OK, let's completely legalize Airbnb-style temporary rentals... but make the host bear the full cost of it. Not the small fraction of the cost the host thinks about, but the actual cost with all the externalities factored in.
Because really the only way Airbnb works is if it offloads significant costs onto unconsenting and often unaware third parties. And all those goshdurned gubmint regulations? They bring the cost of running a hotel-like business into line with, well, the actual cost of running a hotel-like business. But we can replace them all with just a single charge if you like.
Comments here need to be both civil and substantive. Heated rhetoric is neither, so it lowers the signal/noise ratio at both ends.
This is the argument NIMBYs have been using against regular old renters since the beginning of time.
For starters: Occupational safety (branches falling down and crushing you on a tire swing), fire safety, bedbugs, noise/loud parties, litter, criminal occupancy, secondary vice (drug dens/prostitution/craigslist orgies/etc). The problem of a bunch of sailors coming into port has been recognized since antiquity. Skeezy/short term motels have a reputation for a reason, and are regulated for even better ones. You yourself may be a perfectly upstanding citizen who just couchsurfs for a weekend to check out a cool area, but others are not.
It's unreasonable to expect neighbors to file daily lawsuits against their neighbors to keep a modicum of peace. It's a known problem and it's perfectly reasonable to preempt it by either requiring a formal lease with a minimum term of a month or more, or requiring more identification/scrutiny of the clients and some formal standards of the rentiers.
Analogously, it's perfectly fine for banks to scrutinize large cash transactions. Some of them are legit, some of them are tied to crime. But you need to look and be sure because it's high-risk activity. If you don't want that level of scrutiny, send a check/transfer/CC payment and your reputation will speak for itself.
Since we are regulating what people do in the privacy of their own bedroom, shall we also bring up the possibility of homosexuals engage in sodomy?
If that's somehow off limits to regulate, what distinguishes it from the private bedroom activities you bring up?
Search 'airbnb xxx fest evicted' for details.
First, nothing you listed is an externality but rather direct results of poor behavior. An externality would be something like 'decreases property values of neighboring properties' or 'increased rents due to lower supply'.
Second, what data do you have that proves these scenarios are more likely in an AirBnB than a long term tenant? You're only supporting evidence is inference; if people are going to behave poorly then it makes sense for them to rent an AirBnB away from home. But there's an easy counter argument: pressure from neighbors will keep these incidents to a minimum. Sure, there will always be hosts are not sensitive to neighborhood pressure, but that same logic can be applied to long term tenants who have bedbugs, throw parties with loud music, litter, engage in criminal activity, etc. Simply put, all of negative scenarios you outline can occur with long term or short term tenants, and there is no evidence that these behaviors are more common from short term tenants.
Third, comparing all AirBnB's to skeezy motels is like saying all restaurants are roach-infested mold-filled 50-point scoring health hazards. This is a classic straw man argument. What about Marriot or Hilton? Embassy Suites or DoubleTree? Do they fulfill the reputation of "skeezy/short term motels"? This is an argument for better inspections and code enforcement, not prohibiting AirBnB.
No one expects neighbors to file daily lawsuits, but neighbors can notify the police if there is a noise violation, etc. Once again, there is no difference here between long term and short term rentals. AirBnB requires more identification than any hotel I've stayed at, so this argument actually supports AirBnB as a platform.
Lastly, your bank analogy is frightfully off base. First, a bank's intrinsic motivation for monitoring large transactions is fraud and not criminal activity. Second, banks are compelled by law to monitor and report specific types of activities that are likely to be criminal activity, but this is defined by organizations like the FBI, not the banks themselves. Third, you still have yet to prove, beyond casual inference, that AirBnB promotes criminal activity any more than long term tenancy.
Not all restaurants are roach-infested mold-filled hazards - but we have to treat them all like they potentially are, in the sense that we need to register them and inspect them to prove that they aren't hazards. Marriott and Hilton hotels get inspected all the time and they pass with flying colors because they do all the things they're supposed to do - unlike unregistered fly-by-night flophouses working under the radar.
You've obviously never gotten bedbugs from a neighboring unit or hotel. Trust me, they suck like crazy. You do not want to go bundle everything you own into trash bags, move out for a weekend while you wash everything you own, and have the house fumigated (heated to a crisp). It sucks.
Fraud/money laundering is a form of criminal activity, and (just like hotels) banks are compelled to report on specific types of activities that are likely to be criminal. Hotels don't define this; legislatures do, just as they define (or delegate) what they consider to be suspicious financial activity. The Hilton is not deciding that the guy paying in cash every night with a dozen visitors every night or the guy bringing in a bunch of drain cleaner every day is a suspicious individual, they let the FBI investigate that just like financial crime.
Sorry to break it to you but the FBI is on to your no-tell-motel dealing scheme. They're not stupid.
Once again, your arguments support better inspections and code enforcement for health issues not banning short term rentals.
I'm not sure why you assume my history with bedbugs. You are correct that I have never had to deal with a bedbug infestation, but I've helped friends who have. I have lived through multiple other infestation of other insects and rodents because of my neighbors. I've also had neighbors who felt the need to party all night every weekend, and have lived across the street from meth houses and drug dens multiple times. However, all of these experiences were dealing with long term tenants, not short term rentals. I am not discounting the inconvenience of these situations, just questioning why we conclude that they are unique to short term rentals.
It seems that you're confusing the impacts of property values with short term rentals. Long term rentals can occur in very wealthy neighborhoods as well as economically depressed areas. I'm no fan of slum lords, but a slum lord can have long term or short term tenants! Furthermore, they tend to set up shop in economically depressed areas if for no other reason than the overhead is too great in nicer neighborhoods.
Regarding criminal activity, I fail to see how 1) this is isolated to or increased activity from short term vs long term rentals and 2) it assumes that the landlord/host does not care about the activity. While same may not care, it seems quite presumptuous to conclude that all AirBnB hosts will encourage criminal activity. But this presents a really interesting question: why hasn't the city of San Francisco taken steps to train hosts on potential threats if this is a concern?
The amount of off-campus housing needs increased dramatically through the 2000s as the universities expanded enrolment so many areas that weren't being rented now were. Many of the long time homeowners who lived in those areas long before student housing came there have been up in arms.
Think if you started a bakery and went through the laborious process of getting a business license, getting your kitchen health inspected and certified, etc. and then a week later someone next door just started selling bread out of their home to undercut you on price, regulations be damned. I would be rightly pissed off and expect the local government to shut down the home operation.
Commenters who want to ignore externalities are Randians with no actual sense of human society. All they see are rules that are in their own personal way, naturally some tyranny or another. Democracy itself is a blight in their eyes, and a business plan should always trump community concerns.
In the Seventeenth Century many American colonists were fleeing England due to religious persecution because their religion didn't happen to be the the dominant/majority held belief [1].
The idea that government should govern based on what the majority want is a fallacy. The specific topic of tyranny of the majority and ways to combat it were discussed in the Federalist papers and, in my belief, is ultimately the reason the Founding Fathers structured American government the way it did (federation, checks and balances, republic, etc.).
I am not trying to argue that AirBnB is good, but it's not bad because your neighbors don't like it.
Zoning laws and city planning is not exactly the same as what is being implied by the comment I specifically responded to.
I also was not intending to conflate religious persecution, only provide an example of where the opinion of the majority breaks down. In reference to the Federalist Papers, I meant to imply that it was my belief that these mob rule tendencies was why the Constitution specifically doesn't structure the U.S. as a Direct Democracy. And discussions on how to combat these tendencies via education and related points are particularly insightful.
There is a fine line to walk with government regulation protecting greater social good (pollution laws, etc.) and the government restricting property rights as proxy for the desires of the many. If you buy a condo, I have not been convinced that you should not be able to rent it out short or long term. But I am definitely opposed to the idea that you be restricted from doing so because your neighbors don't want you to.
That's why I said "this is a case". Maybe it's a problem for a certain set of people and maybe it isn't. You have to listen to them.
If the majority of the people want to abolish the First Amendment in order to silence hate speech, the government absolutely should not listen the them.
Tyranny of the majority and mob rule are discussed from various angles in the Federalist Papers and I believe were considered carefully when structuring the American government (in order to prevent them).
* https://fee.org/articles/private-property-and-government-und...
There seems to be a common misconception about zoning laws. Zoning laws fall under city planning where placement of certain types of buildings in organized locations leads to a more efficient city. These laws typically address traffic flow, utilities, etc.
So to forward the AirBnB context, the city zones an area as residential, a developer builds residences, and a private owner (again AirBnB context) purchases the property. From there I would contest that the city should have limited (if any) ability to limit or dictate how the now private owner choses to "use and dispose" of their personal property. Renting of the property does not violate the residential zoning...this would be as opposed to the owner tearing down their home to build an office sky scraper.
But if a private owner buys a house, they should be able to choose how to use that house. And again, this is off topic from the original thing I objected to: whether or not your neighbors should be able to dictate through government how you can/should use/dispose of your personal property.
When you have a new 'neighbour' every day, the chance of having that problem in given year increase (as among a large group there will be some bad apples). Moreover, the existing methods of solving the problem won't work because (i) the offender will be replaced (maybe with a new offender, maybe not) by the time any enforcement action can be taken, and (ii) social pressure won't work on someone who knows they will be gone in a day or two.
I'm not advocating a particular solution. But please recognise that laws and processes that were designed for dealing with long term neighbours don't necessarily serve the purpose well when those neighbours are changing every day.
I don't believe this is remotely true in San Francisco. It is essentially impossible to effectively solve such a problem, ie by eviction if necessary. In a long-term rental in San Francisco, I believe "an excessively noisy neighbor is forever".
I live in nearby Oakland, with similar tenancy laws. I have in fact had a neighbor so abusive that I believe if he were an AirBnb tenant, I'd be able to have him gone before the end of his AirBnb stay. His behavior is so bad he might not even be able to ever get an AirBnb again afterwards; for example, he literally epoxied the locks of his apartment as he left.
In any case, as an actual renter, he was able to stay much longer. My emails indicate that he was my neighbor AND abusive for over 2.5 months. (He eventually did something so bad that he was able to be evicted.)
Segregation is the default in American housing policy to the point that most people treat segregation laws as normal, justifiable things. Every time we make a decision about homes, we should consider the impact it has on different kinds of people.
The list of things you cannot do is already extremely lengthy and much to the chagrin of homeowners. I assume you've only rented and never owned, but wait until you see what your property taxes go to, what you are allowed to build, not build, must maintain, must pay for on behalf of citizens that do not own (Denver is currently trying to raise property taxes to subsidize builders and ease purchase pain of new homeowners who currently cannot afford to buy for example). I think people are up in arms over this because Airbnb is a large player in the startup community, but the uproar of politicians creating policy for it's citizens is not absurd.
I also am very wary of the Chavezist instinct to blame property owners and businesses for the faults and failings of bad government planning and policies.
Yes you are correct, the point it usually becomes too much is when you, as an individual, have to begin paying it. Or in this case when a business feels it's paycheck is being affected.
Sadly there is nothing new in politicians coming to take away more of your money & rights
SF's legendary rent control creates a clear incentive for landlords to use a service like Airbnb to continually rent at market rate (though lower occupancy rate) while maintaining control to allocate the unit as they see fit. Renting a unit in sf both freezes rental revenue and removes the owners control to reallocate the unit.
Did you mean something else?
#2 is the big issue. Even with rent control, at least you can rent the place out for the whole year. With the license you can only rent the place out for 90 days a year. You must live in the unit the other 275 days of the year. So your rent controlled rate would have to be 25% of market rate for the legal short term rental to make sense, and you'd have to live there when it isn't rented.
How many people live in rent controlled units in SF?
I've seen more people -- on HN and in real life -- railing against rent control than against AirBnB.
There certainly is a struggle between ownership rights and the right of cities to regulate business within their jurisdiction.
As a renter, I can sympathize with wanting to avail more rental properties to renters, but I am also very uneasy with politicians dictating what you can and cannot do with your property when that act in and of itself is not otherwise illegal. It's not confiscation, but it also kerbs your ability let your property as you wish --and I say this as a renter who arguably would benefit from this politician's policies.
PS move HQ to Brisbane and take the corp taxes with you.