Airbnb Has Sued Its Hometown Of San Francisco (cnn.com)

Robert Mclean, reporting for CNN:Airbnb is taking its hometown to federal court. The company has filed a lawsuit against the city of San Francisco, objecting to short-term rental rule changes approved by its Board of Supervisors. A new ordinance set to take effect in late July would require all Airbnb hosts to register with the city. If they do not, Airbnb would be fined up to $1,000 a day for each listing, putting the burden on the company to make sure each listing is legal. But the city's $50 registration process is analog enough to turn off many hosts. It can't be completed online and requires submitting all the documents in person. Airbnb contends the new rule violates the Communications Decency Act, Stored Communications Act and the First Amendment.

Comments

Frivilous Law Suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Compliance with local regulations is the bread and butter of running an actual business. Airbnb must adapt its business model otherwise they are simply externalizing the costs associated with fraud after they neglect due diligence in verifying the legality of their listings. Inevitably this is more about publicizing that SF relies on a paper process, but the paper process has several advantages in terms of forcing residents to be local in order to rent out their property without actually rezoning it as a hotel or rental property and paying appropriate fees to account for increased traffic and sewage volume, etc.

Re:Frivilous Law Suit

[BitZtream]

. . .

Except this is San Francisco ... where they worked with AirBNB to make the very law that AirBNB is whining about.

AirBNB LOBBIED FOR THE LAW THAT IS BEING USED AGAINST THEM.

Fuck AirBNB and Uber and all the other bullshit assholes who think that they can get around the rules because they run a website, and fuck people like you who are too stupid to realize whats happening.

Have a nice day ;)

Re:Frivilous Law Suit

[Archangel Michael]

The point is that politicians in San Francisco are purposefully imposing onerous regulations, Period

This is the socialist utopia you all wished for. Now that you are familiar with the libertarian framework, exposed by the fast pace of the Internet (unregulated wasteland of Somalia), you are suddenly complaining about onerous regulations for the sake of incumbent businesses.

FYI, they will dress it up in "safety and security" before too long, to make it more palatable. First rape, murder, assault or other crime is all that is needed (never mind that those things happen all the time in hotels and motels).

Re:Frivilous Law Suit

[Solandri]

Have you asked yourself why that's happening?

City laws prohibiting new development maintain the "desperate shortage" of housing. And city laws capping rents makes short-term rentals more lucrative than long-term rentals. The real estate markets were already fucked up there by those laws before Airbnb even existed.

The market wants to fix it by adding more housing units but is prevented by laws prohibiting development. This causes prices to increase, which normally acts as an incentive for more development. Since the city doesn't want that, it caps rents. This doesn't make the problem go away though. All it does is shift the problem from one of price into one of availability - a lot more people want to live there than there is available housing. This results in a larger population of people wanting to live there but unable to. Which leads to more people wanting to visit. Which leads to more demand for short-term rentals like hotels and Airbnb.

In other words, Airbnb is a symptom of meddling in the real estate market (by the local government). Not the cause as you're insinuating.

Re:Frivilous Law Suit

[lgw]

been to San Francisco? Where would they build new housing? They can't make the houses or apartments any narrower than they already are

One look at Seattle would answer your question. Any lot downtown that used to have a building less than 5 stories now has a highrise in some state of construction, or recently finished. There are about 50 highrise buildings (depending on how you define that) currently under construction, and the 5-10 story buildings are being eyed by developers for replacement now.

You can always go up, assuming the city lets you. Seattle lets you (at least in some areas, there are height restrictions in some places, but it's the minority), SF doesn't.

Please, it's Frivilous Regulation

[Firethorn]

Sack up and deal with it Airbnb

So a company should comply with any regulation at all without complaint?

That other companies should be able to impose regulations in order to capture the industry by excluding any possible competition?

My take on it - any proposed regulation should identify a problem or opportunity*. There should be fairly solid numbers on the problem - IE X amount of criminal calls, complaints, accidents, and such per year. The regulation should identify how much it's expected to cost. There should be a metric to identify whether the regulation is fulfilling it's purpose adequately.

If the regulation turns out to be more expensive than anticipated or doesn't solve the problem in line with it's costs, it should be eliminated.

*And no, 'government makes more money' isn't an opportunity.

Re:Some privacy more equal than other

[mi]

have to register

Any government-registration requirement is highly suspect and the vast majority of them are unwarranted and provide no tangible benefit in exchange for the very real loss of privacy and other burdens.