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

[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.