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Comment by Mz | Hacker News Reader

Wow:

This is where it’s clear the authors overreached and created a toxic spill waiting to happen.

If the City finds you did indeed host someone or assisted someone else as such, even for one night, then the City can take action against you.

But then it gets absolutely bonkers. If you didn’t host anyone, or it was just your Aunt Rose visiting for the weekend, then your cranky neighbor can still sue you anyway, and the City has to help them do it. And we’re not just talking about filing suit so the City can collect its fines and fees, but filing for “special damages” that the neighbors get to keep for themselves.

This sounds incredibly bad.

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It's a bit overblown. Civil lawsuits cost money to prosecute, so they're unlikely to be pursued unless there's a good chance of winning.

Have you ever lived in a community with an HOA? Some of the people there take finding violations, infractions, and actionable offenses as their second job, and will not hesitate to sue you just because. So enabling these people by requiring the city to help them sue is like dumping a tanker full of kerosene on a forest fire.

No doubt the point of the law is to tap into community activism. But it's different from suing your neighbor over the hedge you don't like. Prop F is much more objective and substantive about what constitutes a violation than your typical HOA covenant: illegal hosting. Neighbors and their legal teams are unlikely to sue over that unless they think they can really prove a violation.

Yes, but by setting a minimum damage amount of $250/night, you've removed the most difficult aspect of a case like this. It would be incredibly difficult to prove that a neighbor's having guest caused a high dollar amount of damages. Without needing to do that, all the person pursuing the case needs to show is that the law was violated and they'll be eligible for potentially thousands of dollars in damages. That creates a huge incentive to pursue cases like this, even when the damages sustained are negligible.

> all the person pursuing the case needs to show is that the law was violated

I think you're misunderstanding the point of the proposition a little bit. It's not just about recovering direct damages to neighbors (e.g. noise). It's about using incentives to crowdsource enforcement that the city doesn't have the resources to do.

You don't have to have a good chance of winning to make money - most civil lawsuits are settled out of court.

You can be guaranteed that that there will be lawyers taking up cases (possibly on contingency) for the most frivolous of claims and offering to settle for a few grand (much less than it would cost to defend the case).

I wasn't really thinking of the "you could get sued" angle so much as the "you could get sued BECAUSE you let your Aunt visit for the weekend" angle. It sounds like the law basically outlaws having family come visit, among other things. It sounds just fucking crazy to me.

Though I don't live in SF and likely never will, so I guess if SF wants to get even crazier than it already is, it can. I have no power to vote in city level stuff in SF.

It looks like it only outlaws paid rentals. I don't see anything saying otherwise, the aunt line is supposed to be something that is legal, but can be misinterpreted.

I realize that.

There is a famous story of the old west. Unfortunately, I can't remember names at the moment to even google it, but supposedly some saddles were stolen and someone was hired to get them back. He ran around shooting people on the brand of saddles that had been stolen. More saddles were returned to the seller than had been stolen. Even people who had actually purchased one no longer wanted to be seen sitting on one.

So I realize the law does not technically make it illegal to have your aunt visit. But if the effect is that you might get sued, the de facto outcome might be that you stop letting relatives come visit if you live in SF because the risk involved in doing something completely legal is nonetheless too high.

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