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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.
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.
Some good reasons I can think of off the top of my head:
I'm sure there are more, but I only had a few moments to consider it. Conversely, the $50, and fill out a form seem like remarkably low burdens to impose. I mean, "I'm suing because this form isn't online" is pretty stupid.
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Some modern companies seem to complain excessively about regulations that people have been living with for years without complaint. We've seen Uber complain that their taxi service is sometimes regulated like a taxi service, requiring commercial driver's licenses, commercial insurance, and background checks (nobody's applying medallion limits to Uber).
You seem to be saying that regulation shouldn't be applied when it's actually needed, but rather has to wait until numerous people have suffered for the lack of it. You're also calling for metrics that don't really exist. It's usually not possible to directly compare results with regulation and results without regulation over time. Consider background checks for taxi drivers: the idea is to reduce crime perpetrated by the drivers, but there really isn't much measurable other than how many people failed the check. In order to see if it reduces crime, it would be necessary to take some of the people failing the check and put them into cabs over a period of time and see how many passengers were crime victims.
Life requires judgment calls. If you don't like the calls your elected representatives are making, campaign against them in elections. If you get no traction, then it may well be that everyone else is happy with the situation.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There are a number of cities that rely on the tourism industry that are undergoing negative changes due to AirBnb.
More rooms are available -> Hotels cant charge as much for rooms due to competition, and collect less taxes for the city. So the city has more tourists to support, but less tax revenue
Real estate prices go up -> Long term residents have incentive to sell/rent, renters have incentive to live elsewhere
It's similar to gentrification, but instead of replacing poor people with yuppies, its replacing residents with absentee landlords. There are increases in tourist dollars to local businesses, but less money from local residents. The overall effect is unhealthy for the city as a whole, since it drives residents away. Ultimately a city cant survive without locals who actually live in it.