
Critics Blame Airbnb for San Francisco's Housing Problems - jfaat
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/11/338830807/critics-blame-airbnb-for-san-francisco-s-housing-problems
======
idlewords
I like Sausalito (pop 8,000), but I've come to think it should be covered in
high-density housing, with a BART stop. Same for the vast areas of the
Penninsula owned by Stanford. If you drive from AT&T park southward, keeping
close to the water, you will see an enormous amount of unused land. Drive
through Palo Alto and you'll see McMansions with huge lawns where there should
be apartment buildings. Drive up San Bruno Mountain and look around, and
you'll see entire swathes of Visitacion Valley that are just empty wasteland.
Colma is an entire city made of graveyards.

What's missing is any kind of regional government capable of coming up with a
housing and transit plan and finding the money to fund it. The result is no
new homes in an area that is seeing a huge influx of workers, most of them in
tech. Since those workers earn a lot of money, they price out other people.

We know how to build out our cities, but for some reason that is politically
impossible in the Bay Area. It's a pretty despicable abrogation of
responsibility.

~~~
justizin
BART was originally intended to reach Marin, but fierce opposition kept it
out.

Sausalito doesn't have the infrastructure for high density living, there
certainly isn't room for, say, 5x as many people to commute into SF.

A lot more people need to start both living and working in the east bay, it's
not tenable for most of the lucrative work to be isolated in downtown SF,
leaving vast swaths of the bay area largely vacant during the day, with
basically noone able to live near their work in the city.

Those other communities have worries about gentrification and displacement as
well, but the bay area as a whole would be better off if growth were spread
more evenly.

This is why I oppose the luxury shuttles. If you want to work in Palo Alto,
Sausalito, or Mountain View, I think you should live there.

~~~
binarycrusader
I don't know why you refer to them as "luxury" shuttles. As far as I can tell,
most of them don't even have working Wi-Fi. Those shuttles are keeping extra
cars off the highway and the road. Why is that not a good thing?

Also, not all of those shuttles are for Apple or Google, and many of them are
not going anywhere near SF. They're going to areas of the South Bay where
there are no practical public transport options.

Even people that live in or near Mountain View take those shuttles (instead of
driving) to places where they work in the South Bay.

Same goes for Santa Clara caltrain and the Fremont BART station. Shuttles go
from there to other places too.

Personally, I think the shuttles would have been far less necessary or popular
if the California Bay Area had a fast, efficient transport system that
actually covered it.

It's no wonder most people want to live in San Francisco, Palo Alto or
Mountain View -- those locations all have some of the best public transport
options and connections to other forms of transport as well. There are
obviously other desirable aspects to those cities as well.

As for your argument that people should live where they work -- there's not
enough housing for that. Mountain View alone certainly doesn't have enough
space for everyone that works at Google. Likewise, San Francisco doesn't have
enough space for everyone that works there.

Oh, sorry, let me correct that, Mountain View has plenty of housing -- if
you're willing to pay ~$2700 a month for a two-bedroom apartment built in the
70s, $1.5 million+ for a new house (attached) or $2 million+ for a new,
detached house.

So before you grouse about so-called Luxury shuttles, stop and think about
what the real problem is.

~~~
idlewords
It literally says "LUXURY" on the side of some of these buses.

~~~
binarycrusader
Yeah, so do some of the bars of soap in the dollar store, but that doesn't
make them "luxury" in the dictionary sense of the word.

------
DavidAdams
San Francisco is has extremely low population density across vast swaths of
its territory for a city with such a high demand for housing. And, unlike
other world cities, most of the buildings are not architectural masterpieces
with historic value. They're cheaply built, ugly little boxes. The only things
that will reduce this tension would be limiting the number of people allowed
to move into the city (obviously not legal) or increasing the supply of
housing. There isn't a lot of new land, but it would be easy to increase the
density by a factor of 2-3x by giving developers incentive to raze lower
density housing and replace it with larger buildings. The could be compelled
to pay impact fees and fund neighborhood improvements to ensure that transit
capacity, parking, public amenities, and street life are actually improved
rather than degraded.

Unfortunately, the current regulatory climate in SF is 180 degrees opposed to
this solution, with NIMBYism run rampant and any improvement or expansion of
existing housing stock subject to a thicket of roadblocks and regulations.

~~~
idlewords
This holds even more strongly for Silicon Valley, where housing density is
even lower, and zoning way more restrictive. A lot of people would like to
live in San Francisco, but I bet a lot of people would be happy to live in
Palo Alto or Mountain View if it stopped pretending to be a suburb and became
halfway affordable.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Agreed. The entire Bay Area needs a lot more apartment buildings and far fewer
suburbs.

I'm surprised, sometimes, with all the perks that Google offers, they don't
own an apartment building near the Googleplex. They're already 90% of the way
to "company town" status; might as well embrace it.

~~~
justizin
Do you really want to live in a building owned by your employer? I lived in
corporate housing when I went to a corporate school and when your relationship
with that entity ends, you become homeless fucking _real_ fast.

It should be tenable to increase density with the right community support in
MV, Palo Alto, etc.. - a regional agreement which is perhaps not as binding as
it should be requires those cities to approve housing equal to the population
increase of all the office developments they approve.

When Mountain View and Palo Alto approve office developments which welcome
100k new workers and apartments for 20k, they shuck the responsibility for
residential civic planning onto SF and surrounding areas and collect the
corporate taxes. And fuck them for that.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Do you really want to live in a building owned by your employer? I lived
in corporate housing when I went to a corporate school and when your
relationship with that entity ends, you become homeless fucking _real_ fast."

Just make sure the lease includes some clause that requires around 3 months
notice if being evicted due to losing your job. If enough employees refuse to
use the housing unless they are given those kinds of assurances the employer
would have to cave.

------
tilsammans
The article mentions that Amsterdam has recently allowed short-term rental. I
live in Amsterdam. While it's true that this law exists, it was created to set
rules surrounding the practice. It doesn't exactly encourage it, in fact the
law limits short term rental:

    
    
      only allowed by the main occupant
      less than 2 months per year
      you must pay tourist tax
      you must have permission from home ownership association
      your house must be rated safe by the fire department
      maximum 4 people
      no disturbances of any kind
    

The list (in Dutch): [http://www.amsterdam.nl/wonen-
leefomgeving/wonen/informatie/...](http://www.amsterdam.nl/wonen-
leefomgeving/wonen/informatie/verhuren/particuliere/@663963/pagina/)

In practice hardly anyone complies with the full list. All rent-controlled
apartments are excluded from short term rental anyway, as are most free-market
rental apartments.

edit: removed unrelated rant :)

------
LandoCalrissian
I think the problem isn't the conversion of rent controlled apartments, it's
that there are rent controlled apartments.

Rent control artificially limits supply and drives up prices for everyone
else. This is one of the few things economists can agree on regardless of
political affiliation. This isn't Airbnb's fault.

~~~
idlewords
Rent control is a political tool that allows at least some poorer people to
keep living in the city. The underlying problem is severe and chronic lack of
supply in absolute terms.

Rent control is a way to mitigate social tension enough so the people on
Google buses don't end up with their heads on a pike.

~~~
saosebastiao
The problem is that this tool to satiate the plebs actually makes the problem
worse, because it introduces more plebs. Rent control _reduces the quantity
and quality of housing_. This raises prices, making non-poor people poor.

~~~
LandoCalrissian
[http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-
rent-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-
affair.html)

This is an old Krugman Op-Ed from 2000 that says exactly that.

------
steven2012
One of my friends said that their friend bought a unit at Divisidero and Fell
and then another one in the same location a few years later, and AirBNB both
for over $5000/month. I asked why they don't just rent it out, and they said
it's easier to rent it out vs getting a tenant and being subject to draconian
SF rent-control laws.

~~~
geebee
I'm guessing that these are rentals for less than 30 days? If so, your friend
is making a lot of money by breaking the law. Your friend may have contempt
for this particular law, so in this case, this profit is an assumption of
risk. Illegal activities tend to be quite profitable because they are higher
risk.

Honestly, though, I doubt there's all that much risk to this. Maybe even less
than renting out to a permanent tenant (who has powerful rights in SF).

Unfortunately, SF seems to be unusually good at passing restrictive laws with
low enforcement, encouraging people to test the limits and profit, and making
chumps of people who follow the rules. I just paid over $8k for permits (hell,
I paid a few hundred in permit fees to replace my windows and furnace with
energy efficient ones). In response, SF wouldn't allow me to put a sink in my
laundry room "to make sure that I'm not putting in an illegal in-law".
Meanwhile, there are illegal in-laws left and right, all done with zero
permits, and no apparent enforcement. Here's the thing, I don't have contempt
for the law. I think that a structural engineer and licensed electrical work
with required firewalls to prevent an inferno that starts in the illegal in-
law from spreading next door are actually pretty good regulations.

It sounds like SF may soon allow legal airbnb with some restrictions, but like
permits, this will probably be an option to register, pay money, and be
regulated vs breaking the law in a nearly zero consequence environment.

~~~
steven2012
Yep, undoubtedly they are breaking the law. But no one appears to care.

Ss I was reading your comment, I was thinking "There are so many unpermitted
remodels in SF I wonder why this person actually paid for permits?" If you try
to buy a house, I would say every single house I saw in SF had some sort of
unpermitted remodelling, and no one cares, not even the real estate agents.

It's almost as if SF likes to penalize the people that follow the law, which
is backwards and sad.

------
logfromblammo
Yes, of course. When there is a big, ugly design flaw in the program, blame
the big, ugly workaround for it.

City planning is difficult. The engineering itself is actually pretty
straightforward for skilled laborers, but that isn't the only thing to it. The
problems usually stem from all the buildings being filled with irrational yard
apes that hate and fear change, and have an unjustified interest in what their
neighbors do with their property.

SF needs a higher density of residental building space. People who live in SF
use their political power to make demolition and construction projects aimed
at increasing housing density unprofitable, or at least less profitable than
similar projects undertaken elsewhere.

Result: housing shortage. Solution: blame AirBnB and continue to ignore the
underlying problem.

The critics should be blaming those actually responsible: every person in the
Bay Area that has ever opposed new construction, by any means, for any reason.

~~~
cpncrunch
Agreed, there seem to be a lot of scapegoats for the SF housing problems and
AirBnB is just the latest one to be pilloried.

------
meritt
I guess AirBNB is also responsible for the vast number of high-paying jobs in
the SF vicinity and the utter lack of housing development.[2]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8120070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8120070)

[2] [http://www.newgeography.com/content/003899-plan-bay-area-
tel...](http://www.newgeography.com/content/003899-plan-bay-area-telling-
people-what-do)

------
owyn
Local building policies are creating a huge problem here, but a big part of
what's causing prices to skyrocket is not tech workers, it's foreign
investment...

 _for the period April 2013 through March 2014, total international sales have
been estimated at $92.2 billion, an increase from the previous period’s level
of $68.2 billion_ [1]

And according to some reports, 90% of new condos sold in Miami are to foreign
buyers.

 _A soon-to-be-released study by New York consulting firm Integra Realty
Resources for the Miami Downtown Development Authority, an economic-
development agency, found that about 90% of the buyers of new residential
units are from abroad. Despite steadily increasing prices, their appetite
doesn 't appear to be waning..._ [2]

Rules for purchasing real estate in the US are generally pretty relaxed, and
as wealth grows in the rest of the world, people are looking for places to
invest (and probably in some cases "hide") their money. The "premier" cities
receive the bulk of that investment.

Tech workers and private buses do make it more convenient to live in SF and
I'm sure it helps drive up the cost of renting in the city, but only 7% of the
population of the city works in Tech. There are much bigger forces at play
here.

[1] [http://www.realtor.org/news-
releases/2014/07/international-h...](http://www.realtor.org/news-
releases/2014/07/international-home-buyers-continue-to-invest-in-profitable-
us-market-realtors-report)

[2] [http://online.wsj.com/articles/condo-builders-fuel-land-
rush...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/condo-builders-fuel-land-rush-in-
miami-1406052941)

------
gregatragenet2
I was complaining to a friend recently about how the city of Mountain View has
approved so much new commercial property development while approving very
little residential property development. And he brought up a good point. A lot
of the unused space in Mountain View is superfund sites. The development of
new commercial space is happening at these sites (the whole area around
Moffett including Google). It's easy to ensure commercial entities are meeting
the requirements to mitigate the pollutants in these areas (proper HVAC and
ventilation systems, etc) than with individual residences - and the limits on
the amount of exposure are also lower for commercial areas vs. residential
areas. So this could be a strong factor on why there's way more commercial
development than residential in Mountain View and surrounding communities.

------
Camillo
I blame the fact that BART was never extended down the Peninsula.

~~~
idlewords
Or into Marin! Even a BART line along Geary to the ocean would be
transformative.

~~~
pjlegato
Almost equivalently, a Muni subway along Geary that wasn't slow, overcrowded,
and prone to breakdowns would be transformative. The N-Judah should also
become a subway for most of its aboveground route; there's too much traffic
now for it to run at street level.

There used to be Muni streetcar tracks along Geary, but they became buses long
ago. Both are subject to sitting in traffic for long periods.

They have been talking about a Geary Bus Rapid Transit line -- a dedicated
bus-only lane. If it works, it'll be better. I am at a loss to explain how the
city requires 8 years (and counting) to debate whether to paint "BUS ONLY" on
a street.

------
lnanek2
What's really funny is the AirBnb hosts often will not let you stay 30 days,
but are fine with it if you have a day missing, then book another thirty. So
the hosts understand and fight really hard to prevent anyone from possibly
being considered a tenant which would give them more protections under the
law. If it weren't for that I'd say, yay, AirBnb, help us make more efficient
use of our housing. But really it is very prejudiced against long term
residency in practice, so it is really choosing a certain type of tenant and
taking long term housing off market.

------
seanflyon
There is not enough housing and we won't allow people to build more... It must
be Airbnb causing the shortage.

