"As part of city law, San Francisco requires property owners renting out units for less than 30 days to register with the city’s office of short-term rentals, as well as be a permanent resident of that unit."
They were breaking the law, Herrara enforced said law.
Get used to it; language is always evolving. Awful used to mean "awe inspiring" and terrific used mean "causing terror" and now they both mean the opposite and nobody questions it.
This is a fairly recent and controversial change to the word. It was updated officially in the dictionary after people kept misusing the word. So now it means both literally and the complete opposite of literally.
People aren't misusing the word. Hyperbole always doesn't mean what it says. The meaning of the statement "my head just exploded" is that my head just exploded. The meaning of the statement "my head just literally exploded" is the same but maybe stronger. The hyperbole applies to the whole phrase and makes the whole thing mean something other than the literal definition of the words.
I'm guessing it is intended as somewhat humorous. AirBnB is about "renting out beds for the night." The law here is addressing who can lay down to sleep, where and when and so forth.
I don't think the other responses adequately explain what was attempted here.
Laying down the law is an idiom. It doesn't have to do with the law. (Someone posted an example specific to laws, which confuses the rhetorical device.)
As laying down the law does NOT have to do with law (e.g. I could "lay down the law" by punching someone in the head for touching my stamp collection), they add "literally" because Dennis Herrera is, in fact, the city attorney and is specifically applying the actual law. So rather than doing something unrelated to the law, which is what the idiom "lay down the law" allows for, the idiom's loose definition now has a literal application regarding the word "law", in this case.
14 units times 11 months times the median rent in 2017 ($3000) = $462,000 in revenue.
I suppose the article implies approximately $200,000 in expenses but it’s not clear whether those are Airbnb specific or whether those would have been required even if rented to tenants. It’s unlikely that each unit requires $14,000 in maintenance per year. It’s fairer IMO to use $1/sqft per year for condo maintenance when an HOA looks after the exterior, though I’m assuming these were condos? Assuming 750sqft, that’s just $11,000 in costs. Then there’s opportunity cost of capital, etc. The top line number should be good enough for napkin math.
What is the motivation for this law? Why is SF regulating the length of stay or rentors at all? Seems like a gross violation of freedom and property rights. Zoning I can understand but duration? This seems like a bad law.
Regulating where hotels and other business may be located is a pretty standard thing to regulate. If you turn an apartment block into a factory or hotel without a permit, you are going to have a bad time in pretty much any city.
Short term stays like hotels and long term stays like renting should be regulated differently, yes? You have different rights as a renter and as a consumer of hotel services.
If you claim to be regulated by one (say as a landlord who has several empty units intended for lease) but are operating as the other (essentially an off-books hotel) that is an attempt to manipulate regulators and avoid responsibilities, tax burdens, etc that one or the other has.
There are already laws and rights for tenants that are based on how long they have stayed at a place, whether they have received mail there, pay for utilities there, etc. Generally speaking, the more you are a full time tenant for a longer duration the more rights you have.
People don't like living next to hotels. This has never really been a problem because until recently the barrier to operating an apartment as a hotel was very high, so no regulation arose to regulate it. All current movements for AirBnB licensing are doing is regulating these as if they are hotels.
> Short term stays like hotels and long term stays like renting should be regulated differently, yes?
It's clear that a lot of people take this for granted, but I don't. I don't see why the rights of one group ought to be different or more important than the rights of another group.
This is what SF does: create a ton of laws or regulations so that it’s onerous to not break one, then selectively enforce them when it’s palatable to. Try street parking in SF; it’s like an SAT problem trying to figure out if you’re doing it legally. Arbitrary justice is not good.
Isn't zoning one of the contributing factors to the housing crisis?
The problem AFAIK with airbnb is that it takes supply from the residential side, and people using the properties for living in the area should be prioritized over visitors who should book hotels.
Why should they be prioritized? That seems rather subjective and dependent on who you are. An argument could be made that it takes supply from the short term side and artificially drives up the cost of hotels. Why not let supply / demand decide?
Tourism for the tourist is a luxury, shelter for the resident is a necessity. If you’ve been homeless you would probably agree not having a home is quite a bit worse than having to pay more for a hotel when on holiday.
“Letting supply and demand decide” means deciding to give the housing to whoever will pay the most: which group do you think will pay more, the entire world of tourists who want to visit SF on vacation or people who live here?
Which of these groups do you think it is more important to serve?
There are a large class of landlords that will favor longer term tenants because it is lower risk / less hassle.
There are also many cases where renting long term is more profitable as well if the home can't be booked consistently. There has always been a "volume discount" incentive for business owners.
I would say there is economic incentive for both interests.
I don't claim to have the right to assert my opinion on other renters and landlords. I don't think others should either. Who I think is more important is none of my business. That's between the renter and the landlord IMO.
Markets, based on supply and demand, have a natural tendency to find balance between the interests of multiple parties.
And what's being done here is the same as communism? And communism has no potential benefits? Why don't you argue based on concrete facts instead of false equivalencies?
Because tourists tend to impose negative externalities upon the city (like getting drunk and throwing up in the streets), and long-term residents tend to impose positive externalities (like planting flowerboxes at their windows).
Also because residents pay for public services via taxes, and tourists staying in illegal Airbnbs don't even pay hotel taxes.
I think the government has a legitimate role in maintaining order in the streets. I don't think the government has any legitimate role in influencing the number of flowerboxes in windows.
Because by banning AirBnB short rentals, the rooms and entire properties will then be more likely used to house permanent residents. Owners will be financially incentivized to provide it for the residential rental market, or to sell it, versus not doing anything with it and paying the property taxes.
Hotel owners do not want competition. For a politician, it is easier to extract surplus from a limited number of hotel owners than from a large number of people renting their individual units. So, under the appropriate excuse, a law preventing competition is passed.
The foundations of all this were established in the early 20th century in cases such as Nebbia v New York[1], Munn v Illinois[2] etc.
For the record, I think these decisions, and the various laws passed by cities in an effort to protect hotel owners and taxi medallion owners and cable franchise owners etc are both horrible law and horrible economics.
This is a pretty short-sighted view, in my opinion.
Regulation also means working fire alarms, access for disabled persons, and a whole lot of other things that are far from guaranteed with unscrupulous building owners in a booming housing market.
The right solution is in the middle somewhere, but it's insufficient to simply call this a case of regulatory oversight.
I think you answered to the wrong comment. He never said all regulations were wrong, he said the monopolistic regulation around hotel and taxi are just made to protect hotel and taxi owners. He isn't talking about any other regulation from what I understands.
Most opposition to the mini-hotel industry (AirBnb) is community oriented. The fact that these interests align with the hotel industry is irrelevant.
Most of the profit AirBnb generates is from huge, commercial interests renting out 10+ rooms and entire houses. That strains supply and disrupts neighborhoods.
> “This is a win for San Francisco residents,” Herrera said. “Whether you’re a tenant or a landlord who has been following the law, this is a victory. This outcome frees up more homes for long-term tenants and stops unfair competition in the marketplace. The serious financial penalty is an important deterrent. It sends a clear message to those looking to illegally profit off of San Francisco’s housing crisis: Don’t try it. We will catch you. Most importantly, we preserved more than 45 housing units to be used as homes, not hotel rooms. We are fighting back against San Francisco’s housing crisis in every way possible.”
This city attorney seems... extra.
You know what else frees up more housing units? Letting people build housing does. You know who is responsible for the housing crisis? The city is.
With an attitude like this, SF will be the next Detroit. Exponential economic curves always turn out to be sigmoids, and when the sigmoid flattens and the economy is carrying tremendous dead weight predicated on future increasing prosperity, the city will be out of options.
While that's true, they don't have to bend over backwards for those voters. SF supervisors have a lot of leniency in clearing out the construction approval backlog.
It seems...foolish to not bend over backwards for those who control your destiny through democratic actions. Property owners have the most to lose, and therefore the most incentive to keep their neighborhood as-is. I find it hard to fault them for their actions (especially when you're investing seven figures into your home's purchase).
The core problem is that SF property owners value their homes, communities, and property values over the inclusion of additional residents, and that won't change without stripping this constituency of their property and voting rights (which is of course untenable in a functioning democracy).
SF really is in a situation where a regional development council needs to come in and clear out a lot of the low-density housing, but since that's unlikely to happen this story makes me quite happy.
Look I had to be sure, I've never seen anyone actually suggest eminent domain so casually before. The only times I've seen it have been in grainy, fuzzy news reports from the 80's.
Eminent domain is used daily in the US and around the world. It would literally be impossible to build and maintain a transportation network without it.
Okay but we're talking about razing houses and replacing it not with infrastructure and transportation networks but with more housing in a state with already a quarter of the nation's homeless population.
I have so many questions about what happens in that regional development council hypothetical with astronomically high housing prices and homelessness:
- Do you play benevolent city planner and let current residents in these low density zones stay, redevelop around them? This is already happening without much help needed from the city, hastening that seems to be a good way to add to the homeless population resulting from displaced families fleeing the inevitable raise in property value and therefore taxes, no?
- Do you play well meaning but forward marching city planner who has to watch families move out of their city acquired land and homes, sure probably with a check in hand and a pat on the back hoping they make it-when realistically the market probably, very likely (A) don't have room for them or (B) probably out of their financial range to even relocate to nearby neighborhoods?
I just don't see a path forward here for SF using eminent domain that doesn't come with some very painful outcomes that probably exacerbate the very problem it would intend to solve. An unforced error.
Perhaps I'm overthinking the conceit here, but it's an experience I've lived through, so maybe that explains why my eyebrow immediately shot up.
I don't understand the outcomes of the second scenario. Wouldn't adding housing stock A) make more room for them and B) as a result, lower the cost to stay within the neighborhood
Won't their checks be for fair market value of their expropriate property? So by definition, they should be able to relocate within the neighborhood?
>Won't their checks be for fair market value of their expropriate property?
As someone who's been on the short end of eminent domain for a freeway offramp in north LA, nope. The city tends to hire their own appraisers with their own way of looking at things. Considering that most eminent domain cases run through single family housing without existing homebuilder contracts with the city (at this point, we're talking homes before 1980), there are a litany of ways in which a city appraiser can devalue the house. Yes, of course you can hire an appraiser go to bat for you.
The short and sweet of it is that the city can use things like "you never applied for a permit to build this addition" or "your re-roofing was never replaced with high wind resistant (no joke) tar." At this point, we're talking multiple visits from an appraiser (assuming you can find one willing to deal with city bureaucracy), and lawyer fees to handle the entire case.
That doesn't even begin to address the emotional quagmire of the fact that they knocked on _your_ door. You'll probably need to need to talk to a counselor for that one.
> Okay but we're talking about razing houses and replacing it not with infrastructure and transportation networks but with more housing
Who’s talking about that?
All you have to do, literally, is just stop actively preventing people from building apartment buildings. The market will have no trouble taking care of the rest.
I don't think that's the plan op is talking about... the plan is if you change the housing rules so that the approval to build your apartment is state level rather than local level, then assuming it makes financial sense, developers can come in and buy single family homes on the open market and build something high density in their place.
There's a bill like this every few years, and it always gets shot down. The latest is SB827, which was shot down, too.
In general, the problem isn't with people being unwilling to sell to developers; the problem is that even after the developers get the property, they are prevented from developing it in a high density manner.
I actually understand it. Ironically, a San Francisco resident Uber driver explained it to me. She said something like "People like the small city feel without over-population, people like the view from almost anywhere in the city - we don't want to to be another new your.
And while the skeptic in me sees "Property owners don't want prices to go down," I also see the other side now. San Fran wouldn't be San Fran even if we dug deep to have a ton of housing without ruining the view.
There is something to be said for not seeing a single police car until going South at night (or getting pulled over for going South on some street starting with an S "after 9"). There is also something to be said for living around people who can afford to live there (I can't, so don't take this as some elitist techie failing to check his privilige).
After moving here, I see this point too. However, there's very clearly parts of the city that could look like Taipei and the city still wouldn't lose its look at feel.
Feel free to stick all of us Techies in Gigantic high-rises in Dogpatch and Mission-bay to bring the housing costs down everywhere else (and stop playing these band-aid games with Airbnb)
Property owners are responsible for the housing crisis. The city is at their whim.
But that’s beside the point, because this is a case about an unlicensed Airbnb. I don’t know what the laws are where you come from, but someone illegally turning their multi-tenant property in a residential neighborhood into a 24-hour motel isn’t someone I have any sympathy for.
Besides, Airbnb is no answer to the dearth of housing in any city. The lawyer is spouting facts. Those are 45 units that would be going to people who would live or work in SF and instead are used to price gouge visitors (relative to the going rent/mortgage rates) who want to save $50 on a hotel room.
> Property owners are responsible for the housing crisis. The city is at their whim.
If a government wants your land & they have the cash to pay for it according to some calculation, they can force you to sell via eminent domain. [1] A property owner that pisses off the government may not be a property owner indefinitely.
> Property owners are responsible for the housing crisis. The city is at their whim.
I don't know. Maybe this is just differing philosophies of government, but when I object to the government exercising an authority that only it has, I consider that to be directly a problem with government. Obviously it's useful to look into who else influences the government's decisions, but the direct problem is the exercise of power.
The local government is the will of the collective group of people who are governed by it. Maybe you're the home owner who would love to have your home demolished and replaced with a high rise, but the fact that you can't means your community doesn't want to be subject to that, and they've exercised that will through the legal framework where you, too, have a voice (albeit an outnumbered one). We trade authority to the government for it to stop you with legal means so that your neighbors don't stop you with clubs and pitchforks.
> The local government is the will of the collective group of people who are governed by it.
That's awfully idealistic! Sure, it would be nice if that were true, as a pure expression of democracy, but I've never seen a real-world government which actually met that standard.
The rooted pay taxes, provide stability to a neighborhood, and are invested in the upkeep of their properties.
They also tend to be better neighbors than a constant flow of random people who may not care whether they make noise, or disturb others.
I certainly would be incredibly peeved if I paid a million dollars for a unit and then the person down the hall turned their apartment into a miniature hotel and had random people coming in and out at all times of the day that I'd never seen before.
Beyond that, these units drive up rental prices, and avoid luxury taxes which can benefit locals to enrich the owners of AirBnB.
Visitors spend far more per day than long-term residents. I think there's a high likelihood that their overall contribution to the taxbase greatly exceeds the long-term residents per day of occupancy.
In other words, there's good reason to suspect that having a unit rented out to a succession of short term residents will produce more tax revenue for the city than having it occupied by one long-term resident.
As for stability, I don't think we're in any danger of destabilizing major cities from lack of long-term residents.
>>certainly would be incredibly peeved if I paid a million dollars for a unit and then the person down the hall turned their apartment into a miniature hotel
This should be decided by the contract you signed with your condo association when you purchased the property, not an arbitrary intervention in private contracts and property by the city.
Also, would it make any difference to you if the steady rotation of guests were not paying? If not, why not make the rule focused on the problematic condition, which is a large number of different people visiting/staying, rather than whether there was financial compensation?
It wouldn't matter if it was the condo across the hall or the house across the street. Just because you own a piece of property doesn't give you the right to do anything you want with it.
That's why we don't allow strip clubs next to schools. Because certain things should be in certain places and not others.
In this case, the people have stated by voting in representatives who've appointed officials who've created zoning laws that they don't want short term leasing without a permit in their residential neighborhoods.
And those tourists tend to contribute more to city coffers when they're not actively dodging things like luxury taxes.
Asking silly hypotheticals about people operating hotels for no monetary gain doesn't help your argument.
It's poor exercise of government power to prohibit a money-making operation, as a way to stop a subset of that money-making operation that has harmful effects. Better to target the harmful activity directly.
>>And those tourists tend to contribute more to city coffers when they're not actively dodging things like luxury taxes.
That's a different topic. My point was that there's no good reason to assume long term residents contribute more to the tax base, given how much more tourists spend per day of occupancy.
But to your point: who said Airbnb means dodging luxury taxes? And why ignore the loss in tourism when you wipe out the low-cost accommodations market provided by home-sharing?
>>Asking silly hypotheticals about people operating hotels for no monetary gain doesn't help your argument.
Remuneration from paying guests is not the only potential motivation for allowing a large number of people to stay at one's place in quick succession. The motivation should not be relevant if the problem is the quantity of people staying. Targeting remnunerated stays exclusively is biased.
When you bought a residential property, you agreed to operate it within certain levels of upkeep, within residential zoning ordinances, adhering to a list of rules the city imposes on you. You didn't settle a piece of land on some unclaimed frontier, and you don't get to change the rules your building, neighborhood, community, city, state, or country imposes on your property just because you don't like them. If you wanted to operate a hotel, buy property zoned for that purpose.
Good point. There is a case that house-use restrictions are consistent with voluntaryism given land is not man-made movable property. The community at large could reasonably argue it has a greater right to govern immovable natural property than the first person to homestead it, given the latter is not an act of creation the way the genesis of other types of private property is.
Anyway aside from the larger political question, I think it's more practical to leave these decisions to individual condo associations. No need to homogenize policy in a diverse landscape.
Building housing isn't the solution to solving the problem created by airbnb, as most airbnb units would be competing for tenants towards the bottom of the market, and would likely be rent controlled, when compared to new housing that competes for tenants at the top of the market.
I read an article that did the math on the SF housing issue (it’s killing me that I can’t find it, but it was on HN).
It’s actually physically impossible to build housing at the rate that SF is growing. Even if you got rid of the politics. Even if there was unlimited land. The issue is that you literally cannot build housing at the skyrocketing rate of growth that SF is experiencing. That’s why this is a crisis, it’s essentially a mass migration to SF.
This is nothing new. There are many zoning laws restricting what you can do with your land: What can you build? Is commercial and/or residential use allowed? It's very much in line to say if a unit can be used as a hotel-like or not.
Airbnb is suing NY right now because the city wants the names and addresses of those who are illegally renting without registering their apartments. I believe it's called "disruption"
Law Enforcement want data from Facebook because it's useful to an investigation.
Law Enforcement want data from AirBnB because the act of working with AirBnb is the illegal part.
So asking a drug dealer for the name of his distributors seems reasonable to me. Or asking the illegal online betting company the names of those who were placing illegal bets.
Though the regulations should hopefully be more clear on this.
Airbnb isn't banned in New York, it can be operated legally. The city is asking for a full list of all operators, including hosts abiding by regulation.
If continuing the (poor) Facebook analogy, this is akin to asking for a full list of their users, even the ones abiding by the law.
> So you also support Facebook giving up names and addresses to law enforcement?
What aboutism of the worst kind. This isn't "law enforcement", this is the justice system. And yes,if a judge legally approves such subpoena then corporations need to follow the law. If you don't like the law then change it through democratic means. Neither Facebook nor Airbnb are above the law. The era of "disruption" where anything went because "we're just an app" is over.
You could find out if interested (Department of Finance and Administrative Services contact info on that page, who regulates short term [ie AirBnB] accommodations).
This actually sounds like it could make for a really interesting endeavor in open records requesting for anyone who geeks off on that sort of thing (looks around...oh wait I guess that's me).
Rather than putting restrictions on what private people can do with their property, I'm starting to think the city should consider bulldozing some of the GG park to put up affordable housing or renting it out for cheap to those who need it where the city of San Francisco would be the landlord.
One never has absolute dominion over their property in the way you’re framing it, nor should they. The city has a right put restrictions on how land (which really ought to be a common resource anyway!) is used.
> As part of city law, San Francisco requires property owners renting out units for less than 30 days to register with the city’s office of short-term rentals, as well as be a permanent resident of that unit.
As far as I can tell, AirBnb is blatantly complicit in allowing renters to violate this law. When I moved to SF I stayed in an AirBnb for a few weeks. It didn't occur to me when I booked that it could have been an illegal operation. Once I became aware, I looked up the public records and, lo and behold, there was no short term rental permit.
Not only are they complicit in it they are profiting off of breaking the law but having zero consequences. They are paying no fine in this case or any other I've heard of because of something in their TOS.
"As part of city law, San Francisco requires property owners renting out units for less than 30 days to register with the city’s office of short-term rentals, as well as be a permanent resident of that unit. "
- The registration can easily be made a requirement to list on AirBNB and they could limit one unit rental to users.
"These are not the type of hosts we want on our platform and are glad the City has the tools it needs to enforce the rules" - Ha.
Their business model is the arbitrage between legal tourism housing and illegal short term rentals of residential neighborhoods to the detriment of more permanent residents.
For both owners of properties and travelers, this is good for you, so you do mental gymnastics to escape it as you can see all over this comment section :)
Personally, I see no problem with Airbnb and I think the government forcing you to be licensed is bad.
Airbnb has a review system for a reason. If it’s a shitty place, you write a review and other people will be less inclined to rent.
I’ve been in hotels that were shitty and licensed. I’ve been in airbnb rentals that were cheaper and better taken care of. I’ve also been in great hotels and shitty Airbnb’s.
How is suing two property owners a win for city licensed landlords? Are they getting the 2+million? No? Oh the city is getting it for “reasons” and calling it a win.
There was a case made that Airbnb rentals are subsidized by the local residents through higher rent. So if you travel to Paris, you're paying less for an Airbnb rental there. In your own city, Airbnb rentals are rising the cost of buying and renting. The outcome is that your costs end up the same: higher property at home, lower price of renting abroad.
This is, of course, purely theoretical. There are many other factors in play: regulation, your propensity to travel, desirability of your home neighborhood, etc.
The licensing is not to ensure quality, the licensing is to restrict supply of hotel units. Not to keep hotels in business, but because people simply do not like having short-term visitors as neighbors or floormates.
It's not a win for city licensed landlords. It's a win for residents. Residents are ultimately voters. And AirBnB is bad for the vast majority of residents.
> people simply do not like having short-term visitors as neighbors or floormates.
That's a commonly provided explanation, but I find it very hard to believe that existing laws and leasing rules can't/don't already easily solve this. If too many instances of noise complaints, property damage, improper trash disposal, etc. occur from your property, you (the owner or renter) get fined or evicted. It's obviously not an excuse to say that you rented out your unit on AirBnb. Surely these laws and rules have always existed, since that problem is not unique to short-term rentals. What am I missing?
Okay, then that seems like the problem. Why would short-term rentals laws be enforced any better? Unless, of course, the incentive to enforce those laws is provided by special interests like the hotel industry. Shocking.
People want zero short-term visitors as neighbors, and the law reflects that.
Landlords, under existing US law, are only really liable for tenant nuisance if they should have known that the nuisance was likely (e.g., an aggressive dog in the apartment.) It's hard to really argue that you could tell anything about noisy short-term visitors, since fine upstanding members of society on a weekend trip may turn out to be party animals at night.
Short-term rentals are even more difficult to enforce against just because there is a shortage of police and inspector manpower in most major cites; by the time one is able to get to you the visitor may have left already. And first offence is generally just a warning, but a warning is of little use to people taking a plane out the next day.
I don’t think simply not wanting short-term visitors in your neighborhood is a legitimate desire that should be respected. It’s fine to desire a lack of specific symptoms like noise or damage. If a landlord or property owner allows guests that cause problems I don’t see why they’re any less liable than if they cause the problems themselves.
I use AirBnB all over the place and love it. That said, I don't have a problem with a reasonable government licensing requirement. I want my AirBnBs to have smoke detectors (and CO detectors where relevant). I want them to have safe means of egress in a fire.
These are not things that ratings/reviews/stars are going to capture.
Are they not going after airbnb to get their fees back? Airbnb seems to charge a fee of around 10-13% on bookings, putting their haul around $100k for the 11 months mentioned in the article. Maybe the settlement mentioned also included a financial component.
Not downplaying the landlord's unlawful acts, but they couldn't have easily operated at this scale without the help of a popular platform.
There's also a 14% occupancy tax only on rentals of less than 30 days, so SF has a financial disincentive against converting all these properties to long term rentals. (Edit: if airbnb is lowering the average short term rental price, then the picture is less clear. There are tourists who will go outside SF if there aren't any 'whole house' options there...)
The fines have to be large enough to discourage breaking the law. Is it a good law? I generally trust the residents to pass laws that make sense for those that live there. What I want to understand is what makes SF different from other cities in terms of zoning laws?
The city government would like to blame illegal Airbnb rentals for contributing to the housing crisis but at the same time still enforces strict height limits on buildings because NIMBYism. It won't be today, or tomorrow, but eventually SF and the greater Bay Area will no longer be sustainable as the major economic hub it is without some serious change. You can't complain about increasing income inequality and cost of living problems without addressing the core component that makes up the cost of living...
156 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] thread“San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera is laying down the law — literally. “
Nowhere in the article is it explained how they “literally” are laying down the law.
"As part of city law, San Francisco requires property owners renting out units for less than 30 days to register with the city’s office of short-term rentals, as well as be a permanent resident of that unit."
They were breaking the law, Herrara enforced said law.
https://www.salon.com/2013/08/22/according_to_the_dictionary...
I was quite surprised when I randomly found out yesterday.
I wonder if this is how people felt when some guy invented the word "flammable" in 1813.
1) in a literal sense or manner.
2) (informal) used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible
I literally just did.
But yeah people using this term still grinds my gears.
> to state officially what someone must do or how they must do it
As in,
> The Natural Resources Department has laid down tough standards for water quality.
Using that meaning this "literally" seems to work just fine.
Laying down the law is an idiom. It doesn't have to do with the law. (Someone posted an example specific to laws, which confuses the rhetorical device.)
As laying down the law does NOT have to do with law (e.g. I could "lay down the law" by punching someone in the head for touching my stamp collection), they add "literally" because Dennis Herrera is, in fact, the city attorney and is specifically applying the actual law. So rather than doing something unrelated to the law, which is what the idiom "lay down the law" allows for, the idiom's loose definition now has a literal application regarding the word "law", in this case.
I suppose the article implies approximately $200,000 in expenses but it’s not clear whether those are Airbnb specific or whether those would have been required even if rented to tenants. It’s unlikely that each unit requires $14,000 in maintenance per year. It’s fairer IMO to use $1/sqft per year for condo maintenance when an HOA looks after the exterior, though I’m assuming these were condos? Assuming 750sqft, that’s just $11,000 in costs. Then there’s opportunity cost of capital, etc. The top line number should be good enough for napkin math.
If you claim to be regulated by one (say as a landlord who has several empty units intended for lease) but are operating as the other (essentially an off-books hotel) that is an attempt to manipulate regulators and avoid responsibilities, tax burdens, etc that one or the other has.
It's clear that a lot of people take this for granted, but I don't. I don't see why the rights of one group ought to be different or more important than the rights of another group.
I have no sympathy for these landlords.
The problem AFAIK with airbnb is that it takes supply from the residential side, and people using the properties for living in the area should be prioritized over visitors who should book hotels.
Which of these groups do you think it is more important to serve?
There are a large class of landlords that will favor longer term tenants because it is lower risk / less hassle.
There are also many cases where renting long term is more profitable as well if the home can't be booked consistently. There has always been a "volume discount" incentive for business owners.
I would say there is economic incentive for both interests.
I don't claim to have the right to assert my opinion on other renters and landlords. I don't think others should either. Who I think is more important is none of my business. That's between the renter and the landlord IMO.
Markets, based on supply and demand, have a natural tendency to find balance between the interests of multiple parties.
I dunno, let the market decide? From your question, it seems like you claim to have a self-evident answer, why?
Also because residents pay for public services via taxes, and tourists staying in illegal Airbnbs don't even pay hotel taxes.
Also because residents, not tourists, vote.
Seriously? Cities love tourists, they contribute a lot of $$$ to the economy
If anything, cities should encourage property owners to rent out spare rooms or empty apartments to tourists to bring in that spending money.
How do you think it's different?
The foundations of all this were established in the early 20th century in cases such as Nebbia v New York[1], Munn v Illinois[2] etc.
For the record, I think these decisions, and the various laws passed by cities in an effort to protect hotel owners and taxi medallion owners and cable franchise owners etc are both horrible law and horrible economics.
[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/291/502
[2]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/94/113/
Regulation also means working fire alarms, access for disabled persons, and a whole lot of other things that are far from guaranteed with unscrupulous building owners in a booming housing market.
The right solution is in the middle somewhere, but it's insufficient to simply call this a case of regulatory oversight.
Most opposition to the mini-hotel industry (AirBnb) is community oriented. The fact that these interests align with the hotel industry is irrelevant.
Most of the profit AirBnb generates is from huge, commercial interests renting out 10+ rooms and entire houses. That strains supply and disrupts neighborhoods.
See, e.g., "Hotel Money Is Funding Anti-Airbnb Sting Operations"[1].
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-12/hotel-mon...
This city attorney seems... extra.
You know what else frees up more housing units? Letting people build housing does. You know who is responsible for the housing crisis? The city is.
The core problem is that SF property owners value their homes, communities, and property values over the inclusion of additional residents, and that won't change without stripping this constituency of their property and voting rights (which is of course untenable in a functioning democracy).
Eminent domain is used daily in the US and around the world. It would literally be impossible to build and maintain a transportation network without it.
I have so many questions about what happens in that regional development council hypothetical with astronomically high housing prices and homelessness:
- Do you play benevolent city planner and let current residents in these low density zones stay, redevelop around them? This is already happening without much help needed from the city, hastening that seems to be a good way to add to the homeless population resulting from displaced families fleeing the inevitable raise in property value and therefore taxes, no?
- Do you play well meaning but forward marching city planner who has to watch families move out of their city acquired land and homes, sure probably with a check in hand and a pat on the back hoping they make it-when realistically the market probably, very likely (A) don't have room for them or (B) probably out of their financial range to even relocate to nearby neighborhoods?
I just don't see a path forward here for SF using eminent domain that doesn't come with some very painful outcomes that probably exacerbate the very problem it would intend to solve. An unforced error.
Perhaps I'm overthinking the conceit here, but it's an experience I've lived through, so maybe that explains why my eyebrow immediately shot up.
Won't their checks be for fair market value of their expropriate property? So by definition, they should be able to relocate within the neighborhood?
As someone who's been on the short end of eminent domain for a freeway offramp in north LA, nope. The city tends to hire their own appraisers with their own way of looking at things. Considering that most eminent domain cases run through single family housing without existing homebuilder contracts with the city (at this point, we're talking homes before 1980), there are a litany of ways in which a city appraiser can devalue the house. Yes, of course you can hire an appraiser go to bat for you.
The short and sweet of it is that the city can use things like "you never applied for a permit to build this addition" or "your re-roofing was never replaced with high wind resistant (no joke) tar." At this point, we're talking multiple visits from an appraiser (assuming you can find one willing to deal with city bureaucracy), and lawyer fees to handle the entire case.
That doesn't even begin to address the emotional quagmire of the fact that they knocked on _your_ door. You'll probably need to need to talk to a counselor for that one.
Who’s talking about that?
All you have to do, literally, is just stop actively preventing people from building apartment buildings. The market will have no trouble taking care of the rest.
There's a bill like this every few years, and it always gets shot down. The latest is SB827, which was shot down, too.
https://slate.com/business/2018/01/california-bill-sb827-res...
In general, the problem isn't with people being unwilling to sell to developers; the problem is that even after the developers get the property, they are prevented from developing it in a high density manner.
And while the skeptic in me sees "Property owners don't want prices to go down," I also see the other side now. San Fran wouldn't be San Fran even if we dug deep to have a ton of housing without ruining the view.
There is something to be said for not seeing a single police car until going South at night (or getting pulled over for going South on some street starting with an S "after 9"). There is also something to be said for living around people who can afford to live there (I can't, so don't take this as some elitist techie failing to check his privilige).
Feel free to stick all of us Techies in Gigantic high-rises in Dogpatch and Mission-bay to bring the housing costs down everywhere else (and stop playing these band-aid games with Airbnb)
I've always heard it was the owners, but as someone who doesn't live in SF, I can't verify.
But that’s beside the point, because this is a case about an unlicensed Airbnb. I don’t know what the laws are where you come from, but someone illegally turning their multi-tenant property in a residential neighborhood into a 24-hour motel isn’t someone I have any sympathy for.
Besides, Airbnb is no answer to the dearth of housing in any city. The lawyer is spouting facts. Those are 45 units that would be going to people who would live or work in SF and instead are used to price gouge visitors (relative to the going rent/mortgage rates) who want to save $50 on a hotel room.
If a government wants your land & they have the cash to pay for it according to some calculation, they can force you to sell via eminent domain. [1] A property owner that pisses off the government may not be a property owner indefinitely.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain
I don't know. Maybe this is just differing philosophies of government, but when I object to the government exercising an authority that only it has, I consider that to be directly a problem with government. Obviously it's useful to look into who else influences the government's decisions, but the direct problem is the exercise of power.
Perhaps it should be. That certainly doesn't mean that it is. Do the people of Flint want their water crisis?
That's awfully idealistic! Sure, it would be nice if that were true, as a pure expression of democracy, but I've never seen a real-world government which actually met that standard.
>save $50 on a hotel
how the hell can you simultaneously be gouged and save money?
what makes the long term resident more deserving than the short term visitor? why should the rootless pay a subsidy to the rooted?
The rooted pay taxes, provide stability to a neighborhood, and are invested in the upkeep of their properties.
They also tend to be better neighbors than a constant flow of random people who may not care whether they make noise, or disturb others.
I certainly would be incredibly peeved if I paid a million dollars for a unit and then the person down the hall turned their apartment into a miniature hotel and had random people coming in and out at all times of the day that I'd never seen before.
Beyond that, these units drive up rental prices, and avoid luxury taxes which can benefit locals to enrich the owners of AirBnB.
In other words, there's good reason to suspect that having a unit rented out to a succession of short term residents will produce more tax revenue for the city than having it occupied by one long-term resident.
As for stability, I don't think we're in any danger of destabilizing major cities from lack of long-term residents.
>>certainly would be incredibly peeved if I paid a million dollars for a unit and then the person down the hall turned their apartment into a miniature hotel
This should be decided by the contract you signed with your condo association when you purchased the property, not an arbitrary intervention in private contracts and property by the city.
Also, would it make any difference to you if the steady rotation of guests were not paying? If not, why not make the rule focused on the problematic condition, which is a large number of different people visiting/staying, rather than whether there was financial compensation?
That's why we don't allow strip clubs next to schools. Because certain things should be in certain places and not others.
In this case, the people have stated by voting in representatives who've appointed officials who've created zoning laws that they don't want short term leasing without a permit in their residential neighborhoods.
And those tourists tend to contribute more to city coffers when they're not actively dodging things like luxury taxes.
Asking silly hypotheticals about people operating hotels for no monetary gain doesn't help your argument.
>>And those tourists tend to contribute more to city coffers when they're not actively dodging things like luxury taxes.
That's a different topic. My point was that there's no good reason to assume long term residents contribute more to the tax base, given how much more tourists spend per day of occupancy.
But to your point: who said Airbnb means dodging luxury taxes? And why ignore the loss in tourism when you wipe out the low-cost accommodations market provided by home-sharing?
>>Asking silly hypotheticals about people operating hotels for no monetary gain doesn't help your argument.
Remuneration from paying guests is not the only potential motivation for allowing a large number of people to stay at one's place in quick succession. The motivation should not be relevant if the problem is the quantity of people staying. Targeting remnunerated stays exclusively is biased.
Anyway aside from the larger political question, I think it's more practical to leave these decisions to individual condo associations. No need to homogenize policy in a diverse landscape.
Good. Extra is what you need to stand up to SV clout
How do you propose convincing propertyowners to finance their own vertical construction?
It’s actually physically impossible to build housing at the rate that SF is growing. Even if you got rid of the politics. Even if there was unlimited land. The issue is that you literally cannot build housing at the skyrocketing rate of growth that SF is experiencing. That’s why this is a crisis, it’s essentially a mass migration to SF.
Didn't think so.
Law Enforcement want data from Facebook because it's useful to an investigation.
Law Enforcement want data from AirBnB because the act of working with AirBnb is the illegal part.
So asking a drug dealer for the name of his distributors seems reasonable to me. Or asking the illegal online betting company the names of those who were placing illegal bets.
Though the regulations should hopefully be more clear on this.
If continuing the (poor) Facebook analogy, this is akin to asking for a full list of their users, even the ones abiding by the law.
What aboutism of the worst kind. This isn't "law enforcement", this is the justice system. And yes,if a judge legally approves such subpoena then corporations need to follow the law. If you don't like the law then change it through democratic means. Neither Facebook nor Airbnb are above the law. The era of "disruption" where anything went because "we're just an app" is over.
http://www.seattle.gov/business-regulations/short-term-renta...
As far as I can tell, AirBnb is blatantly complicit in allowing renters to violate this law. When I moved to SF I stayed in an AirBnb for a few weeks. It didn't occur to me when I booked that it could have been an illegal operation. Once I became aware, I looked up the public records and, lo and behold, there was no short term rental permit.
"As part of city law, San Francisco requires property owners renting out units for less than 30 days to register with the city’s office of short-term rentals, as well as be a permanent resident of that unit. " - The registration can easily be made a requirement to list on AirBNB and they could limit one unit rental to users.
"These are not the type of hosts we want on our platform and are glad the City has the tools it needs to enforce the rules" - Ha.
For both owners of properties and travelers, this is good for you, so you do mental gymnastics to escape it as you can see all over this comment section :)
Airbnb has a review system for a reason. If it’s a shitty place, you write a review and other people will be less inclined to rent.
I’ve been in hotels that were shitty and licensed. I’ve been in airbnb rentals that were cheaper and better taken care of. I’ve also been in great hotels and shitty Airbnb’s.
How is suing two property owners a win for city licensed landlords? Are they getting the 2+million? No? Oh the city is getting it for “reasons” and calling it a win.
Stupid.
This is, of course, purely theoretical. There are many other factors in play: regulation, your propensity to travel, desirability of your home neighborhood, etc.
It's not a win for city licensed landlords. It's a win for residents. Residents are ultimately voters. And AirBnB is bad for the vast majority of residents.
That's a commonly provided explanation, but I find it very hard to believe that existing laws and leasing rules can't/don't already easily solve this. If too many instances of noise complaints, property damage, improper trash disposal, etc. occur from your property, you (the owner or renter) get fined or evicted. It's obviously not an excuse to say that you rented out your unit on AirBnb. Surely these laws and rules have always existed, since that problem is not unique to short-term rentals. What am I missing?
Landlords, under existing US law, are only really liable for tenant nuisance if they should have known that the nuisance was likely (e.g., an aggressive dog in the apartment.) It's hard to really argue that you could tell anything about noisy short-term visitors, since fine upstanding members of society on a weekend trip may turn out to be party animals at night.
Short-term rentals are even more difficult to enforce against just because there is a shortage of police and inspector manpower in most major cites; by the time one is able to get to you the visitor may have left already. And first offence is generally just a warning, but a warning is of little use to people taking a plane out the next day.
These are not things that ratings/reviews/stars are going to capture.
Not downplaying the landlord's unlawful acts, but they couldn't have easily operated at this scale without the help of a popular platform.
There's also a 14% occupancy tax only on rentals of less than 30 days, so SF has a financial disincentive against converting all these properties to long term rentals. (Edit: if airbnb is lowering the average short term rental price, then the picture is less clear. There are tourists who will go outside SF if there aren't any 'whole house' options there...)