I am not arguing for or against the proposition - I just don't think the OP is a quality article around which to have this debate. It's a political scare piece.
For example, private right to action is very scary - it generates immense amount of abuse for such things as ADA and Prop 65, most of which only reallocates money from businesses to slimy lawyers while contributing exactly nothing to the welfare of the intended beneficiaries. And to add one-way attorney fees shifting to that? This moves it from the "bad idea" territory to "these guys are completely insane, everybody, turn and run!" territory. This is practically begging for the law to be abused. I think with such starting point one has to work very hard to write a piece that would be scary enough.
The OP on the other hand, well I really tried in my first comment to show the OP's hypocrisy, I am not going to be able to do a better job here.
I suppose one measure is, how much did private right to action and one-way attorney fees come up in the HN discussion of the article? Not enough, and never (?) with the kind of historical context you are hereby providing (also missing from the OP). I'd posit that the OP did successfully scare more than 0 readers into considering voting against the proposition. So while the article may not be entirely without social utility (scare pieces have utility!), it's not a "smart" article, and it didn't do a good job of explaining the real critical problems with F. And it successfully made me feel alienated from and judgemental toward the No On F crowd.
I think a lot of people do, not only in SF. Same for Uber laws, etc. Of course, they don't call it exactly that, but the intent is clear.
> Clearly this is referring to
Judging laws by "clearly this is referring to" is rather risky proposition, unless you are one of the nine people who have the power to actually decide such questions (aka The Supreme Court). Because otherwise you won't be deciding it, the judge or jury would, and what is clear to you may not be as clear to them. And you can land in a big trouble for it.
Not to mention being pursued by regulators is a very expensive and complicated thing even if you win. And regulators can be very zealous in their prosecutions, and they would try to twist every letter against you. There are numerous cases where judges had to rebuke regulators and prosecutors for excessive zeal and misinterpretation of the law. You do not want to be on the wrong end of that. So any law that leaves opening for that is extremely dangerous for the citizen.
> SF judge would want to jail somebody over renting out on Airbnb illegally?
It doesn't have to get to the judge even. It can be just "do you want to close your business now or do you want to risk prosecution that can land you in jail?" Criminalization of regular business behavior is dangerous because it grant immense powers to prosecutors by leveraging the threat of imprisonment - even if imprisonment itself does not follow. I.e. if prosecutors want something from you (like testify on unrelated case) and they discovered you let your friend stay in your apartment and took money for it, or even helped one friend to star at other friend's house (and you had no idea if any money changed hands, but prosecutors say they did so you are prosecutable now for "assisting") - they can threaten you with 6 months in jail now. Would you risk it, relying on the kindness of SF judges, or would you just bend over and do what the prosecutors tell you to do? Criminalizing common behavior may not land you in jail immediately, but it makes you more and more dependent on the good mood of the law enforcement. It is not a good thing.
> If it's a paid rental.
"Paid" is a very stretchable term. Any consideration can be considered payment. Did they offer to pay for your tickets on the game you go to see together as thanks for hosting them? This can be treated as the same as rent - you hosted them and got something in exchange. Etc., etc.
> And remember, up until this year it was completely illegal to rent for less than 30 days.
"It was worse in the past" is not really an argument for it being good currently. You can always think of something worse.
> The reason Prop F bans in-laws
is that they want less rentals unless it's under conditions under which people do not want to rent. Somehow it does not sound to me like and argument for, but a rather strong argument against.