I think the board of supes missed an incredible opportunity here to enforce code. One problem with many of SF's downstairs "in-law" units, in my opinion, is that they are almost always built without permits and in violation of building codes. This can be a big deal - having done a downstairs remodel recently with proper permits, I know the expense but also the value of licensed electrical and plumbing work, proper structural engineering, and firewalls to prevent the inferno that results from faulty wiring from spreading to the bedroom next door. My take on it is this -the government has the right to inspect hotel rooms. I'd say if you want to list your home on airbnb and turn it into a commercial property, you probably should have to accept that the govt will enforce proper safety, environmental, and structural regulations like it would for a hotel room, without the same privacy issues we'd extend to someone's home.
>I'd say if you want to list your home on airbnb and turn it into a commercial property, you probably should have to accept that the govt will enforce proper safety, environmental, and structural regulations like it would for a hotel room, without the same privacy issues we'd extend to someone's home.
I don't know about California, but in Massachusetts short term rental activity is explicitly residential, and not commercial, per existing case law. That may be why they didn't do what you suggest.
No idea, but that is a good point. I think that the internet has dramatically changed the nature of short term rentals. I don't think that regulations have become irrelevant - in some ways they are more relevant than ever - but they do need to adapt.
Prior to the internet, it was difficult enough to get word out and so forth about a spare room that short term rentals could be regulated largely as an afterthought. Now, they're a multi-billion dollar industry.
There may be a middle ground we need to find, something between "government out of my private home" and surprise inspections of a hotel. But things like unpermitted wiring, lead paint, uninspected furnaces, the absence of carbon monoxide alarms… while these things are actually illegal in residential units, I think the game really does change when you start to expose potentially hundreds of people to this over the course of a year through commercial use of a property.
"Unpermitted" wiring doesn't mean that it is unsafe, wrong, or even illegal. And unless you're remodeling, lead paint is just a scare story.
I agree that when commercial activity takes place, inspections are necessary so that people don't have their implicit expectations violated. But your comment demonstrates a big problem with how this ends up being implemented - people cut wide swaths through subjects they know little about (driven by fear of the unknown), leaving mandatory onerous regulations in their wake. And obviously once the regulatory bodies obtain power, they will work to expand their scope like any organism.
Take for instance the recent addition of mandatory AFCIs in the NEC. Yes, modern circuit breakers are now running unauditable and unupgradeable software! In addition, the prohibitive cost of these devices actually causes fewer circuits to be built out in new construction. The simpler solution would have been to stop running plastic-covered wires through wood-framed structures, but presumably the AFCI patent holders lobbied for such circuits not being exempt.
(Don't get me started on California title 24, user-hostile shutoff timers, and sickly GU24)
The bulk of the criticism from rational people that I hear is due to the "but they do need to adapt" argument. Flagrantly violating the law just because you want the law to change is not the proper way to do this. If Airbnb wanted to form this industry and generate revenue for cities and offer protections for renters, rentees, and residents in the buildings the units reside in, they would attempt to change the law through legislature. The fact that they simply keep raking in profits from users obviously violating the law paints them in a very negative light to any rational resident of a city where Airbnb is illegal.
They are in a sweet spot right now, where they get to compete with commercial business, but with nearly no regulations. Essentially, they are commerce where it comes to profits, but "sharing someone's home" where it comes to regulations.
It's kind of like running a restaurant out of your dining room, but claiming that the government has no right to inspect your kitchen, because you're "sharing" meals. If I invite friends over for dinner, I should be careful about food prep, but the government clearly doesn't have the right to suddenly show up and inspect my counters and refrigerator.
But if I start charging and serving a large number of meals this way? Totally different game.
Its not completely unreasonable to break the law to protest it when you find it unreasonable. On the other hand, you need to understand that, in doing so, you may be fined or do jail time for your actions.
That's called civil disobedience. I consider it more legit if it is done by individuals for social change rather than for profit companies to make money.
As an individual, yes. Airbnb is more like facilitating individuals breaking the law (or their contract ie lease), so most of the culpability falls on the individual, not on Airbnb.
Huh? Of course it is - the case I'm referencing (Crowninshield v. Blaisdell) is explicitly regarding the classification of short term rentals. The courts found them to be residential, not commercial (which makes sense, if it's a residential short term rental).
If "passed inspection" implies "is legal", Airbnb would be taking on substantial legal risk and it would remove probably 99% of the listings in NYC (I only mention NYC because I live there and am aware of the laws), making one of the most densely populated areas a big hole in the map.
Well, the badge could be optional and there could be fine print saying "The badge indicates that we've received proof the property passed inspection. Properties lacking the badge may have also passed inspection".
I live in NYC and think that something like this here would only solve one of the major problems we have with Airbnb. If it is enforced, the 90-day cap should be enough to keep apartments from being taken off the market during a housing crisis so they can be used as full-time hotels. That is really important, because it is the more affordable apartments that are most vulnerable to this, since they don't usually have a doorman or a landlord that is likely to care that much.
The problem it doesn't solve, however, is the fact that hotel guests shouldn't be staying in apartment buildings unattended by a host anyway. It creates terrible problems for people who are actually trying to live there, since Airbnb guests will treat your building like a hotel. I would much prefer that a host always be required to be present if the rental in question is an apartment.
There is an extremely simple solution that AirBnB will forever refuse to do: simply build a function that allows me to search for AirBnBs by address and file a complaint should I need to do so. As far as I can tell this + feedback provides a level of regulation that is a pretty decent compromise. I've been adversely affected by people AirBnBing in my building but I'm not against the overall premise of it, they just need some kind of system that allows people who are currently affected but outside of AirBnB to provide feedback.
Of course this would totally shrink their market size over night but...
I think the bigger problem is that it would allow competitors or just people who are assholes to file unfounded complaints. I don't think much good would come of such a system.
I think there would certainly be things to iron out but the burden is on them to provide a system of regulation that works. Currently they aren't. Regardless I don't think the two problems you mentioned are insurmountable for a $10B company by any means.
I believe it isn't insurmountable but any possible solution would be unreasonable. You're asking for a system to be put in place but you have no ideas regarding implementation. If you think about the problem you'll realize how ridiculous any solutions would be. The biggest problem is verification of complaints, how do you do that?
You're proposing that my solution wouldn't work. Maybe, but your opinion is based on just as little data as mine is, so neither is more valid. I still think my system would work fine, and this is based on helping work on systems similar to this in the past, but that's not really the point.
I want to reiterate that while I provided what I think is a relatively easy and doable approach, the burden is not on people negatively impacted by a company to come up with solutions. The simple fact is that most metropolitan areas do not allow short term rentals in residential neighborhoods as a matter of zoning, not to mention the fact that many leases prohibit subleasing of any kind. AirBnB allows a ton of illegal activity to happen on its network, and then claims it has no easy way to enforce the law. That may or may not be true, but it's like telling a bank that is laundering money that it's not responsible for fixing the money laundering problem because detecting it is expensive, and hey, they're just the platform right?
I'm not saying your solution wouldn't work, I'm saying that any implementation of your solution would be an unreasonable burden. AirBnB is not a real estate agent and does not act as one, there are no laws against them listing properties nor should their be.
I don't see how you can say that and not feel the same way about payment providers. If AirBnB is not on the hook for activity that happens explicitly and exclusively on their platform I don't see why we should hold banks accountable for illegal activity that happens on their platforms.
Banks shouldn't be held accountable for illegal activity that occurs on their platform unless they are complicit in the activity neither should AirBnB. If the government comes to AirBnB or a Bank with evidence of criminal activity they should then have act but neither should be in the business of policing on behalf of the government.
I would agree with AirBnB having to be audited so that the gov't could do the policing but that's about it.
Can't agree enough. I serve on my condo board and we have had nothing but problems from Airbnb rentals. Aside from going against city laws, our by-laws / rules explicitly forbid it. Because of a lack of care, we're left to trolling listings in the area looking for pictures that match the finishes in our building in order to track down an ad if we have a sense that someone is renting it out.
It should be pretty obvious to anyone that short term renters are undesirable for a variety of legitimate reasons. Which is why no landlords or HOAs allow them. None.
It doesn't sound like they have a realistic plan to enforce the 90 day limit. This strange right of action for 5 year old non-profits, that can only seek an injunction and can only go after some subset of violators does not seem like it will be very useful.
They should have created a private right of action sounding in nuisance, with damages available, and open to any affected party. And maybe a loser pays provision.
That is a shame. We technically already have a law here banning short-term subleasing for under 30-days if the tenant isn't present, which makes the vast majority of these full-time Airbnb hotels illegal. The only problem is that no one is enforcing it, so it is barely better than having no law at all.
And it's worth mentioning that even if the tenant is present, condo/co-op boards are free to ban the practice and I would be shocked if most don't -- we do. There are practically no single residential dwellings in NYC -- anything in a multiple dwelling building is subject to the rules put forth by the condo/co-op board.
"Airbnb allowed" should be a feature of rental properties the way "Pets allowed" is. It will attract people who want to be able to use Airbnb and repel those who don't want the problems it brings.
I don't know the details, but I learned last week when I was in LA that LA allows "short term vacation rentals" that I believe are distinct from subletting.
So I believe that these two are not necessarily the same, depending on the city's legalese.
For example, NYC has "fixed" the law to be very clear.
"What the Law Says -- Contrary to what many may think, New York laws about short term rentals are pretty clear, thanks to a new law went into affect in 2011. "Under the New York State multiple dwelling law, a residential multiple dwelling can only be used for what is termed 'permanent resident purposes,'" explains attorney Robert Braverman. "What that means under the statute is that it has to be occupied by the same person or family for 30 or more consecutive days." So anything less than 30 days, no matter how you swing it, is violating the law, unless of course, the place is zoned to be a hotel or hostel."[0]
No, but landlords are allowed to apply the same criteria to subtenants as they do to original tenants, which pretty much kills Airbnb (at least through that clause).
And then there are places like Mountain View and Cupertino that were happy to have companies headquarter there but then refused to allow new housing to be built for the workers, putting even more pressure on SF to pick up the slack.
I was not aware the numbers were that bleak. Is that total housing units or just rental units?
Well, no one forced said companies to set ground there. Especially when a ton of their employees don't even want to live near Mountain View, Cupertino or Menlo Park and thus have to be bused for an hour+ from SF. Jus' saying ;)
The US is vast, but of course, let's cram all the technology workers in a tight corner of a bay and densify that to the max.
Grow Out. Of course, SF is a "city", not the kind of city that's part of an urban sprawl like the others. Maybe that's what other cities should start doing. That and quality public transport (not only Google Bus)
I dream of building a city in an otherwise-empty part of the U.S., one built around electric bike paths (and hell Segways lol), with bicycle and pedestrian paths and lightweight rail moving around the heavy stuff. Cars and trucks and trains can be on the perimeter and in several large arteries.
Though I was actually surprised it was so high. That's units, not bedrooms, and it's only a city of ~800k people. I guess there's a lot of 1-person households to bring down the average despite all the families and twenty-somethings in 2-4 bedroom units with at least as many inhabitants as bedrooms.
As a new immigrant to US and Bay Area I am totally amused to see that there is so much vacant land everywhere and yet so little housing. Dont see why cupertino, MV, Sunnyvale cant have 10 floored housing complexes.
Many of California's cities have laws requiring massive, incredibly wasteful amounts of parking to be built even in supposedly high-density or transit-oriented communities. In addition, there are rules saying houses have to be set back a certain distance from the road, which takes a good deal of space. Finally, most places also require that roads meet a certain (high) "Level Of Service", meaning lots of cars can move through very quickly. Nevermind the fact that by building things like this you are forcing them to go much, much FARTHER. Have you noticed that driving through LA (or San Jose for that matter) is mostly driving through a sea of parking lots and wide streets? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_service for more.
There is also a cultural preference for lots of land; I'm bemused by how many people mock "McMansions" for having small yards but never spend any time in their own yards.
This is less true in the bay (and not at all in SF) than other parts of the state (looking at you LA) but it remains a problem. Also, areas where the majority of the population are homeowners tend to vote against new housing construction. This increases the value of their own homes at the cost of strangling newcomers to the area and making the cost of living exorbitant. Of course, without new housing those areas will continue to consist primarily of homeowners, so the cycle continues. Even in supposedly lefty places you see people oppose construction that would help increase housing supply, presumably because it's bad for the environment or will damage neighborhood character. I'm sympathetic to those claims, but making people commute from 40 miles away (if they're LUCKY it'll be on BART or Caltrain, but probably not) can't be good for those things either.
I wonder if it's time we reconsidered whether it makes sense for highly interdependent neighboring communities to be separate cities. Would we have a more integrated and efficient transportation, housing, and office infrastructure if the bay from San Mateo up to Mill Valley and east to 680 were the same city? Quite possibly. It would at least mean, to some small extent, that they couldn't say "we'll take your companies but housing the plebs is somebody else's problem - only huge single-family homes for us, thank you!".
there is also a lot of, we like our town and we don't want others here. Hence throw up building codes, regulations, and such, to keep housing from being built. You can use all sorts of PC buzzwords to make it palatable, from environment to maintaining historic sites. When large scale housing is built it usually is where people don't want to be.
Throwing up obstacles to building housing is often called NIMBY-ism or "PC", but it is also what owners of homes would be expected to do it they were maximizing their own economic self-interest
I was not aware that other home owners get a say into what is being built in the city. That should explain anything. It is very much like our Indian community where people on H1B often demand immigration reforms but once they have it they demand stricter immigration laws. :P
It explains some of the enclaves of low density you see even in large cities. Santa Monica and Beverly Hills come to mind as good examples of this; those areas would normally expect to draw more building but the local residents fight tooth and nail against it. Even small developments spend years and years being fought over.
Source: I lived in SM and attended city council meetings that discussed the matter because I wanted to see more transit-oriented development and improved bike infrastructure. Can't say I'm sad I left; socal is dysfunctional with regards to transportation. I do miss the beer, though.
New construction is being built taller than previous (but not necessarily 10 stories).
The problem is that getting around in that part of the Bay Area still requires a car, so units with no available parking are much less desirable. Having 1 parking spot per unit, and 1 level of parking, effectively limits the height to ~4 floors of marketable residential units (a second level of parking would be more expensive than the first, and allow for ~8 floors of marketable units).
Fears are often not rational, and such fears do play a minor role in feelings against certain structures in California. Talk to some people for a while and it comes up.
Having said that, it's not the main driver preventing development in the Bay Area. Citizens with money, influence, and established interests want lower-density development, and so that's what exists.
For whatever the reasons - the Japanese government decided that opportunities of building taller buildings outweighs the risks involved.
Both California and Japan have a long history of earthquakes and know the danger involved. When you look at the numbers, more people have died due to earthquakes in Japan than in California.
Prime example: CA 1994 Northridge earthquake (6.7 magnitude, 70 people died, $20B in damage) vs Hanshin earthquake (6.8 magnitude, 6400+ died, $100 billion in damage).
Are the fears irrational? Each culture has a different approach.
I agree with other comments though - fear of earthquakes is a minor footnote in the grand scheme of property development in California.
First, NYC is also kind of a clusterfuck; rents there are terrible. But while NYC needs to continue building more, it at least has the excuse that it's built up a lot already, and its mayor is actively encouraging more development.
People don't cram into arbitrarily small spaces, so one thing to remember is the cause and effect: way more than 840K people want to live in SF proper, but there's no room. So 376K housing units effectively sets the population cap. But because a larger pool of people want to live there, the prices all go up. Rent control fixes that for incumbent residents but worsens the problem for everyone else. The only way to alleviate that is to create more houses so that a larger percentage of the people who want to live there actually can.
The subways in New York help the common case - minimizing how much is needed to spend on housing, while being well-connected to Manhattan. This is how people can live in a relatively cheap borough like Queens, and still have 15-35 minute commute to their job.
There's also a massive amount of rental apartment stock at any time. This means that you have the liquidity to make any tradeoffs necessary, by balancing your budget, commute distance, number of roommates, and the amount of space you need.
New York is also connected to several public transit systems (NJTransit, Metro North, PATH), so you can often go way cheaper, by leaving the city bounds itself.
It's not all sunshine and roses, though. Rent is going up in a lot of the previously-cheap neighborhoods in Brooklyn. This hasn't really affected me, but my sister has been priced out of multiple apartments in the 5 years she has lived in the city.
Airbnb is emblematic of the new "disrupt everything and fuck the consequences" economy. Too bad more landlords don't lay a smackdown on tenants who use their apartment as a hotel.
I could see landlords being lax because they might not be present or live in the building and have no sense of what is going on. In my building in NYC, renting your condo via Airbnb, VRBO, whatever is a $1,000/day fine.
People always talk about how AirBnb is ignoring consequences. But other than a very few high-profile cases, I haven't seen much evidence of these supposed consequences.
Pretty clear that mostly what SF cares about is the tax revenue. That is the only part that is centralized and Airbnb has to provide. Everything else is self reported by the hosts which means that maybe the city will lean on them if the neighbors or landlords complain. Pretty smart of Airbnb to pay off the city and avoid responsibility for anything else. This is definitely a scalable business model if they can get other cities to buy into the same idea.
Now that it's legal, do you think they will abide by the regulations, or is it just a symbolic move that will have an intangible effect on the actual business? It's hard to tell if a company operating largely outside the law will go inside of it now that it is just an inconvenience to comply instead of impossible.
They should be requiring that Airbnb help them enforce it. Airbnb could easily require you to input a permit number when you create a listing then keep track of the number of days you are renting without a host present in order to make sure you don't go over it. They should also be reporting your rental income to the state for tax purposes.
See, this is the part that truly makes me ill. I don't want the government, at any level, to outsource its habituation. Regulations are one thing - on the local level they're usually tolerable - but bureaucratic integration is another.
In the anarcho-capitalist community we call it slave labor. It is a bit of a stretch to say as much, but it get's clumped under the same umbrella as conscription. i.e. Government compelling you to do labor (usually for free), which is just a bit away from "government compelling you to enforce it's laws/regulation/process/bureaucracy/tax enforcement on it's behalf, at your own personal business cost". Assuming that's what you mean with bureaucratic integration? i.e. Government getting businesses to help them enforce their bureaucracy.
I don't think "a bit of a stretch" quite captures the exaggeration. It is, in fact, a huge ridiculous stretch that should offend anyone who knows what slavery actually is. It's not even in the same ballpark as conscription. (I recognize, though, that you appear not to entirely buy this terminology yourself, which is admirable. The anarcho-capitalist community could use a few more people who think critically and take language seriously.)
In cases like this the government does not compel anyone to do anything. Rather, it permits them to engage in a particular line of business on the condition that it does so in a way that attempts to re-internalize what would otherwise be a host of harmful externalities.
These regulations appear to mostly apply to the individuals who choose to rent out their property. Airbnb itself dodged the one big item that would have impacted them directly, which was an idea that Airbnb should be on the hook for $25 million in "back taxes."
> Airbnb itself dodged the one big item that would have impacted them directly, which was an idea that Airbnb should be on the hook for $25 million in "back taxes."
Though, I'm sure they didn't want to pay $25 million, I doubt it was as important as some of the other regulations they were hoping to avoid.
A one time fine of $25 million isn't as important as a law that would've prevented any type of rental. That would've been more existential.
Also, the $25 million was proposed to be paid by Airbnb and other similar companies. They weren't on the hook for the entire amount, though, it probably would have been most of the amount. But that's off track from my point that $25 million isn't the #1 issue they were worried about.
This has zero relevance to the topic but, yes, there is a reference you're missing. When AirBnB redesigned their logo, there was an internet uproar (read: slow news week and some tweets about it) about how ugly the new logo was/is.
The most common situation seems to be one where it is legal for Airbnb, the business, to exist and do what it does, but where the majority of the people listing their places to rent on it are violating some law/regulation or clause of their lease by doing so.
Sort of like how running a user-generated content site is legal, but people who upload movies/albums/etc. to it in violation of copyright are on the wrong side of the law.
Short term rentals have been illegal in San Fran since (I believe) the 80s.
Running a hotel without paying hotel taxes and following other regulations is generally illegal.
It surely is also is against local zoning regulations. I think zoning regulations are generally a good idea but in practice they are often harmful (except in older downtown areas which are generally friendly to mixed use).
I was simply commenting on the semantic nature of "it wasn't illegal, but it wasn't legal."
That said, "unlicensed hotel" is a quandary that has been argued a thousand times over. A hotel and a boarding house are legally distinct. Legally speaking, hotels have separate rooms for guests which is distinct from subletting either a single room as well as from subletting the entirety of the property. Legally speaking, an AirBNB rental most closely correlates to a "lodging house", which does not provide food for its guests, which is a requirement for a hotel, or inn (per Black's, anyway).
Legally speaking, what we are likely talking about is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of all AirBNB rentals that are now being lumped together into a single term, which only muddies the argument even further.
The idea that a sublet, lodging house, or boarding house is "close enough" to a hotel to be considered under the purview of hotel licensure is ... optimistic, and to me, smacks of the state's unwillingness to let some revenue go uncaptured.
But, that's just my opinion, and I appreciate that the argument is nuanced, and there are potentially safety concerns as well.
I think that weird semantic nature is because there's more than one entity involved here.
AirBnB is just a platform. It is, by itself, legal. However, virtually everyone who uses AirBnB uses it illegally.
Thus, it's not illegal (because AirBnB the service is not forbidden) but it's not legal (because it's hard to use the service without breaking the law, and in practice almost nobody does what's required).
But it wasn't unregulated. It was just poorly regulated. You could legally AirBnB your place by getting a "conditional-use permit" and notifying all your neighbors.
Well,obviously if a laboratory creates a new drug,and that drug is not approved by the FDA,that drug is illegal.
The problem with Airbnb business,is that Airbnb soclializes the risk.Airbnb doesnt risk anything,hosts do.Of course it is in the interest of Airbnb to make sure its users risk the minimum.But Airbnb as a plateform is legal.Airbnb can argue it's just like Ebay or Paypal.
All these "disruption" plateforms Airbnb,Kickstarter,Uber and such,they pretty much work the same way.They are the new middlemen,that bypass former middlemen,collect a fee and wash their hand of any wrong doing when things turn south.
My only problem is with Airbnb, it can really drive prices up for long-term renters,that have others things to do than running illegal hotels.
> The problem with Airbnb business,is that Airbnb soclializes the risk.Airbnb doesnt risk anything,hosts do.
Like Craigslist. And Ebay. And Etsy. And all these other fantastic platforms that let people generate money / increase productivity without the old gate keepers getting in the way. Not a new problem, and one that many consumers -- like me -- are happy to deal with versus the alternative.
I'd argue that being ripped off a couple hundred $ on an auction platform, or an e-commerce site is in a somewhat different category than getting your apartment ransacked by speed freaks, or you being attacked by a mentally volatile driver with a hammer.
> Well,obviously if a laboratory creates a new drug,and that drug is not approved by the FDA,that drug is illegal.
Is that true? I thought the FDA could only regulate drugs that made a claim to treat or cure a disease. If it wasn't specifically illegal or if it isn't making a claim to treat a disease, the FDA doesn't have jurisdiction to regulate it.
The FDA only has jurisdiction over things that are intended to "diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent" an illness. Witness the incredible boom in dietary supplements, (nearly) all of which disclaim exactly the quoted verbiage. (Those that don't disclaim doing those things tend to get a lawyergram from the FDA in short order. See what happened to 23andMe's service a while back as one case in point.)
