
Santa Monica convicts its first Airbnb host under tough home-sharing laws - lnguyen
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-santa-monica-airbnb-conviction-20160713-snap-story.html
======
TeMPOraL
Discussions under articles about AirBnB, Uber, et al. start to make me wonder
recently - why is it so that so many people living in apparently advanced XXI-
century civilization need to be explained that following the law is a _good
thing_ in general[0]? Like, you know, paying your taxes and not dumping
externalities on people around you? How is that _not obvious_?

I mean - should I interpret it as a good sign, of people questioning
assumptions to check if they still hold true, or is the society really going
so bonkers that the very idea of being a law-abiding citizen is seen in
negative light?

EDIT - added "in general [0]" and a footnote to clarify.

[0] - I mean not "follow all regulations blindly", but "follow regulations by
default unless there is a _very good_ reason not to".

~~~
jpadkins
not all laws are good. criticism should be encouraged, so we make the laws
better.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Criticism is good, encouraging to break the law and glorification of those to
do, in general, is not good in my books.

~~~
clinta
I suspect that if people weren't willing to break the law we'd probably still
have alcohol prohibition. Making a law unenforceable is a very effective way
of changing it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Fair enough.

------
sologoub
Santa Monica has become amazingly expensive, but the town has rent control
that is even more draconian than SF. For example, unless the lease prohibits
adding additional occupants, rent controlled units can be passed from one
resident to another without much restriction, as long as original lease is in
effect.

Ellis evictions require huge compensation sums.

As the result, available rental stock is minuscule and prices are rivaling SF.
Due to this supply restrictions, what little AirBNB activity goes on, it
actually impacts the overall market substantially.

Similar situation is in Venice (city of LA).

As a condo owner, Santa Monica makes me very uneasy - if I fall on hard times,
I may have no choice but to sell, or risk never being able to re-occupy my own
home again or have to pay an extortion to do so...

~~~
CPLX
> As the result, available rental stock is minuscule

Prove it.

I see this argument all the time, the idea that somehow a massive global rise
in the cost of residential real estate in important urban centers is "caused"
by rent control, rather than a huge increase in inequality, the rise of a
winner cities take all job market, or something else.

I've lived in NYC for seventeen years, during which time rent stabilization
policy has not changed much, but rental prices sure have. The (relatively
tiny) core stock of regulated apartments is pretty similar to what it was when
there were homeless encampments in Greenwich Village townhouses, yet people
ignorantly shout "rent control" all the time.

So we're sure rent control caused this?

Is there rent control in London? What's happened there?

Are you sure the problem isn't Snapchat payrolls, or rising film profits, or
globally suppressed interest rates, or restrictions on Santa Monica building
permits, or maybe even Airbnb listings?

Why are you so sure? I have a degree in Economics and everything yet I'm quite
a bit less certain.

~~~
stuaxo
There is no rent control in London, rents have been going up and up.

Only 10 year graph I could find is this:

[http://leftfootforward.org/images/2015/02/London-rents-
and-w...](http://leftfootforward.org/images/2015/02/London-rents-and-
wages.jpg)

At the same time, lots of property is being built and left empty -

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/21/tens-
thousan...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/21/tens-thousands-
london-homes-deemed-long-term-vacant)

~~~
MagnumOpus
London is hemmed in by the "Metropolitan Green Belt" which restricts building,
and inside the belt housebuilding is very hard due to planning policy. House
building in London is barely keeping step with the usual deterioration of the
housing stock - let alone with the population growing by more than a million
people in a decade.

> lots of property is being built and left empty

8,000 properties empty for more than 2 years is nothing in the big scheme of
things. It is maybe 0.2-0.3% of the housing stock. In fact, this is amazingly
low.

------
bruceb
He is renting 5 homes in Santa Monica? Does he own them or is he subletting?

Instead of having a law against short term renting it should just be one
against renting for more than a total number of days in a year, say 90. That
allows people who are out of town to rent but it not be a permanent hotel.

~~~
orange_county
If you own the place, why does your city or your neighbor have to have a say
in how you manage your property? This is what I don't get. It's your place,
you paid for it, it's yours. If they don't like what you are doing, then they
should move. This anti-house sharing nonsense is just a ploy by the hotel
cartels.

If you don't own the place, and the owner is okay with you subletting, again
what's the problem?

This is one of the few things I don't ever get. Regulation on things that are
not an issue in the first place.

~~~
Mikeb85
Why don't I just buy the house next to yours and start a 100 seat restaurant?
Maybe have a poolside bar in the backyard?

Anyhow, zoning exists for a reason. Hotels are a business. You can't run any
business out of your home. If you do allow any home to become a hotel, you're
opening a huge can of worms...

~~~
davidw
> Anyhow, zoning exists for a reason

Yeah, to keep out black people, poor people and other undesirables who cannot
afford single family detached homes:

[http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/02/zonings-racist-
roots-s...](http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/02/zonings-racist-roots-still-
bear-fruit)

Also, to ensure that you must have a car to do anything at all. God forbid
anyone build something like a corner store within walking distance.

Other reasons here: [http://www.nimbyngo.com/](http://www.nimbyngo.com/)

~~~
sdoering
At least in Germany zoning laws are there to prevent businesses to intrude
into residential neighborhoods. That means, I get to live in an area that is
not "polluted" by noisy trucks driving up and down the street to deliver or
collect goods - and so on.

It also means, I am restricted in what I do with my own property in such, that
I cannot build a factory inside my home/on my ground for the same reasons.

Imho this is quite a reasonable policy.

Some other zoning laws in German communities might restrict me from planting
some trees while forcing me to plant a hedge from a small list of pre defined
plant varieties - just to make sure the neighborhood looks homogenous.

These laws do not make the slightest sense imho. Esp. as the allowed plant
varieties oftentimes are not local but some stuff that is easy in handling and
not that great for nature (no possibilities for birds to nest and such stuff).

~~~
davidw
I can understand the sentiment, but I think we've gone a bit too far with it
in the US.

In Italy, where I lived, there were certainly residential areas, but they were
very close to businesses - from our house we could walk 5/10 minutes and be at
a coffee shop, supermarket, our kids schools, a tram stop, a bakery, and a few
other things.

In the US, you have massive residential-only neighborhoods like this:

[https://www.google.com/maps/@44.1036878,-121.3081349,1586a,2...](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.1036878,-121.3081349,1586a,20y,106.49h,44.73t/data=!3m1!1e3)

It's a car or nothing.

Philosophically, you can say they just designed it wrong, but I think you can
also make an argument that sometimes it's best to evolve complex things, via
markets, rather than attempt a big up front design and then rigidly enforce
that.

------
yladiz
Regardless of whether the law is justified or not, it should be very simple
for Airbnb to force compliance to these laws. In other words, it should be
simple for Airbnb to see a person having multiple properties within this
district/city and not allow it if it's against the law, or limit the number of
days a person can rent a properly out. However, Airbnb doesn't seem to do
this.

Airbnb is a great platform, which I've used both domestically (in USA) and
internationally, and I really appreciate what it offers. What I don't
understand is the flaunting of laws by saying it's not their problem, that
they shouldn't police their users and that their users are responsible for
what they do. I can understand the argument, but it's not difficult to handle
these cases and Airbnb should really do more (arguably their due diligence) to
handle them.

~~~
15thandwhatever
At first, I think this would be just as complicated to enforce as US
municipality taxes.

There are several taxes to be levied within a given state, with the rates
changing based on county/city borders (see New York), regional cooperatives
that span multiple towns but not the entire county (see Illinois), multiple
taxing districts within a town (see Connecticut).

That doesn't even get into the fact of taxes that are levied just for your
industry (see the extra taxes on your car rental bill for picking up at the
airport, or Arizona's former shared rental facility recovery fee for recouping
the cost of building a new rental car facility).

This was Amazon's argument against collecting state sales tax.

But taking on the opposite view for a second, and siding with you...

While it's complicated, all the incumbents in the hotel, rental car, and taxi
industry that we're trying to displace for "not being agile enough", have
spent the necessary man-hours to build the necessary components into their
system to identify a taxable situation and properly deduct and remit taxes.
They've hired own in-house staff and relied on external accounting firms to do
their due diligence of regulatory matters (even to the extent of arguing
against particular new taxes or tax increases).

Hertz, Hilton, and Greyhound all operate within these "heavily taxed" confines
(in terms of effort, not absolute dollars), and communities/states have gotten
used to their compliance, which in turn funds the various operating coffers of
a municipality/region/state.

So yeah, why not expect the same from Airbnb?

------
loudin
Why can't we compromise a bit here? I don't think many people have issues with
folks renting out their place for a few weeks during the year, but buying
property and using it to attract vacationers to a residential area is very
different. It can change the city by causing businesses to cater towards more
tourists and to reduce available housing stock.

What if people could only rent out their primary residence for no more than
half the year unless the property is exempt as a vacation home? Perhaps this
could be a good compromise for cities to encourage Airbnb while effectively
banning the practice of buying homes exclusively for Airbnbers.

~~~
bronson
It might still profitable to rent the house for the busy season and let it sit
vacant the other half of the year. A friend who owns three VRBOs in Santa Cruz
basically does that. (he's a decent guy but an opportunistic and terrible
landlord)

~~~
Broken_Hippo
It is possible to think through the law and write it well to avoid that sort
of situation. In this case, a clause stating that 1) a primary residence can
only be rented out x days a year while the owner is not present, but may be
rented an additional x days a year with the owner present 2) A secondary or
vacation home can only be rented out x days a year with a minimum of x days
between rentals, and the owners must be present at least x days out of year.
3) A non-primary or secondary home may only be leased out x days of the year,
with longer x days in between. 4) A unit that would otherwise be a unit for
longer habitation can only be rented out a smaller x times a year, and must be
offered for long-term renting at competitive prices in between times. 5) All
other residences being rented out must be registered and liscenced as a resort
or a hotel and uphold the regulations of those. 6. All must register their
rentings with the city and obtain the appropriate permits (simple stuff for
single home owners looking to supplement income, of course).

------
cassieramen
Is 1,700 units at all meaningful for Santa Monica housing prices? Is it worth
the city expending all these resources to stop what seems like a blip on the
radar?

~~~
arebop
There are 50912 housing units in Santa Monica, 36657 of which are rental units
[[https://www.smgov.net/Departments/HED/eddContent.aspx?id=235...](https://www.smgov.net/Departments/HED/eddContent.aspx?id=23577)].
So 1700 is (generously) 4.6%. Not nothing, but how much really? It's
complicated but extrapolating from a San Francisco analysis
[[http://www.sfhac.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Ted-Egan-
Pre...](http://www.sfhac.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Ted-Egan-
Presentation.pdf)] we might expect that 4.6% increase in housing supply would
result in a 5.8% decrease in prices. For comparison, Santa Monica has seen
about a 25% increase in rental prices this year
[[http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Santa_Monica-
California/](http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Santa_Monica-California/)].

Maybe somebody else will actually repeat the Egan analysis with Santa Monica-
specific regressions and so forth. Perhaps the model itself could be improved.

Also, if there are so many people willing to pay so much to spend a night in
Santa Monica, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have both long-term
_and_ short-term housing?

But it doesn't really matter does it? AirBnB is a _political_ issue in all
these places and the rabble don't care about your "data" or "logic." They are
fed up with high prices and arrogant "disruptive" tech bros and they are ready
to take action!

~~~
mdorazio
Good numeric analysis, but a couple things don't sit well with me. First, 5%
is a significant price difference when you're sinking up to half your income
into housing ([http://la.curbed.com/2015/12/10/9892338/los-angeles-rent-
bur...](http://la.curbed.com/2015/12/10/9892338/los-angeles-rent-burden-most-
unaffordable)), especially at the price levels we are talking about for Santa
Monica rentals.

Second, AirBnB is more than a political issue and referring to people as
"rabble" just because they disapprove of illegal rentals is pretty arrogant. I
live in Santa Monica, work in tech, and absolutely do not want any of my
neighbors renting their apartments on AirBnB. One of my neighbors did so for a
while last year and the result was the entire complex repeatedly having to
deal with unruly visitors being overly loud at night and trashing the common
areas.

If you want to make money on rentals, buy a property that allows you to do
that, and where everyone around you knows that's going to happen and can plan
accordingly. If you don't want to do that, then you don't get the right to
abuse your apartment complex or neighborhood just because you want to make
some money. Treating AirBnB rentals like they have zero impact on anyone but
the renter and owner is disingenuous and shows a certain level of selfishness
with respect to the actual complexities of the situation.

~~~
arebop
My neighbor was pretty noisy when he first moved in. I had to ask him several
times to quiet down and eventually after the landlady heard complaints from
several others, he did. This isn't at all an AirBnB-specific issue.

I admit 5% isn't nothing. But if your problem is that rents are rising 25% pa
in your town, a one-time decrease of 5% isn't much of a solution.

~~~
kalleboo
So it took several times to get a neighbor to quiet down, then he stayed
quiet.

Now imagine getting a new neighbor every week. Once he quiets down, there's a
new one. That's living next to an AirBnB.

~~~
arebop
The same person is responsible every week. Take it up with the landlord.
Before I was in an apartment, I owned a condo, and the bylaws prohibited short
term rentals and even most long term rentals. No new laws are needed to deal
with these old problems.

------
werkschuwtuig
_online rental platforms such as Airbnb could also be fined if they refuse to
turn over addresses of rentals that failed to register._

This is the part where it is going to get funny, and which will pretty much
help shaping the future.

So, they are going to fine an online rental platform conveniently located in
Argentina that settles all payments in bitcoin?

As you can imagine, it will not make Airbnb any more popular if they "turn
over" their users. In a version 2.0 iteration of the concept, the platform
will just shut its ears for any of that. Of course, then they will be attacked
through the payment method, but that is where bitcoin kicks in.

In order to make online things comply, you need to strangle their cash inflow.
However, if you do not kill it, you will only make it stronger. Bitcoin is
really the elephant in the room. Goverments are making lots of trade expensive
or impossible unless they are setted in bitcoin. That is pushing the value of
bitcoin through the roof.

Hence, the final shape of the system, adjusting its shape attack after attack,
until it finally has become unassailable.

~~~
vidarh
Except that property rental always have a final thing to attack: Ownership of
the property.

There are certainly businesses that may become hard to force to comply with
laws due to Bitcoin, but property rentals are far down the list, given that
there are few things that are harder to move out of "troublesome"
jurisdictions.

------
seesomesense
Rent control can easily be evaded by renting property through AirBNB.

Perhaps that is why rent controlled cities like Santa Monica are aggressively
shutting down this loophole.

------
legohorizons
Jared can finally have his apartment back!

~~~
pandaman
Wrong city, Santa Monica is in LA.

~~~
huac
It's a bit of a tortured analogy anyways, since Jared was an Airbnb host, and
in this case, the guy is fleeing California.

~~~
pandaman
And that whole story makes me wonder how is that Aribnb is not overtaken by
squatters in CA yet.

------
untilHellbanned
> As for Shatford, he’s moving to Denver this week, after 13 years of living
> in Santa Monica. He said he hopes people are more tolerant there.

Skeptical.

~~~
danso
Um, tolerant of _what_? Is he planning to do short term rentals in Denver? If
so, has he not looked up their regulations? Because it seems like Denver
passed laws that would highly restrict what he was doing in Santa Monica:
[http://www.denverpost.com/2016/06/13/denver-city-council-
con...](http://www.denverpost.com/2016/06/13/denver-city-council-considers-
short-term-rentals/)

(Short term rentals are allowed in primary residences, but not for vacation
homes)

~~~
cmurf
He doesn't care about the law. He didn't care about it in Santa Monica. And
he's completely unrepentant in that case. Naturally he's moving on to the next
town to see if he can get away with it there.

~~~
aminok
Yeah we need snuff out the scourge of voluntary market transactions.

~~~
vidarh
These transactions have affected parties that are not voluntary participants,
such as the neighbours. That is the problem.

~~~
aminok
If tenants are disturbing neighbours the owner should be held liable, whether
the tenant is a short term renter or a long term renter. Airbnb has an
effective mechanism to ensure good guest behavior: ratings. There is no
justification for discriminating against all short term renters to prevent
neighbours from being disturbed.

The affected parties city governments are pandering to are those looking to
rent long-term, and they have no legal or moral claim to renting someone
else's asset, let alone dictating the rate at which it is rented out.

~~~
c22
But neighbors don't get to rate the renters of the airbnb next door, so who
will give them a negative rating? The business owner who does not reside there
and is hoping for no repeat customers?

~~~
aminok
If the city can create a law punishing landlords who rent short term, they can
create a law punishing landlords whose tenants disturb neighbours. Once the
incentive is there, landlords using Airbnb will be sure to monitor guest
behavior toward the commons/neighbours, and report misbehaviour in the ratings
they give out.

~~~
c22
But we already have a framework of laws governing the business of offering
short term rentals. Why is creating and enforcing this new framework better
than asking people who want to run hotels to just follow the existing rules?
It doesn't sound simpler.

~~~
aminok
The laws violate human rights. People should not have their right to contract
denied. Actions that infringe upon the rights of others, like damaging the
common area of an apartment building, or creating noise pollution, can be
justifiably prohibited, but not actions that are non-infringing and only
deemed to be correlated with the infringing action.

In other words, prohibiting short term rentals is a form of repression.

~~~
cmurf
You're completely wrong on every count. Your argument weirdly proposes a
totally anti-democracy, pro-mercantilst point of view where citizens have no
right to petition government for zoning laws that clearly disallow, for
everyone, operating certain types of business in those zone. Short term rental
is widely regarded as operating a hotel or b&b.

~~~
aminok
Claiming I'm wrong doesn't make it so. Your definition of democratic is the
majority being able to violate the minority's rights. Your definition of
mercantilism is also totally wrong.

>Short term rental is widely regarded as operating a hotel or b&b.

You say that as if it justifies repressing it. As if certain categories of
voluntary transactions can justifiably be repressed.

------
unethical_ban
>Shen, the prosecutor, said city officials received a complaint from someone
who had rented one of Shatford’s properties. The woman was surprised to learn
that she was renting a unit that was illegal and was uncomfortable with the
situation, Shen said

Seems pretty ratty to report on something so victimless, especially after
participating.

~~~
Tomte
It's victimless in the same sense as tax evasion is victimless.

Come to think about it, the analogy is quite apt: someone hires a plumber to
fix his leaking pipe, gets an invoice and sees no tax. He then asks the
plumber to give him a correct invoice with tax because he doesn't want to be
complicit in tax evasion. And you're now accusing him of ratting on the
plumber who just wanted to save some money.

~~~
werkschuwtuig
Well, the long-term effect will be that you will only be able to get a decent
plumber on an anonymous online platform, at which you will have to escrow a
sizable security deposit in bitcoin first. Making that kind of threats to any
of the plumbers will just lead to the customer losing his security deposit.
Online platforms are several orders of magnitude more efficient at enforcing
anything than governments are. So, there you are.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's a weak argument why bitcoins and anonymous trade are a bad idea.

(A stronger one will be raised after the first nuclear or bacteriological
incident traced back to anonymous black-market purchases.)

> _Making that kind of threats to any of the plumbers_

Threats? Refusing to be complicit in a crime is a _threat_ now? I hope society
never goes _that_ bonkers.

------
themartorana
I can't seem to muster the ability to care. I guess this is supposed to seem
like a win?

Diligently prosecuting serial renters while people who caused worldwide
economic collapse commit economic crimes of thousands of degrees beyond this
go free makes it difficult to muster empathy.

I'm jaded. Apologies.

