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SF Evictions Surging From Crackdown On Airbnb Rentals
JoeyRox (2711699) writes "The city of San Francisco is aggressively enforcing its ban on short-term rentals. SF resident Jeffrey Katz recently came home to an eviction notice posted on his door that read 'You are illegally using the premises as a tourist or transient unit.' According to Edward Singer, an attorney with Zacks & Freedman who filed the notice against Katz, 'Using an apartment for short-term rentals is a crime in San Francisco.' Apparently Airbnb isn't being very helpful to residents facing eviction. 'Unfortunately, we can't provide individual legal assistance or review lease agreements for our 500,000 hosts, but we do try to help inform people about these issues,' according to David Hantman, Airbnb head of global public policy. SF and Airbnb are working on a framework which might make Airbnb rentals legal, an effort helped by Airbnb's decision last week to start collecting the city's 14% hotel tax by summer."
Do people really not read these things. No subletting is a common clause.
http://www.sfrb.org/index.aspx?page=1040
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
What is the logic behind that?
You can stay with a random SF resident.
Could be a furry, could be a militant lesbian. The only thing guaranteed, it won't be boring.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's the usual for tourist areas: You want to soak the tourists, who don't vote in your area, for as much tax money as you can. Thus the double-digit tax percentages on things that only tourists normally use, such as hotels.
Also restaurant taxes specifically aimed at sit-down places that 'tourists' normally visit more often, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
"'You are illegally using the premises as a tourist"
Tourism is illegal in SF now huh?
A friend of mine got a similar notice in Oakland last year. Shut down or be evicted. It's a shame. She provided a better place to stay than any reasonably priced hotel.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
The city of SF is not enforcing anything - it's the landlords. In SF, most units are covered by rent control, meaning most people are paying rents far below the market value. Landlord are prohibited from increasing rents or kicking out current tenets unless they violate their lease. So any lease violation, such as subleasing, can be used as an excuse to evict the tenet and get one that will pay the current market value.
"'Unfortunately, we can't provide individual legal assistance or review lease agreements for our 500,000 hosts, but we do try to help inform people about these issues,'
Bullcrap. If they wanted to actually ensure that their rentals were legal, they could do vastly more to ensure that. In NYC, for example, any whole unit rental (where the lessor isn't going to be there as well) of 30 days is illegal if the unit isn't a licensed hotel. If you try to post a property for a non-roommate rental in NYC, they could have the site simply say "Is this unit a licensed hotel? If not, then the rental would violate NYC law. Please confirm that the unit is a licensed hotel unit. Yes/No"
They don't even bother with this level of fig leaf.
hey. kim jung il said you can't use your private property as you see fit. be glad the glorious leader allows you private property at all.
now pay up 14% for the pleasure of using your own property!
If you're renting it from your landlord, it's not "private property". If a landlord wants to go into the short-term rental business, he can follow the legal process to do so.
I would feel threatened by the new competition and would do everything I can to crush them, including lobbying politicians to impose barriers to entry disguised as consumer protection measures. Pretty much standard operating procedure.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
You don't own your property. Just fail to pay your property tax and see what happens.
If you're renting it from your landlord, it's not "private property".
It's still private property. It's just not your private property—it belongs to the landlord. You've just contracted to use it for a time.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
These are the criminals our police and lawyers need to be expending time against.
After multiple warning, and then court proceeding it will be seized for failure to pay taxes and then sold. THe amount of money owned will be kept and the rest given to the previous owner.
If you don't own any land you will not have to worry about paying taxes on it.
If you're renting it from your landlord, it's not "private property".
It's still private property. It's just not your private property—it belongs to the landlord. You've just contracted to use it for a time.
Well yeah, I thought that part was obvious. You've contracted to live in it for a while, not sublet it, which is prohibited by most rental contracts.
We don't need protecting from ourselves. We do not need a hotel tax. In fact, we don't need any taxes except sales tax. But as soon as it is allowed to collect taxes, government invents new reasons to tax. That's because government is in business for itself. We're just the suckers who pay for it
the context here is that rental rates in SF have skyrocketed in recent years, and if landlords can evict long-time tenants they can get the unit on the market for 4x rent.
Irrelevant. You expect your landlord to uphold his end of the lease, why should he not expect you to uphold your end of lease.
This sounds like predatory landlord practices.
It sounds to me like landlords enforcing the rental agreement. The agreement is between the renter and the landlord, not some unknown unvetted third party.
I'm not sure I want to live in a building where other renters are sub renting to random people on a daily basis. Seriously, these people need to get a hotel room, and if they can't afford a hotel room, well, what could go wrong?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
No, they aren't evicting you if you own it, that would be where fines or other sanctions come into play.
Good way for landlords being ripped off by rent controls to evict renters, though. I like it!
SF and Airbnb are working on a framework which might make Airbnb rentals legal, an effort helped by Airbnb's decision last week to start collecting the city's 14% hotel tax by summer.
This is what we used to call corruption. Or, before that, "tribute to the king."
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
"Illegal activity" in this case, being that the little people aren't allowed to engage in free enterprise without greasing some palms.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
San Francisco isn't the first city to do this, Paris for example has had a similar law for years but only until 2010 started enforcing it. It's meant to drive tourism to Hotels for all the tax base benefits and to address the problem of affordable housing. AirBNB is a great idea but like Uber is allowing some cities to start abusing their citizens by preventing them from doing legal commerce that they can't control or tax.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Really. Can't rent an apartment there, can't rent a hotel room there, can't breath the air there without a trust fund. Godz forbid we should find a way not to pay the rapacious owners of San Francisco even more money. No, this is not the way the free market goes, Rand Fans. This market will never be "free". It's monopoly of space. Space is limited. There's too much money in the city. Prices go up. Eventually the place is full of empty apartments owned by capital funds and by Saudi and Colombian investors, as London has shown us. Free for whom? No the people who live there, damn it. They're peons now.
Capital funds are now rolling up the apartments into securities now, and selling them on Wall Street as investments. Of course, surrounded by derivative bets. No chance of a crash there, eventually. And the complaints of a reduction if not elimination of maintenance are of course rolling in, 'cause that's what an unfree market does: charge you more for less and less.
Don't care about the laws. Laws are bought by the owners of the city, and we duck around them as best we can. If you are rich enough, you ignore the laws and pay the fines if they catch you. Or just buy a new law, just for you. The law is a joke. Contracts are a joke. We have no power to negotiate a better deal, so the hell with it.
Don't see an end to the hoovering up of the peon army's piggy banks any time soon. Students now owe a trillion dollars in student loans that most can never repay in their lifetimes, and additionally they'll have to live in cars or trucks when the rentiers start enforcing the limits on the number of people living in a single unit. Don't want those poor people in your neighborhood. And "poor" is a relative term. The middle class are starting to understand that they are the new "poor" now, in some places.
Where the hell are people gonna live? This is amusing. SF might become a true Randian paradise. A lost cause for 95+ per cent of the population. New York used to have rent control, and that might have saved SF from the upcoming years of rage; but "free" markets are the rule now. Let's see what happens. Vomit on the buses? That's the beginning. We're replaying the 1930's. Gonna have to start getting those private security forces, rich people. (Odd thing: if you've money, you tell your private police what to do. If you don't have capital, public police tell *you* what to do)
End result, less money from tourists, visitors and job seekers looking for a place to crash while finding their bearings. The rentiers don't care; they're rich anyway. Also, the people paying 4000 - FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH for their two bedroom can't make a little cash back. They can't buy the appropriate laws. Shrug. Lost cause here.
Or don't pay your condo association fees for a month. Or homeowners association fees. They can confiscate.
There's no place in the world you can live where a bastard can't figure out a legal way to steal your home. Never was. Government or private. Remember the hundreds of thousands of faked refinance agreements that banks and capital groups used to steal people's homes in the last ten years? Got clean away with it. Kept the houses, too. We can't touch them anymore. Red handed, and they walked away with tiny fines.
The only defense against thieves? Live somewhere they don't want to live, or where they can't figure a way to rent your property for a good price. This is the new Gilded Age, and the bastards are just getting warmed up. We're gonna see what supercapital trillionaires are capable of in our lifetimes.
So don't live there, "problem" solved.
The Slashdot editors are likely to assume that everyone on Slashdot knows a handful of companies/products that have been talked about a lot lately (like Bitcoin, Airbnb, Uber, RaspberryPi, Tesla, and a few others). It's usually not true that everyone knows what all of them are, but complaining is only sporadically effective.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
S.F. is one of those markets.
I wonder of the IRS will get into the game too. Rentals more then 14 days are taxable income (minus expenses).
For those of us who aren't in the real estate business, maybe you can explain. How is this a predatory landlord practice, when it's caused by the government enacting laws that say people need special permits to sublet for less than 30 days? Repeal the law and you remove the "predation." Isn't the problem caused by the city government "stepping in" and causing the practice to become illegal?
I get it that municipal governments want their hotel tax revenue. Presumably they would also like to have a "red shirt tax" too. That doesn't mean it's sane for people to support such a government, though.
Doesn't free enterprise also include the freedom to enter contracts. If your contract with your landlord says you cannot sublet, are you arguing that the contract should be unenforceable?
As for the tax, we rely on a number of services that are paid for through taxes. It's fine to object to the bedroom tax, many hotel owners do. It's less fine to opt out of taxation.
Herre. Different case than renter-subletters.
Disclosure I am a realtor and do a fair amount of rentals : ...
While you might think you are correct, You must first look at the contract that the tenant signed.
All the leases we use in Florida that are binding by the FAR-BAR ( Florida Lawyers and Florida
association of realtors create the contract to make it equal weight and fair to both landlord and tenant )
specifically state if you can sub lease. That's just half of the problem
the other half is
Condo or Homeowners or gated community restrictions which the buyer of the property signed when
he purchases the property AND which the tenant must read his portion of his restrictive rules when
he's a tenant.
The tenant laws are really tough, not easy to evict a tenant once they are in unless they break the
lease ( the rules get you fines but the association can not kick you out 99% of the time ) .
in southern Florida, Broward county mostly ( and some parts of Dade-Miami ), it's common on the lease to pay
first month and security ( one month ) to the landlord, and 1 month to the association as a security deposit.
realtor get's paid by the landlord.
ALSO, when you belong to a restrictive association, you bought in to those rules. I know whom lives on my
floor, building and general area. rentals are only 1 time per year, 1 year min. Weekly or daily rental would
increase some basic cost ( mostly water consumption, and extra security ).
now daily and weekly rental buildings have that option, but they have a higher cost to purchase, if I can rent
a place out 52 times a year, I should be able to maximize my income yield, but I will be subject to a higher
vacancy rate.
Just to state, I went and spoke to an owner that was doing these short term rentals in my building. he stopped knowing
that the fines he would get were not in line with the income he would generate.
Also, Airbnb is a great service, just don't get caught in those restrictive buildings.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
And New York City.
The black market in this case, as in all the others, is the real market. San Francisco's overpaid and underworked bureaucrats need to die in a fire. Get out of the way and let better bus service bloom, Uber cars replace medallion taxis, and well-paid geeks with the income to support real historical preservation replace those hopeless, smelly street people whose contribution to their fair city is, so far as I can, mostly in the form of graffiti and vomit.
Sycodon's too smart to let that happen to him. Only stupid losers allow that to happen.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I have an apartment. I am legally prevented from charging "market value" for my property due to rent control laws, especially for long term residents.
Now you happen to be a tenant and you got a really sweet deal on an apartment. However, because you're an asshole, you decide to exploit the difference between what I actually charge you and what the market could actually bear*. And now you're bitching about my actions, which are limited by the law with which I must abide by to do business in the location? Nevermind the no-subletting clause in the contract *you* signed. Because, fuck you, I'm getting mine.
Jesus fucking christ.
Self-entitlement is strong in this one.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
If SF is too expensive for you to rent and the reason are forces beyond your control or ones that you cannot overcome, then move. It is to your advantage, fighting the others and the economic factors driving the high expense is not going to get you ahead. You don't own a house, what is keeping you there? Obviously the overall quality of life you are receiving is not very good at all and from what I've been reading, it is getting worse. The US is a very large country with different things to offer. I've moved with my wife and two kids 5 times in 12 years, not just across the street either. 1000's of miles each time (Florida to Seattle and a few places on the east coast in between). I know a couple with a new born that just moved from SF to Erie PA. They love it.
This is precisely the problem going on in San Francisco. I come across so many tenants that feel they are doing nothing wrong, all the while bragging on how low their rent is on their rent-controlled apartment. Hypocrisy to the max!
You are correct, but one thing disturbs me - from TFS:
Notice the word "crime". What in the unholy fuck is the City of San Francisco doing by saying that subletting is a crime? I get the whole tax angle (but seriously, I don't; WTF is so special about a hotel that a city - any city - needs a special tax for one?), but damn... just something about calling it a criminal activity that is way the hell wrong.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
the power and reach of goverment unlimited? Somehow I doubt that's what the founders intended with the Constitution. Somehow the fucks in charge have spent 100s of years finding loopholes to control everyone and taxes were the easiest way. You can't run a constitutional republic when everyone in charge is an authoritarian. They'll find a way around any "rights".
Yet another case of government knowing better, what we are allowed to do with our lives and properties.
And, of course, let's not forget the hotel-room taxes it is losing from this "illegal" activity — and all the salaries of the unionized hotel workers, who, like all unions, are dear friends of the big government these days.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I wish I could mod you up.
As a landlord, I dislike rent control enough that I won't be a landlord in a rent controlled area.
The city enforces how much the rent can go up, but can't enforce how much property taxes go up. The city won't cover my losses when rent goes down of course. It's a one way street. I keep my places clean, and things in good order. I make repairs, with a licensed contractor, quickly. I have given people a break on many occasions (late rent, giving young renters without a credit history a chance to *start* a rent & credit history, etc).
My wife was a HUGE supporter of rent control, until we bought a house and she began to understand how much money it costs to keep a house in good condition, and how often the city or state raises some random tax on home owners.
Generally when municipalities go after micro-rental users (particularly en masse), it's not to enforce the main tenants' leases, but to enforce hotel taxes. A reasonable analysis would say it's a typical case of a private citizen unwittingly crossing the line into small business, a cynical one would say that real hotels lobby for these taxes and push for their enforcement to inflate hotel rates.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
what slumlording ???
he's not on a level playing field. but I think that's a slight mistake on his part,
I would advise him to take rent control class, they teach you how to raise the rent legally
what is the most cost effective way. what programs from the city you can get to help
you evict a slimy no paying tenant
and how to maximize your dollars.
You are entitled to make investments in real estate, but you need to learn how to make a return.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Is it possible that there is more going on here than the city protecting the city's revenues? If I were the neighbor of someone engaging in the short term rental of a property that was not in an area zoned for short term rentals, I would be very glad that the municipality was cracking down on them. I like to know who my neighbors are; I don't want new ones showing up every week.
In addition to the fact that airbnb hosts are, in many locations, operating illegal hotels (under current law), liability is also a massive concern. Airbnb boasts about their insurance for hosts but if you read the fine print you'll see that when it really matters their insurance is worthless to you. If a guest trashes your place the insurance helps you out... but the real issue a host needs to be worried about is liability. Airbnb's fine print specifically excludes liability coverage. What if a guest is injured or dies on your property. Now you've got serious issues. Most property owners have liability coverage through their homeowners policy (renters can also buy liability coverage). However, if a claim is made the insurance company is going to tell you to take a hike as soon as they find out you were running an illegal hotel and that's the reason the claimant (or the family of the deceased) is suing you.
Unfortunately, it's an area the conservatives win on. Regulation is good. But so is democracy. So is allowing a myriad of solutions to a problem. If I want someone unlicensed and unregulated to babysit|hotel|taxi|massage|fuck me, I should be able to do that. By no means does that mean that no regulatory system should exist. Stupid fucking Americans turning everything into false dichotomies. It's possible for everyone to be able to do what they want, and for no one to be a dick. But neither conservative nor liberal will let that be 100% of the time.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Here's a New Orleans take on the issue from an alternative periodical. Your supposition seems to be substantiated by the article: the issue's not just the money but the culture. (I don't claim it's the best article ever, but it's not the voice of "the man" either.) The points here are compelling and not out of line with what I'm seeing in my neighborhood.
http://www.antigravitymagazine...
The market clearly wants to move in direction on this one. When the market is restricted in one area it flows out in another. So where will the money flow instead? AirBNB needs to assist in automatic tax collection.
We have the same problem in Spain. Millions of people bought homes here and have been subletting them to cover the cost. Then the hotel licensing law became enforced and this has helped depress the market even more.
This effects everyone including myself in a number of ways even though I don't own a home.
I am in Spain for 6 months a year, 2 months at a time. As a result of this 3 month law I have to live in hostels estranged from the local population. I want to buy a place but factoring in being unusable to use my home for what I want, such as renting out when I'm not there, I will only pay 40% less the previous prices.
This is really crashing the market even harder than it already is. People, the market are trying to come up with ways to survive and they're being crushed at every turn - just like like in Argentina.
There comes a point when people have nothing left to lose - I see a lot of homelessness and squatting now in the empty houses. People are ready to change these rules through violence.
With the financial switcheroo in the world this is only going to become more common. I suggest studying criminality so at least you are prepared when you finally can't play by the rules any more.
A blog I run for the wealth
The choice is yours the future is clear - you can chose good or chose to burn to death. Chose to win or lose and die. Its real freedom and a real choice. Its a true hypothetical vision or real hallucination of San Francisco and the Universe, pick one:
A) Over paid, under worked, black, real market bureaucrats who live large and plump when you cook 'em
B) Well-paid, Geeky, blooming better bus and uber car riding historians who never get in the way unless you're a legit taxi
C) Zero paid, hopeless, smelly, street people who contribute vomit and graffiti for a fair city life.
Not so fast ! Its a trick question ! Geek humanity won't possibly survive AynRandtopia if it can't get laid !
In San Francisco rent control applies everywhere. The "elite" don't control which units are rent controlled. There are other programs, like low income housing, that would better fit your argument.
The trick with rent control is that it only applies to the unit you currently live in. So you rented a 1 bedroom a few years ago when you were single. Now it's a great deal, but you get married and have a kid. As long as you're willing to live in that one bedroom you and your family are still under rent control. But as soon as you try to get a two bedroom, you're stuck with looking for units at the current market rate.
Rent control protects all long term renters who aren't moving. It *does* run the prices up on the units that are available because there are fewer units on the market. That said, I think the benefits of rent control and a renter being able to predict what they'll have to make to cover rent far outweigh the downsides to it. It's not a perfect solution, it's just the least bad of the solutions out there for a city that has traditionally had more people who want to live in it than living units available.
/* It *does* run the prices up on the units that are available because there are fewer units on the market */
I'm not sure this is true, though. The number of units on the market seems to depend upon the number of renters available and the number of actual units available. If you could raise the rents on someone high enough to encourage them to look for a new apartment, they vacate yours, freeing yours, but take a unit elsewhere, so the net is basically zero. What's driving the prices up in SFO isn't rent control, it's a huge influx of young software developers with more money than sense who are willing to pay out the nose for anything that has some "grit" to it. Higher actual demand, with more ability to pay.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
It's a goddamn city. If you want to know all of your neighbors, move to a suburban gated community.
For the guys in rent controlled units, they'd pretty much be forced out of the city if rent control were to go away for everybody. For everybody else, for a short while, there would be such a glut of units on the market that the prices would depress. By how much? I couldn't say. I don't know the % of people who are paying $600-$1000 for that 1 bedroom instead of $3000. (Throwing arbitrary numbers out there.)
Even after the glut of units on the market goes away it has been shown that without rent control, overall prices in a rental market are lower because people are more mobile. There are more units available at any given time. If you're a tenant in a rent controlled unit that you've had for any amount of time, you simply don't leave because you can no longer afford what's on the market. Without rent control you're paying market rate, so you're more likely to move for any number of reasons. Better neighborhood, move closer to work, don't like your landlord, whatever.
Also, at some point, you can no longer afford to live in the city so you move out. There'd be a larger number of people in this group. All of this leads to a higher percentage of vacant units and an overall lower price of rentals. . . but that doesn't mean the rental prices don't go up year over year at a steeper rate than inflation. They may go up slower, but I don't think the benefits of a "free rental market" in the city would outweigh the downsides to a renter who can't count on being able to afford his unit when his lease is up.
Go fuck yourself.
San Francisco's overpaid and underworked bureaucrats need to die in a fire.
Yes, go fuck yourself. I was born in this town and my wife is one of these "bureaucrats." She works 14 hours days on the local healthcare program (healthysf) that bests Obamacare by far. That "healthy SF" surcharge on your bill at Delfina? That's so that a dishwasher can have medical care, like in civilized European countries, and my spouse built that shit on 14 hour days with no overtime at well under $100k/yr. So fuck you.
Yes, we'll build a real economy on uber, googleBusses and airBnB!! -- even though every single one of these models supplants an existing, long-fought, long-discussed, long-legislated sector.
I'm so sick of this shit. "Oh, we fixed the problem!! The (bus/taxi/hotel) problem!!"
No, you fixed it for you. You fixed a narrow use case. Did you fix it for everyone? Fuck no! Case in point, the Google (/yahoo/linkedIn/Genentech/*/) bus. Did you fix all transport down the peninsula? Does it help me when I want to go the the Tech Museum? NO. Do the private busses block the muni stops, slowing down the actual all-access busses that my tax dollars pay for? Yes!
Do Uber drivers run people over? YES! Does Uber try to claim no liability because the driver was between fares? YES!
I could toss out multiple arguments of this sort against every single facet of the "sharing economy". Did I say Fuck You yet?
It just makes me want to cry and puke, the fact that the brightest minds of the millenial generation are investing all their energy in this shit. You do NOT have a grand vision! Fixing little piecemeal shit that improves an inconvenience or saves 5 minutes for the twitter generation is NOT innovation! Previous generations tried to Really Fix Shit -- tried to solve problems in a general sense. A lot of those people -- like my spouse -- went into Government, since historically this is the job of Governments. Are a lot of those solutions terribly flawed? YES! Absolutely. But goddamit, people have tried, and the system is not broken. I just wish there was a bit more of a spirit of FTFU (fixed that for us) rather than FTFM (fixed that for me!).
Self-entitlement is strong in this one.
This is San Francisco that we're talking about here. Self entitled a-holes who don't want to work, think that the rules don't apply to them and that the world owes them a living are found in abundance there. It's probably better to convert your rentals into condos for sale anyway. I hear that condoization is the way to go in San Francisco these days anyway, less hassle and way more money.
How is this any different than renting a car and then renting it out to someone else?
It's a fraudulent contract. How would that not be a crime?
It's an unlicensed hotel. How would that not be a crime?
White collar crimes are still crimes.
-
This isn't about not allowing people to "to engage in free enterprise without greasing some palms". It is about local laws and one agreed to when one signed a lease instead of purchasing one's own property.
This may clear some things up for you:
So why can tenants rerent their units to tourists at a higher rent than what they pay their landlords? Actually, they can’t. These tenants are violating a multitude of San Francisco ordinances, starting with rent control itself, which affords their own low rent protections. If the “host” tenant is renting out their room or unit at a daily rate that exceeds their own daily rental value, that tenant is violating the San Francisco Rent Ordinance, which states that a tenant cannot charge more rent to a subtenant than what the tenant is paying their landlord.
Moreover, by offering their entire unit or room as a short-term rental (defined as a rental for less than 30 days), the tenant is also violating the San Francisco “Apartment Unit Conversion Ordinance.” That particular ordinance prohibits the rental of residential units to tourists or short-term transients without obtaining a special permit first. Violations of this ordinance has penalties, including fines of not more than $1,000 or by imprisonment in the county jail for a period of not more than six months, or by both.
Depending on the neighborhood zoning designation, it is also likely the tenant is breaking zoning laws, which require that hotels in residentially zoned districts obtain a conditional use permit. It is also probable that your tenant or his “guests” are afoul of tax laws because, in 2012, the San Francisco City Treasurer office stated that short-term rentals were subject to the city’s transient occupancy tax (also known as the “hotel tax”). Lastly, assuming the tenant has signed an SFAA lease, they are in breach of the “no subletting” clause of their lease agreement. The most recent version of the SFAA lease is even more explicit, and specifically states in the section entitled “Use” that “No hotel use, such as daily rentals, shall be made.”
Does that clear things up?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Not having the proper permits, violating the rent control laws and not paying taxes are crimes.
Those taxes help pay for police, inspections, etc.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
So, you would have no problem if the law said that if you were caught breaking your legally mandated, below market value lease by subletting at market value, you would be required to retroactively pay market value rent back to the day you started subletting and continuing until you vacate the premises, yes?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Very nice, You should be a Realtor, you'll protect both the tenant and the landlord with a clear explanations like this and never end up in court.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
So, you would have no problem if the law said that if you were caught breaking your legally mandated, below market value lease by subletting at market value, you would be required to retroactively pay market value rent back to the day you started subletting and continuing until you vacate the premises, yes?
No, Mr. Hannity, I would have no problem if the law were limited to enforcing contracts, like it is supposed to do, instead of trying to control every aspect of everyone's lives to the point that no one can make a move without banging on the City Council's doors demanding recognition of their group's desires.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
tl;dr
Thankfully I don't live in the Peoples' Republic of San Fransisco. I get the feeling that there is almost no normal day-to-day activity that a person can engage in there without "likely breaking" some rule or ordinance or bureaucratic policy that the busybodies in government have decided to impose.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Oh, so you are going blow shit out your ass, then when someone tries to educate you, you will say "No thanks, I prefer to be ignorant and foolish and spout it all over the internet." Good to know.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
You sound like an anarchist. If you are, you probably think that the law prevents you from doing what you want. What you don't understand is that the laws exist to protect people like you from people like me.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
The funny thing about your comment is I kind of learned to do that from my Realtor when I was buying my house.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
A good realtor is very hard to find, it really simple reason to, We are just straight business and not looking to make friends. So look for the Realtor whom will explain all the paperwork properly and it might sound like he's/she's walking you out of the deal by explaining all the risk, what they are doing is explaining how to cover your ass and protect your asset's. boring i can assure you, but I've yet been taken to the board.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
How hard are you working to repeal Proposition 13?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Well, what about those folks who own their homes? The article says that they're subject to these restrictions as well. So, if you own a 5 bedroom house, and you choose to rent out a room on AirBnb or VRBO, you'll be cited as well.
To me, seems like the solution should be simple. Just handle it the way a lot of paid escorts do. Offer your room "for free" to people visiting, and then if anyone wants to "offer" you some money expressly NOT for lodging (nudge nudge, wink wink), well then they're free to do that. In the same way that you're paying escorts "for their companionship" and specifically NOT for anything else, you could make the same argument about folks staying the weekend in your spare room. They're not paying you for lodging, they're paying you for your services of guiding them around the city, or cooking for them, or allowing them to use your washer machine, or whatever.
My baby sitter doesn't have a licensed daycare facility. She watches my two kids in her private home. Should she be hauled off to the gulag as well?
When did these apartment sub-letters ever refuse to pay taxes? Why would they need permits for a single unit or single room short term sublease? Permission from the owner I would understand, but that would be a civil matter between landlord and tenant. It's these kinds of intrusions of government into private matters that fuels small government extemists, putting social progress at risk, like programs such as Obamacare and Medicaid.
It's so much easier to tax visitors and tourists since they don't get to vote on the tax...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Rent control in SF apples to every building constructed before 1972 IIRC. It's somewhere on this thread. Classic 'fix' for rent control depressing construction.
In any case the market solution to rent control is very simple. Condo conversion. Don't let the door hit you on the ass Mr. former rent controlled tenant.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Or rent from an apartment owner that forbids subletting and enforces their own contracts. This is why we have civil law instead of totalitarian "do what you're told" law. This whole deal reeks of industry protectionism. Give me a TRUE free market, or give me TRUE socialism. Everything else is just a shade of fascism that favors people with "special" status over the rights of the common man.
This is exactly the problem with our present system of government. From the local council to the US Senate we have laws for this and that, exclusions, grandfathering, retro-active, exceptions, rebates, subsidies, credits, fines, penalties, and loopholes, loopholes, loopholes. There is no consistent guiding principal for how our laws are written. We neither have a socialist nor a free-market government. Some areas of life are virtually unregulated to the detriment of average citizens while others are incredibly over-regulated to the detriment of average citizens. But for almost any law or regulation it is possible to work around the intent of the law by some maneuver such as you describe. The only barriers are cost, risk, and complexity. The end result is that those with modest means and modest ambitions (ie typical American family) suffer under the law, whereas those who are hiring lawyers to plot their way through the loopholes and game the system benefit substantially. In a just and fair society there would be no need for the Estate Law industry. Google "Medicaid Planning" and "Asset Protection" to learn more about taking advantage of loopholes that the wealthy use to avoid the burden levied by the government onto middle-class families or families with an sick, elderly, or disabled member.
I could live happily with a democratic socialist government. I could take my chances in a free-market based libertarian society. I'd rather not have anything in between. 200+ years of singing songs about being free, and yet we have to keep working towards actually being free, breaking one chain at a time, all while another link is being forged on the other limb.
Fun you should ask. It seems there is detailed law covering just that case. http://www.childcarelaw.org/do...
Or were you being sarcastic?
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I wish I was being sarcastic. Coming from Texas I've never seen a requirement for spouses to register with the state to watch their step-children.
Do you ever shutup about Obama and his ill advised programs?
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
In many countries you cannot legally prevent subletting. As a someone with a lease/rent contract, you are allowed to sublet. Of course many of these countries also stipulate that you can't charge more rent than you pay either.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Interesting. Makes the "sharing economy" sound a lot like prostitution.
My original comment wasn't based on subletting, it was based on the transient nature of a hotel/motel/B&B guest as opposed to a neighbor (regardless of whether the neighbor owns/rents/sublets).
There is a wide range of what is acceptable to various people in this context. For some, not knowing who their neighbors are from day to day may not be a big deal. Maybe they like forming new associations constantly, or maybe they avoid forming any associations. Either way, they don't care if the people around them are the same as yesterday or will be the same tomorrow. Others like more constancy in their associations, especially those who are around them when they are most vulnerable (i.e. at home where a lot of relaxing, bathing, and sleeping takes place). It is a tribute to society that many of us feel safe in a variety of circumstances that leave us vulnerable to those around us. We don't feel like we have to live with armed guards, nor constantly watch our backs to make sure someone isn't putting a knife into it. But how comfortable you are in the presence of strangers when you are vulnerable depends a lot on your level of trust in others and/or your ignorance of what can go wrong.
I think people usually expect and operate with the default assumption that the people around them are mostly like themselves, and they govern their actions accordingly. Short-term transient rentals will almost certainly play havoc with those assumptions on both parts. The "inconsiderate assholes" who show up late at night for their AirBnB accommodation probably aren't assholes at all. Their travel was delayed, they are tired and worn out, and they just want to get to a touchdown/relaxation spot. But their assumptions about what constitutes "good behavior" under those circumstances are very different than those of the long-term residents around them think, because they have very different expectations and motivations.
I'm familiar with a circumstance in which the equivalent business to a short-term rental opened in a very small neighborhood (private road off of a county road, six houses). This business has 24 hour a day operations, 7 days per week, with at least 3 employees per shift. Obviously way above/beyond AirBnB of course. The culture clash is enormous. For example, the employees speed down the road when they are late for work (and its not uncommon for people to be running late in the morning). Because its a private road, its only 18 feet wide, not the minimum 22 feet of a county road. The residents know each other, and always slow down to pass each other. The employees don't slow down a bit; I suspect they don't realize the road is as narrow as it is. I'm sure the employees don't understand why the neighbors dislike them so much - they are just working for a living, like everyone else, right? But unlike the residents, there is no tie of the employees to the neighborhood. Its just their job, not where they live.