air…

I guess the question I have is, should someone be able to do a housing swap? Say, let someone trade use their home in SF for a week in exchange for use of the other party's home in NY? Does that need to be regulated?

I agree that there's a huge grey area in terms of defining what crosses the line. I should be able to let my buddy stay at my place if I'm not here. I also don't have a problem if places that legitimately would have just been empty are rented to tourists (ie I'm traveling for 3 weeks and otherwise would just leave my place empty).

The thing that's not OK is when someone realizes they can rent out their place as a permanent hotel to tourists and get more income than renting it out to residents. So I think a first step is to stop the ability to convert a rental unit serving residents into a hotel for tourists. Then the more nuanced stuff beyond that will take a lot more debate.

Re: S.F. ballot measure would severely limit short-term rentals

#20

Post by geuis » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

As a SF resident, I'm opposed to any regulation at all. I'm a long term renter (same house, 7 years) and my lease prevents subletting. That's exactly where the responsibility and regulation should lie, at the feet of the home owner. If I own a piece of property or have a lease that allows it, then I should have the free choice to do with that property what I want in regards to something like Airbnb. In my case, the owner of my house doesn't want that. Other owners do. A friend just purchased a condo for a lot of money. He should be free to do with his condo what he wants.

How far does this line of thinking extend? What about small startups that work out of someone's house or apartment? They're doing commercial activity in an unzoned area, so that should be banned too.

How about coffee shops? Coffee shops are generally licensed to sell coffee and non-cooked (on premises) goods. Want to sell sandwiches made on site? That's a different (expensive) license. Beer and wine? Same thing. So coffee shops aren't licensed to be places of business for customers to perform commercial activity. We should ban engineers working from cafes too.

I've always liked the petition (http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html) Bastiat sent to the French Parliament proposing that they block out the sun to benefit French candle makers. Its in the same vein as a Modest Proposal from Swift about the Irish poor.

We're seeing government protectionism of new competing services against established and entrenched businesses, i.e. taxi medallions vs Uber/Lyft, hotels vs Airbnb, city-built fiber vs Comcast/Time Warner.

This is dangerous. It limits competition and competition is almost always good for customers.

We need to stop this from happening in SF.