SF fines two landords $2.25M for illegal Airbnb rentals
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Good. Extra is what you need to stand up to SV clout
How do you propose convincing propertyowners to finance their own vertical construction?
I've always heard it was the owners, but as someone who doesn't live in SF, I can't verify.
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 :)
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...)
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
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
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?
I have no sympathy for these landlords.
http://www.seattle.gov/business-regulations/short-term-renta...
“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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
This is, of course, purely theoretical. There are many other factors in play: regulation, your propensity to travel, desirability of your home neighborhood, etc.
These are not things that ratings/reviews/stars are going to capture.
Didn't think so.