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Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules

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Re: Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules

#141

Post by geebee »

spikels wrote: post #91
holografix wrote: post #76

Can'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 driv…

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.

Re: Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules

#142

Post by areyousure »

paulmd wrote: post #33
cstejerean wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

Due to intentional local policies, San Francisco is full of transient populations, litter, criminal occupancy, drug dens, and prostitution all directly on the street.

Re: Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules

#143

Post by ap3 »

geebee wrote: post #141
spikels wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

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?

Re: Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules

#144

Post by areyousure »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #61
nostromo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you're in luck because both of those things are already illegal.

Some neighbours are excessively noisy or cause a nuisance in other ways. For a long-term neighbour, you can probably fix the problem within a few weeks, and it stays fixed. When you have a new 'neighbour' every day, the chance of having that problem in given year increase (as among a large group there will be some bad apples). Moreover, the existing methods of solving the problem won't work because (i) the offender w…

> Some neighbours are excessively noisy or cause a nuisance in other ways. For a long-term neighbour, you can probably fix the problem within a few weeks, and it stays fixed.

I don't believe this is remotely true in San Francisco. It is essentially impossible to effectively solve such a problem, ie by eviction if necessary. In a long-term rental in San Francisco, I believe "an excessively noisy neighbor is forever".

I live in nearby Oakland, with similar tenancy laws. I have in fact had a neighbor so abusive that I believe if he were an AirBnb tenant, I'd be able to have him gone before the end of his AirBnb stay. His behavior is so bad he might not even be able to ever get an AirBnb again afterwards; for example, he literally epoxied the locks of his apartment as he left.

In any case, as an actual renter, he was able to stay much longer. My emails indicate that he was my neighbor AND abusive for over 2.5 months. (He eventually did something so bad that he was able to be evicted.)

Re: Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules

#145

Post by good_sir_ant »

notliketherest wrote: post #45

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.

Re: Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules

#146

Post by areyousure »

reza_n wrote: post #41
kelnos wrote: post #16

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).

San Francisco collects no shortage of taxes.

Re: Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules

#147

Post by ap3 »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #128
ggreer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 viola…

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?

Re: Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules

#148

Post by ap3 »

lovich wrote: post #85
mc32 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Re: Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules

#149

Post by ap3 »

sp332 wrote: post #25
mc32 wrote: post #17

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 confis…

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.

Do my neighbors own my place, pay my mortgage or my bills?

Re: Airbnb Is Suing San Francisco to Block Rental Rules

#150

Post by gshulegaard »

colechristensen wrote: post #68
gshulegaard wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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