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

sfgate.com

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

#31

Post by applecore »

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?

This regulation is meant to stop people from buying cheap apartments and turning them into makeshift hotels.

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

#32

Post by wpietri »

geuis wrote: post #20

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 o…

I have some issues with this ballot proposition, but you take it too far.

The "property owners should be free to do as they please" thing is a good slogan, but it ignores negative externalities. E.g., I shouldn't be able to open up a paper mill or a hog farm in my condo, because the effects of that extend beyond the bounds of my property.

That's why we have zoning, for example. We zone an area residential because many people don't want to live in a commercial zone. Saying, "You can't run a hotel in this neighborhood" is something we already do, so it's not crazy to say, "You also can't use AirBnB to run a hotel-like-thing in this neighborhood."

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

#33

Post by baddox »

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…

Why not just let the apartment complex or home owner put rules in the lease that specify what kinds of behavior will result in eviction? I don't even see the need for specific rules against short-term rentals, because those don't inherently cause problems to anyone. If you're concerned about noise, just have a rule about noise.

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

#34

Post by wpietri »

harryh wrote: post #30
tedsanders wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a funny point, but consider this: Land (along with regulation) is what limits the supply of housing in SF. If you transform a house to a hotel, then yes, it's true, the supply of housing has fallen. However, at the same time, the supply of hotels has risen. If the world equilibrates, then perhaps a hotel is torn down elsewhere and its land is freed up for housing. So I don't think it's necessarily the case tha…

Just an aside but it's almost all regulation that limits the supply of housing in SF. There is essentially no lack of land due to our technical ability to stack things vertically.

Regulation isn't really the limit there. Regulation is the mechanism that implements the limit. The limit comes from the combined views of the citizenry about what sort of place they'd like their city to be.

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

#35

Post by baddox »

dougmccune wrote: post #18
enjo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> 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.

By lowering the supply of long-term rentals, it would drive the cost up, which would incentivize the production of more long-term housing.

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

#36

Post by wdewind »

geuis wrote: post #28
wdewind wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I generally favor a less-regulation approach, you're missing the core issue here: short-term rentals have a negative effect on neighborhoods because they change the incentives of the people living the house from those of a neighbor to those of a visitor. This is precisely what zoning regulations are designed to protect. > How far does this line of thinking extend? What about small startups that work out of some…

I appreciate your point of view, but this is just supposition. As far as I know, there have been no actual studies done related to the effect of independent rentals using the Airbnb model on neighborhoods. My own opinion is that property owners have the ability to do what they will with that property up to the limits of established laws. This means that with no existing laws to prevent action, those actions are allow…

Edit: not sure why you're being downvoted, I upvoted fwiw.

Yeah I agree, I'd like to see this studied more in depth, because I also don't find the hotel industry to be unbiased in the discussion.

It is not supposition because it happened to me: someone in my building was Airbnb-ing their apartment and the building had significant damage to public walk ways, parties thrown on roof til 4am on week nights etc.

If you look through my comment history you'll see I'm, admittedly, completely biased because of that.

Again, as you said, I'd love to see a study.

I think it would be totally reasonable to also have a public place where I could see all units in my building that are currently being short-term leased, as well as a place to complain.

I don't think all out illegality is the only response here, but Airbnb (and VBRO etc.) are not handling this properly yet.

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

#37

Post by wpietri »

baddox wrote: post #33
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…

Why not just let the apartment complex or home owner put rules in the lease that specify what kinds of behavior will result in eviction? I don't even see the need for specific rules against short-term rentals, because those don't inherently cause problems to anyone. If you're concerned about noise, just have a rule about noise.

One reason would be that the housing market is bad enough without converting a bunch of housing stock into virtual hotels.

But more directly answering your question, what you're talking about is coming up with a good set of regulations for virtual hotels. That's hard. We often solve similar problems through zoning. E.g., we don't come up with a zillion little regulations on exactly what should be allowed in an industrial area versus a residential area. We just put compatible sorts of use together, and then mainly trust that people will work it out.

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

#38

Post by baddox »

wdewind wrote: post #24
geuis wrote: post #20

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 o…

While I generally favor a less-regulation approach, you're missing the core issue here: short-term rentals have a negative effect on neighborhoods because they change the incentives of the people living the house from those of a neighbor to those of a visitor. This is precisely what zoning regulations are designed to protect. > How far does this line of thinking extend? What about small startups that work out of some…

> short-term rentals have a negative effect on neighborhoods because they change the incentives of the people living the house from those of a neighbor to those of a visitor.

So what? People aren't friendly enough to their neighbors? Is this really worth regulating? If there's a specific concern, like tenants not maintaining the property or being too noisy, why not just require tenants to take care of the property and have a noise policy?

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

#39

Post by baddox »

frandroid wrote: post #13
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...

And in fact, I would argue that a law which is not consistently enforced is by definition not a good law.

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

#40

Post by wpietri »

btgeekboy wrote: post #29
dougmccune wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 per…

Perhaps the solution is that the host must have the property as their primary residence. This implies they spend over half of the year at that property.

That's nice and simple. It also covers my case: after my mom died, I went and spent a summer back home. It was great to be able to rent my place out here to cover the cost of renting a place there.

And I think there's a good incentive there. I was very choosy about who I let stay, because I was letting them into my own home. I didn't want anybody stealing my books or breaking my things. For a unit set up as a virtual hotel room, I expect people would be less careful about guests.

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