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I Have Read Prop F (medium.com/emeyerson)
238 points by _sentient on Sept 25, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 170 comments



I saw some campaign propaganda today.

One side of the flier has a guy named Aaron Peskin imploring me to vote yes on Prop F and Prop I. Prop F is the mess thoughtfully critiqued in this write-up, Prop I is a moratorium on building new market-rate housing. Oh, and he's on the "more affordable rent" campaign platform, because if you want to make rent more affordable, clearly the best way is by preventing construction of market-rate housing. It's like SF voters are brain-dead.

The flip side of the flier derided another candidate. If the point of the flier was to make me aware of which candidate to not to vote for, mission accomplished.


The two candidates are diametric opposites regarding adding housing, improving transit, and working with the mayor. And the winner of this race will likely be the deciding vote on such issues in the Board of Supervisors, including the vote for who will be president, a powerful role that gets to appoint nearly half the members of important bodies like the Planning Commission. If you're in this district, please register to vote and read up on Julie Christensen and Aaron Peskin so you can make an informed decision in just over a month.


I can't +1 one this comment enough.

Both have track records in office and the choice can't be more clear. I'm shocked that anyone is supporting Peskin after his term of obstructionism. Esp. in contrast to what Christinsen has accomplished in her recent term.


>Prop I is a moratorium on building new market-rate housing

Are these people completely insane? Shouldn't there be propositions for denser zoning, land reclamation, or other measures that would increase the SF housing stock? Houston has famously lax zoning laws, and as a consequence has seen much greater population growth (31% vs 18% from 1980-2010 per wikipedia) yet experienced none of these same problems.


They're actually operating in a way that is very profitable to them. If you own property- a house or business real estate- you want a moratorium on new supply. Because not giving new supply will cause the value of your current property to go up. Of course its an "anti-affordable housing" position... but it's not insane.

The anti-development types are taking a very profitable position for themselves.


Lax zoning laws has created its own set of problems for Houston -- infamously horrible sprawl, for one.


Not sure why you are getting downvoted.

Houston's lack of zoning laws (there are HOAs, mind) has certainly created its own set of problems. A friend of mine once described it as less of a city and more of a vast collection of suburbs connected by strip malls - and that isn't entirely unfair.

Whether you view it as "horrible sprawl" or "affordable housing" sort of depends on where you sit, I guess.



The lack of zoning in Houston has its upsides and downsides, but it has comparatively little to do with the sprawl. The sprawl is mostly a result of the manner by which Houston chose to grow: by annexing neighboring municipalities that were growing quickest to gobble up their tax dollars.

And even for all that famous sprawl, Houston is seeing the same sort of urban in-fill that every other major US metro area is seeing... it just has a lot more land to fill before it achieves similar density.


Actually, it would seem that San Francisco's (population density 18,187/sq mi (7,022/km2)) zoning laws worked much better than Houston's lack thereof (population density (3,662/sq mi (1,414/km2)).

However, the real problem is that San Francisco is water locked on three sides and boundary locked on the fourth. It has no way of adding housing that doesn't offend some entrenched interest.


>Shouldn't there be propositions for denser zoning, land reclamation, or other measures that would increase the SF housing stock?

What, and hurt profit margins?


If you can build up, you can rent out to more people..


Prop I is just a moratorium in the mission right? Doesn't really matter, I think it's a bad idea as well.

However, I think you may find that voters are far more opposed to prop I than prop F. My guess is that if someone supports I, they will almost certainly support F, but not the other way around. Time will tell, though.


I Have Read this Medium Post.

The author makes a great case against Prop F, prop F seems like a totally shitty law and isn't going to fix the housing problem. It sounds like that isn't what the law is about anyway, but there is a great way to fix the housing problem. The argument he seems to allude to in his notes, is that people seem to choose sides based on their sentiment surrounding the current resedential/housing market.

In economics there are 2 forces at the heart of most problems. These are called "supply" and "demand" and they govern price. SF has not been keeping up with it's infrastructure, is a decade behind in new construction, and building new resedential properties will take ~5-10 years to complete. They are not actively building properties that will sufficiently meet demand even now. So this won't go away.

Unfortunately, people who paid a lot for houses have a vested interest in not raising supply, and the amount of regulation surrounding new construction creates massive amounts of friction. It will be interesting to see how this problem get's solved. I agree with the author though:

It is not going to be Prop F.


Of course, California also interferes with the market to discourage selling real estate. Proposition 13 disconnected property tax rates from the value of the property (by capping the increase in assessed value at 2% per year, far below the increase in actual market value).

Which created a massive incentive to hold real estate as long as possible without selling, since the only time the tax rate can reset to being based on market value is at the time of sale.


Proposition 13 didn't do that; the various governments who petulantly refused to adapt their tax regimes to the Prop 13 limits did. The bizarre incentives created by almost 40 years of attempting to strong-arm voters into giving power back to legislatures could be fixed by legislatures without doing anything to Prop 13.


What exactly should they do?


Don't make all of your money from a property tax that does not increase as your costs to provide services increase.

There are options besides property tax for raising tax revenue. City-level local income tax is the first thing that comes to mind.


Are you proposing abolishing property tax? Because nowhere in ubernostrom's post did he talk about city revenues, just about the perverse incentives to land-owners by Prop 13, and those will exist unless property tax is eliminated.


I didn't respond directly to ubernostrom, and my comment doesn't discuss whether prop 13 creates a perverse incentive for landowners in any respect (although: it does).

I'm saying that if you tie your revenue stream (i.e. taxes) to something that is essentially fixed at 1970's levels, but you have to buy things with it in 2015 money, you are going to not have a good time.

You can still keep property tax as part of your revenue stream, but these governments need to diversify. I would personally rather they diversified into income tax than some of the alternatives, such as red light cameras.


Nothing is fixed to 1970s levels. Property taxes get reassessed when there's a sale on the property. How many properties in CA have not changed hands since 1970, ie more than 40 years? Probably none, since that's almost 2 generations of families.


I think you might be surprised. There are a ton of exceptions to reassessment [1]. A notable one is that transfers from parent to child are typically excluded, meaning that you can indeed pass down low property taxes from generation to generation.

Commercial property is also covered under the same rules, and there are ways to keep it from being reassessed [2][3].

Improvements to the property will trigger reassessment, if the changes pass a certain threshold. This incentivizes owners not to improve their property (particularly externally). Look around San Francisco, and you can see the effect this has had (along with other factors like rent control). Anecdotally, I've heard of people replacing one window a year because they didn't want to trigger a reassessment. That is just flat out absurd.

There is a cottage industry dedicated to avoiding property tax reassessment, entirely because of prop 13. This isn't how it works elsewhere in the country. There are other, better solutions out there. However, it is virtually impossible to alter or repeal prop 13 because it was a ballot proposition -- it will outlive all of us.

[1] https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/faqs/changeinownership.htm

[2] http://closetheloophole.com/history

[3] http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert...


Prop 13 is across California, not just San Francisco. You're saying that home sales in CA have been suppressed because of Prop 13? You would be wrong.

There are about 6M housing units available in CA, and about 500k sales per year. That's an entire turnover of inventory in 12 years. Your anecdotal evidence is interesting but wrong.


I did not state that property sales have been suppressed, I said that property tax revenue has been suppressed. My particular anecdote was around property improvement, not sales. And once again, a property sale does not mean that reassessment definitely occurred.

However it is hardly groundbreaking to state that prop 13 has created a "lock in" effect [1][2][3][4].

[1] http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~miwhite/wasi-white-final.pdf

[2] http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/files/2008-19151-1.p...

[3] http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/prop-13-california-housin...

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/realestate/07california.ht...


Yes, actually you did say that property taxes are fixed to the 1970s, which I said was wrong.

Based on the level of home sales and the current median home prices, it's safe to say that there is more than enough turnover to reset property taxes, and the idea that property taxes are fixed to the 1970s, which was your initial statement, is utter nonsense. Linking articles that are 10 years old and from the middle of the housing bust is also nonsense.

No one is talking about prop 13 now because there is more than enough housing turnover across CA, and more than enough hungry home buyers willing to pay whatever price, regardless of the property tax.

And since I know you just skimmed the articles you posted and didn't read it, here's a finding that pretty much talks about today's environment, and it completely invalidates what you are saying about Prop 13:

"Rapidly rising housing prices may also have contributed to reduced tenure by increasing home sales, including speculative home purchases. Low mortgage interest rates over that period may have also increased home sales, especially for first-time home buyers, which in turn, would decrease average tenure."


Sorry that you're so fixated on prop 13 not contributing to any issues with local revenue collection or housing shortfalls. I continue to disagree. Either way though, neither of us are likely to get to express our opinions by voting in our life times.

To your point that "no one is talking about prop 13": a constitutional amendment to modify it was proposed 3 months ago [1]. Obviously that will never go anywhere -- the state can't even pass a balanced budget with regularity. But then, that's the whole problem with propositions, isn't it?

Otherwise, I think that you can rest easy, your point has been made. You prefer to make accusations (article skimming! anecdotes that are anecdotal!) rather than constructive dialogue. Welcome to the Internet, it's full of people you won't get along with.

[1] http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert...


Property taxes are awesome: they do not distort economic activity (if done right), and they are hard to evade (since you can't hide your land).


OK. So then I take it we can agree that they shouldn't be artificially capped for some people because they got here first.


Definitely. Just make property taxes proportional to self-reported value of the property.

(With the catch that you have to sell to any would-be buyer who offers to pay the reported value. Just to keep people honest.)


So you want to increase the tax burden on productive economic activity to benefit people who are just capturing rent. That's a horrible idea.


I don't believe that's what I said. Cities in California have services they are obligated to provide -- police services, for instance. The cost of those services over time has increased proportional to salaries. However, the revenue gathered to pay for those services has only increased proportional to property values -- which are artificially trapped in the 1970's to a large extent.

That is an untenable situation, and it is a large part of California's problem at a local level.


It's basically rent control for property owners. California: The land of rent control.


This is true but in most cases it doesn't matter because your next best alternative is not changed. If you have owned a home for 10 years and want to buy a new home in another area, you will still want to sell your home. If you just moved to CA and want to own a home, you will still want to buy despite prop 13.


> If you have owned a home for 10 years and want to buy a new home in another area, you will still want to sell your home.

Actually, as an outsider looking in, the incentives seem set up such that you'd be far more inclined to rent your existing home than sell it.


Why would you want to be a landlord in SF? Even if its not rent controlled, a bad tenant is going to be a nightmare to get rid of.


I'm sure that it isn't all smelling roses and cashing checks, but rental property in San Francisco is literally a license to print money for many landlords.

Simply by virtue of having owned the property for several decades, you stand to make a significant amount of money from tenants.

Consider someone who has owned a property since the 80's. This person might have paid $600,000 for something valued at double that amount today. Their mortgage (if they even still have one) is $2400/mo, property tax works out to $500/mo, and they can charge $4000/mo for rent.

Lots of people in lots of places around the world rent their properties out for far lower returns.


Someone who owns a house from the 1980s, of which is likely very rare, is getting pretty close to retirement age, and would probably rather sell the house and move away than rent it out. And there will be a very willing buyer waiting to buy it, regardless of the property tax.


Rents are headed straight up and people are desperate for anywhere to live. Its a good gig to be a landlord in SF even if the laws are tenant friendly


This is of course patently false, since the real estate market in CA has gone through the roof, and cities are flush with new property tax money at sky high valuations.

The house we bought was last bought at $150k, and we bought it for 10x this amount. The amount of turnover in real estate in our city in the Bay Area has reached a fevered pitch, so the cities are actually benefiting from more tax revenues.


Wow:

This is where it’s clear the authors overreached and created a toxic spill waiting to happen.

If the City finds you did indeed host someone or assisted someone else as such, even for one night, then the City can take action against you.

But then it gets absolutely bonkers. If you didn’t host anyone, or it was just your Aunt Rose visiting for the weekend, then your cranky neighbor can still sue you anyway, and the City has to help them do it. And we’re not just talking about filing suit so the City can collect its fines and fees, but filing for “special damages” that the neighbors get to keep for themselves.

This sounds incredibly bad.


[flagged]


If by "this community" you mean HN, you're as much a part of it as anyone else. Everyone here is required to post civilly and substantively, or not at all. Please re-read the site guidelines and follow them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html


It would be helpful if you could clarify the misunderstanding, then. How is the author's interpretation of the proposed legislation incorrect?


It's right there in the proposed sec.41A.5(f)

If no violation has occurred and the complaint was dismissed, the "Interested Party" may sue, and if prevailing "shall be entitled to an award of actual damages, attorneys fees and costs and special damages of not less than $250 and not more than $1,000 per violation per day."

What part isn't true?


It's a bit overblown. Civil lawsuits cost money to prosecute, so they're unlikely to be pursued unless there's a good chance of winning.


Have you ever lived in a community with an HOA? Some of the people there take finding violations, infractions, and actionable offenses as their second job, and will not hesitate to sue you just because. So enabling these people by requiring the city to help them sue is like dumping a tanker full of kerosene on a forest fire.


No doubt the point of the law is to tap into community activism. But it's different from suing your neighbor over the hedge you don't like. Prop F is much more objective and substantive about what constitutes a violation than your typical HOA covenant: illegal hosting. Neighbors and their legal teams are unlikely to sue over that unless they think they can really prove a violation.


Yes, but by setting a minimum damage amount of $250/night, you've removed the most difficult aspect of a case like this. It would be incredibly difficult to prove that a neighbor's having guest caused a high dollar amount of damages. Without needing to do that, all the person pursuing the case needs to show is that the law was violated and they'll be eligible for potentially thousands of dollars in damages. That creates a huge incentive to pursue cases like this, even when the damages sustained are negligible.


> all the person pursuing the case needs to show is that the law was violated

I think you're misunderstanding the point of the proposition a little bit. It's not just about recovering direct damages to neighbors (e.g. noise). It's about using incentives to crowdsource enforcement that the city doesn't have the resources to do.


You don't have to have a good chance of winning to make money - most civil lawsuits are settled out of court.

You can be guaranteed that that there will be lawyers taking up cases (possibly on contingency) for the most frivolous of claims and offering to settle for a few grand (much less than it would cost to defend the case).


I wasn't really thinking of the "you could get sued" angle so much as the "you could get sued BECAUSE you let your Aunt visit for the weekend" angle. It sounds like the law basically outlaws having family come visit, among other things. It sounds just fucking crazy to me.

Though I don't live in SF and likely never will, so I guess if SF wants to get even crazier than it already is, it can. I have no power to vote in city level stuff in SF.


It looks like it only outlaws paid rentals. I don't see anything saying otherwise, the aunt line is supposed to be something that is legal, but can be misinterpreted.


I realize that.

There is a famous story of the old west. Unfortunately, I can't remember names at the moment to even google it, but supposedly some saddles were stolen and someone was hired to get them back. He ran around shooting people on the brand of saddles that had been stolen. More saddles were returned to the seller than had been stolen. Even people who had actually purchased one no longer wanted to be seen sitting on one.

So I realize the law does not technically make it illegal to have your aunt visit. But if the effect is that you might get sued, the de facto outcome might be that you stop letting relatives come visit if you live in SF because the risk involved in doing something completely legal is nonetheless too high.


This is a really laudable write-up, whether or not you agree with prop F. The problem of "sounds good in principle" propositions that are terribly or deceptively drafted is one that makes every California election a minefield.


That's why a strangely sound election strategy is to just vote no on every proposition. Most of them have heavy corporate sponsorship and are written to deceive the public.


I don't know why this guy is being downvoted. I've heard the exact same thing from many friends of mine who have or still do live in SF: just vote no on all of them, and force the city to do it's job by legislating the usual way.


Downvotes on HN are... strange and capricious. Things that are downvoted for no apparent reason do tend to get voted back up, though.

(I wish there was a meta.n.y.c where we could discuss things like this. Alas.)


I find the proposition system extremely aggravating. Even for propositions that I largely or wholly agree with I have to ask myself: does this deserve to be an amendment of the state constitution or city charter? That's the power that voter initiatives essentially have, after all.

When you think about it that way, they almost all look pretty ridiculous. Should the San Francisco city charter have an amendment about whether one particular construction project in 2014 can be built at a certain height? Should we have a ballot initiative every time a new building needs to be built?

That might make sense in some alternate reality if we lived in a direct democracy with routine voting and people actually informed themselves about the issues they were deciding. I think it's pretty safe to say that we aren't living in that world today.


And even if you are willing to put in the time to read some props and convince yourself they're a good idea, vote no on all the ones you can't be bothered to research.


It's worse than that. The California government is in a long-term constitutional crisis precisely because of the proposition system. The legislative burden from politicized, poorly written, un-repealable propositions paralyzes the state and local governments and budgets, and is the tyranny of the majority embodied. It starts with prop 13 and goes downhill from there. The only thing that will fix it is a constitutional convention and removal of the proposition process.


It all comes back to Proposition 13, which crippled local governments.


Imagine how many people who've owned their homes for years would be forced to sell and move elsewhere in San Francisco if prop 13 were repealed.


Prop. 13 could be fixed without forcing people out of their homes.

Instead of capping the tax, we should cap the amount of the tax that actually has to be paid in a year in which the property does not change hands. That number could be limited according to the Prop. 13 formula; the city or county would receive a lien for the difference, that lien not becoming due until the property does change hands.

This wouldn't change anyone's cash flow until the property is sold, at which time the city or county would receive the unpaid amount out of the sale. The unpaid amount will be a fraction of the amount by which the property appreciated (or if its value fell, the unpaid amount will be zero), so this will be relatively painless.

I've read that this has been done somewhere, though I don't recall where. It's clearly possible. No one is forced to sell, and the localities still get their tax money.


If I am reading this idea correctly, this would create some perverse incentives to hold onto property that has appreciated in value, particularly the longer the property has been held. If the "missing" tax amount gets tacked onto the lien every year, but only comes due when the property is sold, why would you ever sell? You'd keep locked into your pre-existing low tax rates, and lease out the property for income, or use it as an asset, or whatever, but you wouldn't sell it. You would go through elaborate legal gyrations to find loopholes that would allow you to pass on the property to your descendants without it being a sale, so that the lump-sum back-taxes collection isn't triggered. So the housing supply largely freezes, and prices go up higher.


Let's look at some numbers. If you own a property for 10 years, during which time it doubles in value -- let's say it does that at the steady rate of 7.2% per year -- and your property tax rate is 1%, and the increase in your payments is capped at 2% per year, the amount of unpaid tax due when you sell the property is about 3% of your gain on the property. If you held it for 20 years, during which it continued to appreciate at the same rate, the unpaid tax due would be a little under 6% of your gain. If you held it for 30 years, during which it doubled in value again, the unpaid tax due would be about 8% of your gain.

Consider that the standard commission paid to the listing agent when you sell a property is 6% of the sale price, and you'll see that these amounts are not significant disincentives to selling.


Okay, let's just remove prop 13 protections for commercial property. That's at least a start. This isn't an all-or-nothing thing.


Imagine a state where decisions about local concerns are handled by local government, rather than getting kicked up to the statehouse.


Is that a bad thing?


AirBnB needs to step up and suggest what it thinks are some of the right ways to handle this. The fact is, many/most leases and HOAs forbid short term rentals, and for good reasons. As well, many areas are zoned non-commercial, again for good reasons.

But people certainly should have some degree of autonomy when it comes to their personal property. The question is, what is it?

What I never understood is why short term rental regulations aren't modeled more closely off BnB laws than hotel laws. Many jurisdictions have BnB laws and AirBnBs obviously compare much more closely to BnBs. BnBs typically have lighter regulation, different taxes, are frequently in residential areas, etc.


> But people certainly should have some degree of autonomy when it comes to their personal property. The question is, what is it?

That is why we elect people. To answer these kinds of hard questions.

> What I never understood is why short term rental regulations aren't modeled more closely off BnB laws than hotel laws.

Part of the whole kerfuffle is because AirBnB was encouraging people to break the laws that actually existed.

For example, if I buy a house in an area zoned "residential", I don't expect to have someone next to me running different people in an out every week as part of AirBnB. If you want to do that you should have to be zoned "commercial", thanks. Then, we'll get to discuss this at the next council meeting when you ask for a zoning exemption. If it's your hunting lodge, probably nobody is going to object. If it's right next to the elementary school, people are probably going to complain. etc.


The heart of your argument is that there is some clear distinction between residential and commercial which doesn't actually exist. Residential properties have always been used for profit - its called an apartment. These visitors are renting in a residential area precisely because they want a residential experience.

The "burden" on your neighbors from short-term visitors is highly overblown. What actual impact on the elementary school is short-term visitors going to have? Is their driving to & from the home ever so more frequent than a full-time occupant? Do you think they are having rowdy parties despite self-selecting to stay in a residential neighborhood? Or that they would be a pedophile (which federal laws already ban from staying within a short distance from an elementary school?)


"The heart of your argument is that there is some clear distinction between residential and commercial which doesn't actually exist. Residential properties have always been used for profit - its called an apartment."

That's a completely different situation, and not at all relevant to this conversation.

"These visitors are renting in a residential area precisely because they want a residential experience."

And I want a pony. Why should I care what they want?

"The "burden" on your neighbors from short-term visitors is highly overblown."

You're gonna have to prove that.


What is the burden of short-term visitors? I've heard that said before, but I've never heard any actual examples of problems that occur from short-term visitors that aren't present with long-term residents.


Bedbugs are one of the big ones that I have heard reported where landlords had to pump a lot of money in. The risk obviously goes up linearly with the number of unique visitors. A very genuine problem when one tenant of a multi-unit decides to do AirBnB.

As for detached dwellings? If you're hosting out of country people, how do I, as your neighbor, prosecute them if they damage my property (bust a fence, hit my car, swim in my pool)?

I can keep going, but our current laws were set up with the recognition that transiency does represent a risk. Clearly people DO recognize this as a risk or it wouldn't be explicitly banned by so many HOA agreements.


The fact that something is banned by HOA agreements hardly proves its risky or even seen as such. I've seen many HOA agreements that ban painting your house a non-approved color.

I'm not sure I follow your comment about detached dwellings and foreign visitors. The biggest issue will be identifying who harmed your property which will be significantly easier if your neighbor used Airbnb as their identification will be on file. Whereas if they just drove by and damaged your property or stayed at your neighbors house through a less formal rental system that will never be as well regulated (Craigslist, local word of mouth, etc.) or a hotel a mile away then it would be much harder to track them down.


You can prosecute the owner of the property, and no reasonable court would deny you on that.

> Clearly people DO recognize this as a risk or it wouldn't be explicitly banned by so many HOA agreements.

That's circular reasoning - we ban it in HOA agreements because it's dangerous, and it's dangerous because look - it's banned in HOA agreements!


Here's one scenario. A family, with two kids, lives in a single family house in a neighborhood zoned for single families. A house on the block goes on the market.

Several families, with children around the same as the neighbors, tour and bid on the property. However, an enterprising person (who doesn't need the bedrooms for kids) uses the anticipated income from airbnb rentals (not to mention the absence of childcare costs) to outbid all those families. The SFR zoned house, on a SFR zoned block, is now a hotel, for all practical purposes. Guess the kids will have to find neighborhood friends somewhere else.

The visitors are quiet, polite. So, no harm no foul?

I understand that this scenario can occur in the absence of airbnb or even short term rentals(plenty of people rent out rooms in their houses), but there's an order of magnitude difference here. Also, I still see more benefit to this if these are permanent, long term rentals. They may be students who need a place to live, long term residents who need a place to live. I also think that unregulated and unresticted[1] airbnb makes this scenario much more likely (which is one reason why the company is so profitable, it has made it much easier to rent out "spare" bedrooms, creating a new market).

[1] properly regulated airbnb, which allows someone to rent out their house while they are on vacation, now and then, would not cause any of this harm.


Owners give a crap. Long term renters less so. Short term renters not at all.


> That is why we elect people. To answer these kinds of hard questions.

In California, its arguable that the premise of the model of government we have (as articulated in the State Constitution) is more that we elect people to exercise legislative power in the regular case not because we have other things to do on a day-to-day basis, but that the people reserve superceding legislative powers of initiative and referendum specifically because we don't think that the people we hire to deal with the day-to-day drudgery of dealing with legislation are necessarily any better or more trustworthy when it comes to answering the tough questions.


Indeed. In a situation where the people who have been elected operate in a way that benefits corporations or special interests rather than the people who have elected them, there has to be some way for the people to override the decisions. That's what the referendum process is for.

Similarly, a private right of action is meant to deal with situations when the city isn't willing to act. The article makes valid points about the downsides of this, but it's also an accountability mechanism. Should it apply in this case? Seems like a good question for the voters.


> That is why we elect people. To answer these kinds of hard questions.

Yes, and the people we elected actually already answered this question wrt short-term rentals. Propositions like this one undermine this process.

How many people do you think voting for Prop F will have read it?


There are already laws regarding any objectionable behavior that the AirBnB transient renters might engage in. If they are being loud and obnoxious and partying at illegal hours, call the cops and put in a noise complaint. If they are parked illegally, they can get ticketed by zealous meter-people like the rest of us.

Rental agreements often have clauses barring subletting. If you are a landlord and object to a tenant subletting on AirBnB, that's a violation of the terms of the lease, and you can threaten eviction. I would imagine it's obscenely Byzantine to actually get someone evicted, even with good cause and when they are in breach of contract in SF, though.

I'm glad I live in a relatively unregulated area where people mostly mind their own business and aren't jackasses.


I'm not sure why you are placing onus to fix it on AirBnB. The assumption somehow seems to be that any little stupid local regulation, even if obviously bought and paid for by very specific interests in most transparently corrupt way, is sacred and businesses have absolute moral obligation to abide by it. I have no idea where that comes from. Rather, it should be the burden of local government to find solution that is acceptable both for residents and businesses and does not do unnecessary harm.

It's one thing to zone non-commercial (which has very little to do with individual short-term rentals) and another ban short term rentals altogether.


Serious question: has subterranean housing ever been considered for SF? If you can't build out or up, may as well build under.

Feasibility aside, the only problem I see is it'd create a literal underclass—as opposed to the proverbial one that exists now as a result of absurd rent prices.


It's either bedrock you'd have to drill through, or sand. I don't think it's a good place to have underground dwelling.


> If you can't build out or up, may as well build under.

You can only not build up because of regulation. Building under probably comes with regulation, too.


Going down more than a floor gets stupidly expensive. The underclass would be the ones on the surface.


Or you can just live outside of San Francisco, and take 20 min train :)


>I have been a part-time homesharer

You have not. You are a rentier. You are running a business. Please stop this violence against the English language.

I use hospitality exchange websites to actually share my home, that is offer my home as a place to stay free of charge. What people do on AirBnB, VRBO, and others is not sharing, it's commerce, and we have different words for describing that.

Appropriating the language of mutual aid and generosity to describe a business transaction is insulting. Please stop it.


Yeah I agree that abuse of "sharing" as a term is silly. I'm no longer a software designer. I'm a "Software Design Knowledge Sharer".


Absolutely agree. He tipped his hand a little there. It's clear at the end he may be biased against the proposition for personal reasons. He cites very valid reasons against the proposition, but these are points for adjustment in the proposal down the road. Something like this will pass sooner or later in one form or another. The basic gist of the proposition will be approved by some means sooner or later.


If you had to divide the world into people who are pro or anti airbnb then I am anti-airbnb. But prop F is horrible beyond belief.


Why would you say you are anti-airbnb? Just curious if it's their business practices, renters themselves, or what. I've only had positive experiences with airbnb.


Exploitation of marginal utility is fundamentally disconcerting, and it should be -- as tech people, we could think of it as being paid for time spent in a chair, or lines of code. It exploits an inefficiency which exists because of an absolute measurement that mis-assesses the situation.

In the case of housing, at the basic level, we pay a monthly rate in order to have a place to sleep (and maybe live & eat). But embedded in our rules and laws are assumptions about how that works, and one of those core assumptions is stability (that is, people who make this exchange of money for housing will remain in the housing for longer spans). Our noise ordinances are based on long timelines for investigation, monitoring, and enforcement because they embed the assumption of stable tenancy. Our building codes assume certain occupancies and our maintenance schedules assume certain rates of wear. Our building security practices assume that people with the keys have an invested interest in restricting access.

These assumptions may or may not be desirable, but they exist, and because of their existence renting an apartment (I have different feelings regarding owned single-family dwellings) for short-term AirBnB-style rentals violates not only the social contract with neighbors, but the unwritten contract involving a number of ambient practices with potentially negative consequences.

I'm not 100% against short-term subletting, and I'm certainly not against having relatives stay over, for example. But this is a classic example of both money and automation fundamentally changing an existing practice -- people are "doing the same thing", but at a scale and in a way that results in an emergent difference.


wadr why is any of this "bad". I agree 100% with everything you said about built in assumptions in our laws yet I come to the opposite conclusion that such laws ought to be diminished. IMO the assumption of stability creates a de facto serfdom in which people are tied to the land and don't even realize it. If the best opportunity of your life suddenly popped up half way around the globe, how fast can you be on a plane? For me the answer is "next flight out".

I do not mean to say that having a permanent traditional life is less desirable to some people. I simply think that the laws of our land should respect freedom of choice and thus not bias any particular lifestyle. I think it is especially egregious to have laws telling people what they can and cannot do with their own home in a manner that has no tangible effect on their neighbors. I find it dubious (and empirically unsupported) that the presence of airbnb guests has any measurable effect on any neighborhood.


This is a (slightly updated) repost of an earlier response of mine on this topic.

Everyone has an opinion about airbnb. Here's my big worry.

San Francisco's population of children has plummeted in my lifetime (I grew up in SF in the 70s). In this time, I think it has gone from about 22% to a current rate of 14% or so. I guess it's just important to me that SF continue to be a place people are from, rather than a place where young people move prior to having families, or (increasingly) a place where empty nesters move and enjoy the city after having families.

Here's the thing, I consider this to be a very economically vulnerable stretch of life. I have two kids, in SFUSD, and I'm starting to see just how colossal a disadvantage a family with two kids would be in a bidding war against someone who intends to put the extra bedrooms in a SFH or a 3 bedroom apartment on airbnb instead.

It's no secret that housing is in short supply in SF, and that the price of a house or apartment in SF reflects what the highest bidder is able to pay. It's also probably not surprising that kids are very expensive. A two income family (pretty tough to live in SF if you aren't) means daycare - and daycare costs, conservatively, over $2,000 a month per kid. Even if they're in SFUSD ("free"), after care at school with run you about $4,000 a year per kid, and summer camps will add another $3000 or so per kid, if you're doing things the inexpensive way.

Now, imagine that a family with two kids now has to compete against a bidder who plans to put the "spare" bedrooms on airbnb, and who factors that into the bid. The family has two very expensive, non-revenue generating children. The airbnb buyer has a massive advantage here, and I see it as another factor that could potentially put massive new pressures on an already collapsing population of families with children. It could also reduce turnover - someone who no longer needs the extra bedrooms and might have in the past downsized (opening up a SFH for a new family) now rents the bedrooms out full time on airbnb.

Sure, these problems could have existed with permanent, long term tenants, but I do think that it was less likely. Airbnb definitely makes it far easier and more profitable to do this - this is one big reason why the company is so large and profitable itself. Is this happening? I don't know, I don't have the data. Until then, it's just a fear, though not (in my opinion, obviously) an unfounded one. But if they company won't open up the data and recognize the possible danger, my guess is that the public will support strict regulations.


I'm curious what you think of all the young people who move into the city after college and become roommates with one another. I've lived with people who make $50,000 per year, and with people who make 2 or 3 times that much. Because studios and one-bedrooms have become so expensive, we've started renting spaces with anywhere from 2 to 6 bedrooms. Having 6 adults who can afford to collectively pay $9000+ a month bidding against you has got to be almost as much fun as bidding against someone who's going to Airbnb the extra rooms, but at the end of the day, we all need somewhere to live.


Having 6 adults who can afford to collectively pay $9000+ a month bidding against you

very rare.

bidding against someone who's going to Airbnb the extra rooms

increasingly common.


Personally, all my friends with roommates are in 4-6 bedroom apartments, and $1500 per room is not uncommon. I know these are anecdotes that aren't necessarily representative of the city, but given the prevalence of both high-paying jobs for young people and roommate-situations here, I don't feel like it's that uncommon.


I'm not specifically anti-Airbnb, but I'm anti "disruption is euphemism for just ignoring the law". It is common with companies like Uber, Airbnb, and the most recent uproar is over DraftKings and FanDuel. These companies have a disregard for the law as part of their business model and that rubs me the wrong way.


There is a specific, long-standing exception in Federal gambling laws for what DraftKings and FanDuel is doing. They're not ignoring or even bending the law.

The weasel-wording they use in their ads is to get around TV network (and sports league) squeamishness about running ads for sports betting.


There might be a federal exception for most of their games, but the exception might not apply to all of their games. There are also several states where their games are pretty clearly illegal and these companies are just operating there until they either get shutdown or get enough lobbying power to push through their own exceptions.


I also have had only positive experiences with Airbnb, though I've only stayed in "whole apartment" listings. Maybe the OP had some negative experiences with a host they stayed with?


i'm anti-airbnb. i prefer to stay in hotels or professionally managed vacation rental units.

for example, there's absolutely ZERO chance a hotel will cancel your room on you 12 hours before you show up in europe.


Clearly you've never showed up at a hotel that's full despite having a reservation. I have.


> there's absolutely ZERO chance a hotel will cancel your room on you 12 hours before you show up in europe.

wrong


It sounds like you personally prefer not to stay in an AirBnB. That's fine. I likewise prefer hotels to AirBnBs.

But why are you anti-airbnb?


Not in Europe, but I've had it happen twice in the US. Once in Dallas, once in Avalon on Catalina Island. (That one was, "Um, sorry, we only have you booked for one night, and we don't have any openings for the second night.")


Exactly that has happened to me probably half a dozen times


I can't even possibly fathom any reason to be either pro or anti airbnb. It's like being pro- or anti- fuchsia, to me.

Could you explain why you don't like airbnb? Did the CEO kick you in the puppies, or something?


> can't even possibly fathom any reason to be either pro or anti airbnb.

How about--because I find the serfitude economy ineffective outside areas that are already well-served through other mechanisms.

Most of these middlemen are actively interfering in the most profitable cities and areas while ignoring those places where they would actively be useful because they are less profitable.

People would find AirBnB, Uber, et al. much less distasteful if they weren't interfering in dense cities where there is existing infrastructure and were instead focusing on areas that are underserved and would welcome them very much. (For an AirBnB example see: Kittanning, PA--almost nothing in spite of the fact that there are no hotels--heaven help you if you need a hotel while helping with a sick relative in that area during graduation season, leaf viewing season, or the start of hunting season--even normal times in winter are difficult because the hotels have quite a driving distance in bad weather).

Add in the fact that these same companies are taking a middleman cut of money in return for pushing all of the risks onto individuals and externalizing the costs onto the general public.

Top it off with the fact that said middleman generally knows that the end users are actively flouting the law.


I'm not clear how it is Airbnb's fault if they don't have much availability in Kittanning, PA (population 4000). I found two places for rent there which honestly seems pretty decent. The median age is 40 in that area so it doesn't surprise me that Airbnb didn't catch on as quickly there as Brooklyn. You also underestimate the degree to which word of mouth helps two-sided marketplaces spread in urban areas.

As for the claim that "these companies" are "pushing all of the risks onto individuals", I would cite the $1,000,000 insurance policy that Airbnb provides the host to take the risk off of them: https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee


> I'm not clear how it is Airbnb's fault if they don't have much availability in Kittanning, PA (population 4000).

It's not their fault. However, AirBnB, Uber and all the other serfitude economy ilk would get a lot less static if the at least tried to incentivize people in order to serve these kinds of underserved areas. Instead, they're trying to elbow their way into the already well-served markets--often while ignoring the law.

> As for the claim that "these companies" are "pushing all of the risks onto individuals", I would cite the $1,000,000 insurance policy that Airbnb provides

Did you read the page you linked? Did you note that it doesn't cover "personal liability"? Which is the whole reason you would likely need $1,000,000 in insurance? And I guarantee that your personal liability insurance won't cover AirBnB rentals.

Given the size of pool and statistics that AirBnB has, the fact that AirBnB doesn't just insure everybody tells me exactly what I need to know. I trust AirBnB's actuaries, and those actuaries have basically said "unprofitable if we cover everybody properly".

So, yeah, my point still stands about "pushing all of the risks onto individuals". These companies are masters of the "$1 MEEEEELLLYON DOLLARS" while burying the important asterisk "*it doesn't actually apply to anything you'd need help for" in the quiet fine print.


What's AirBnB going to do, go into every small town in the country and try to recruit people into their service? How would that be successful without prior successes in larger, more fluid markets, to grow a reputation, and, just as importantly, raise the money from investors to support those operations.

I think its a simple numbers thing. Lets say one household in Kittanning is interested in working with AirBnB. For the sake of argument and easy numbers, let's say a household is the platonic 4 people, that's 0.1% of the population. In New York, assuming the same percentage of people that would be willing to be AirBnB rentals and the same household size, that's almost 8500 possible units available for rent.


Going from 0 hotels to 2 AirBnBs sounds like a massive improvement to me.

>serfitude economy

Really? That's a fine description for the terrible 'contractor' jobs, but it doesn't fit renting a room at all. AirBnB makes their hosts less serf-y, with a completely different set of externalities.


It's more like being pro or con U2 or bee stings. How could you not have an opinion?

Personally, I think AirBnB has not done a very good job helping communities figure out what the best situation should be. Many/most leases and HOAs forbid short-term leases for very good reason and yet AirBnB turns an eye. And for people who own their residences, many areas are zoned non-commercial, again for very good reasons, and AirBnB turns an eye. Prop F looks terrible but if it somehow manages to pass, AirBnB has no one to blame but itself for not participating constructively in a reasonable solution.


I find it very easy to not have an opinion. Whether my neighbor wants to rent out part of his property via airbnb, craigslist, or not at all makes no difference to me. It does not affect my quality of life, does not interfere with my enjoyment of my own property, and is a private transaction among 3 (or more) parties of which I am not one. I just don't care, at all. That doesn't mean that his tenants might not cause me problems, but in that case I will deal with the tenants themselves and/or my neighbor concerning the actual problem. Such things have nothing to do with airbnb and can and do happen regardless of whether tenants are short- or long-term (or the owners themselves).

People who are either pro-airbnb because they feel it makes some kind of political or economic statement or places them into some kind of club they like, or are anti-airbnb because they are busybodies and like to find things to be outraged over or similarly feel that being so places them in a club they like, find it impossible to imagine having no opinion of airbnb. Personally, I find it impossible to imagine myself in either of those camps. To each of us the limits of our own imagination, I suppose.


Some towns don't have noise ordinances. Thus, lets assume someone rents out their house. The renters hire a band with a powerful PA system, and play from dusk til dawn. How will you deal with the tenants? You have precisely zero recourse, because they aren't breaking any laws.

Isn't it obvious that these situations are far more likely to happen with short term tenancies than people who rent for a year, or own? It's similar to a mob mentality. "I'll be gone tomorrow." vs "I'll have to deal with my neighbors for the next X years".

These situations have unequivocally become more frequent as a direct result of the existence of Airbnb.

Having an opinion about a company that has streamlined the process for your neighbors to create unsafe or otherwise undesirable conditions in your neighborhood is pretty rational behavior, and not the exclusive domain of your fringe strawmen.


I have a neighbor (he was here before me) who gets drunk about every weekend and does exactly that. We do have noise ordinances. The police never bothers to show up.

How can I also blame this on AirBnB and possibly extort them for large amounts of money? /s


Seems to me that your complaint is about a lack of noise ordinances (which does not apply to SF, the subject of this article), a matter that should be fairly easy to correct and much less controversial than this whole airbnb kerfuffle.

I don't think short-term tenants are any more likely than long-term tenants or owners to be terrible neighbors; I've seen some awful examples of both. Unfortunately, people who are inconsiderate jerks are going to be lousy neighbors regardless of how they came to occupy the premises. Laying blame for a tenant's inconsiderate behavior at the feet of a particular broker is absurd; you may as well ban truckers from entering your city because they might deliver lead-based paint. If airbnb went away, someone else would fill the niche; there's obviously plenty of demand for short-term rental broking. And you're always going to have to deal with bad neighbors -- often of the much more permanent variety. It would be a lot more constructive to think about the behavior you want to prohibit than tertiary factors like who arranged for a lease or how many days it was for. The whole point of inconsiderate jerks -- and if you'd ever had one for a neighbor you would know this -- is that they don't care what you think! They're not thinking "gee, I'd better not be such an asshole, because I'm going to be living next to this guy for years!". They're thinking "I like cranking my death metal to 11 at 3am and there's no law against it so they can suck it." That is, if they're even aware of your existence at all. Because that's the kind of people they are. What's the worst you're going to do, not lend them your lawnmower?

Seriously, I don't care if airbnb succeeds or fails. They don't pay me, I don't own their stock, and I don't pretend that they're making the world a better place or any of that tripe. They're just one more private corporation that wants to make a buck, and they seem to have found a much better way to serve a particular market than the dozens of other substantially indistinguishable competitors. Good for them. If it turns out that the only people who lease short-term rentals are inconsiderate jerks, then airbnb won't be doing much business once those inconsiderate jerks are sitting in jails. The anti-airbnb crowd seems to be shooting the messenger, while the pro-airbnb crowd seems to be elevating a glorified classified-ad publisher to sainthood for doing nothing more interesting than connecting willing buyers and sellers. Everyone needs to get over it and focus instead on what matters. This company just isn't interesting enough to justify having a strong opinion about it.


No contortion of logic allows you to escape the fact that Airbnb has vastly increased the number of people renting out homes and apartments. The demand for short term vacation rentals certainly existed previously. Airbnb lowered the barriers to entry for a huge volume of new supply, private primary residences. The short term residential rental market simply did not exist at anything close to the current volume before Airbnb. It is an undeniable cause and effect relationship. So saying that blaming Airbnb for problems stemming from short term residential rentals is "shooting the messenger" is more than a little intellectually dishonest.


I'm not contorting anything. I'm saying that whether there are 50 or 5 million short-term rentals is irrelevant, and you should stop looking for a convenient corporation to attack and start solving a problem that existed long before it was founded... and will exist long after it perishes.


You are being willfully ignorant of basic logic. The high number of short term residential rentals _is the problem_. Airbnb exclusively facilitated the overwhelming majority of these short term rentals. Ergo, Airbnb created this problem. Due to the nature of cause and effect, the problem did not exist before it was created by Airbnb. Being the creator of the problem makes them the correct entity to attack.


We'll have to agree to disagree. To me, bad neighbor behavior is the problem, and I've seen nothing here to make me change my mind.


If one of your neighbors is renting their house short term on a regular basis, you all of the sudden have a constant flow of new neighbors. The larger pool of neighbors increases the likelihood of bad neighbors. If other permanent neighbors see the original neighbor is doing good business, they may start renting their house out, further increasing your likelihood of bad neighbors. I realize that minds are never changed this far down a comment chain, but certainly you have to appreciate that Airbnb increases the cumulative number of people in areas where there service is used. Given a normal distribution of people, increased numbers of people results in increased numbers of bad actors.


Have you ever owned a residence? For starters, some banks won't even lend on a property that has too high a percentage of renters. And who wants to have new strangers roaming around the neighborhood all the time?


> Have you ever owned a residence?

Yes. Do you even lift?

This article is about SF, which is a city. Most of the busybodies who get up in arms about airbnb are residents of cities as well. Cities are densely populated places with large numbers of tenants per unit area, high residential turnover rates, and lots of tourists. "New strangers roaming around" is just a fact of life, regardless of whether a particular rental broker is in business. If you don't like that, you would probably be better off living in a rural area where you could easily afford a large parcel of land from which others can be excluded. There are plenty of places where you could afford 160 acres of timberland and a very nice house for less than a 2-bedroom TIC in SF. You'd probably average one new neighbor per decade, none closer than half a mile away, and could easily go years without seeing another human if that's what you prefer. That's just not what cities are about.


Lift?

In dense areas, the solution is pretty easy and widespread: HOAs and landlords forbid it. No one in multi-unit dwellings wants a steady stream of strangers.

It's the less dense neighborhoods where residents resent renters, much less short-term renters.


> Lift?

You asked if I've ever owned a residence. This sounded an awful lot to me like the classic trolly put-down "do you even lift?". See http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-you-even-lift. I don't care if you lift weights or if you've ever owned a residence; I just think your response to my comment was pointless and obnoxious. Try addressing the points in my argument instead of my (dubious?) credentials.


I, for one, am absolutely sick and tired of companies thinking it's "disruptive" to ignore the law. Why do they think they're so special?


reading the proposition would help, but that's beside the point ain't it?

Someone really needed to let us know how fantastic things are when the gubmint gets out of the way. Got it.


Please stop posting uncivil comments to Hacker News.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281311 and marked it off-topic.


[dead]


> Get over your self satisfied prejudices and actually think for a minute

> tells me all i need to know of your cognitive powers

We've banned this account for breaking the HN guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Cool dude, continue your BS Mod policy that allows group think and personal insults but ban the account that points out your double standard.


Edit: Thread parent lost due to moderator detach: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281311

Houston also has four freakin' beltways (I610, TX 8, TX 6, and TX 99).

Comparing a city that is the poster child for "sprawl" with a chunk of real estate that is more than a little landfill and locked on 3 sides with water is more than a little disingenuous.

Houston's second beltway would encircle San Mateo, some of Oakland, and Sausalito if transplanted to San Fransico.

If transplanted to San Francisco, Houston's fourth beltway (TX 99--currently under construction) would encompass almost all of San Pablo bay, Walnut Creek (maybe even as far as Concord), easily all of Oakland, Hayward, and Redwood City. And be more than 50% underwater.

The differences are more than the "gubmint reg-you-lashion" my good man.


Your comments are breaking the site guidelines. Please comment civilly and substantively or not at all.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281311 and marked it off-topic.


The density of Brooklyn is almost double San Francisco, and I wouldn't consider Brooklyn a very high rise city.


> The density of Brooklyn is almost double San Francisco, and I wouldn't consider Brooklyn a very high rise city.

What are you smoking? I want some of that.

Brooklyn has a density of 35,369.1 people per square mile.

That would make it the 5th most dense city in the US. Behind only other New York areas. It would even put it in the top 10 in density for Europe.

What the hell DO you consider a dense city?


"dense" and "high-rise" are not the same thing.

And "not very high rise" is more like "medium-rise", not "low-rise".


Downvoting because you can't refute inconvenient facts? Nice.


[deleted]


Not exactly low-rise: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Dtown_Bk...

Edit: fixed bad link


You have it exactly backwards. The density of SF is almost double Brooklyn. 18k/mi^2 vs 10k/mi^2


[deleted]



Careful, I think the per km^2 numbers are getting conflated with the per mi^2 numbers.


From your second link -

"There are about 34,916 people per square mile in Brooklyn"


It also says explicitly that there are about 10,000 people per square mile elsewhere in the same page.


San Fransisco is no where near the top when you measure population density, other cities can fit more people in less space, San Francisco is not unique, it simply represents the failure of local laws.

Also, what's with constant 'gub' slurs, are people on HN little children who must insult people who are willing to criticize inept policy makers?


> San Fransisco is no where near the top when you measure population density, other cities can fit more people in less space, San Francisco is not unique, it simply represents the failure of local laws.

Actually, you are factually wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

San Francisco is only behind New York, Los Angeles, and Miami in density. It's probably in or close to the top 20 in Europe.

Sure, none of our cities compares to anything in Asia. We also don't seem to like to live that dense.

> Also, what's with constant 'gub' slurs, are people on HN little children who must insult people who are willing to criticize inept policy makers?

Invoking a lack of regulations as proof of success when the factual metrics (Houston's population density is ridiculously, laughably low) easily refute said statement is going to provoke a response appropriate for someone who clearly is impervious to fact.


It's really quite remarkable that you can know so little about something, yet be so judgmental about it at the same time. Go 'mericuh!

Prop I is a temporary (18 month) moratorium in one neighborhood (the Mission), for only a limited subset of projects, coupled with the requirement that the city has to create a "neighborbood stabilization plan" by the end of that period [1].

It is not a "moratorium on building new market-rate housing", as you say.

The idea is that the Mission is undergoing a land-grab by speculators, that poor people are losing (they are), and that the battle will be over by the time a coherent plan is formulated to do anything about it. Whether or not you believe this to be the correct approach, it does nobody any good to mischaracterize it as something that is obviously and painfully stupid.

I realize it's not at all fashionable on HN to point out that life is more complicated than chapter one, paragraph one of a high-school economics textbook...but prop I might actually be a good idea over here in the real world, where actual poor people are being evicted from the only places they can afford in the city, at alarming rates.

[1] http://ballotpedia.org/City_of_San_Francisco_Mission_Distric...


You're characterizing opponents of Prop I as people who have only read the first chapter of an economics textbook, but the city's chief economist, who is well-respected, has a PhD in this, and has taught the subject as a professor at Berkeley, just finished a long, careful review of the proposition, and issued a scathing report concluding that it's a terrible idea.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/City-report-Missi...


> It's really quite remarkable that you can know so little about something, yet be so judgmental about it at the same time. Go 'mericuh!

As I'm sure you know, there is no place on Hacker News for inflammatory attacks against other users.

The commenters who have taken what was a substantive, reasonable thread about an interesting (beyond just local SF politics) subject and turned it into an angry insult match are breaking everything we're trying to achieve in this community. Users who do this disqualify themselves from participating in the discussion.

We've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281057 and marked it off-topic.


Just want to point out that some of us have read the full text of the Proposition, know exactly what it does, and the rationale, and still think it will be completely ineffective.

For example, SF's Chief Economist: http://sfcontroller.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid...


The point of the moratorium is not to affect prices; it's to give the city a chance to come up with a plan that will protect affordable housing in this one neighborhood, without losing the ability to act.

Viewed in that light, this report is a vote for the plan, not against it: it gives a little breathing room, and probably won't affect prices either way. Whether or not it "works" is entirely speculative: someone has to come up with an actual solution in the longer term.

I believe the advocates of this proposition want the city to buy the remaining vacant lots in the Mission, and use them to build affordable housing projects, but I could be wrong about that.


I understand that. It's actually addressed starting on page 26 of the report -- basic conclusion is that a landowner / developer will more likely hold the land until after the moratorium (when it will be even more valuable due to the moratorium) than develop below-market units at a lower price.

I've worked hard to understand both sides of the issue. In practice what I strongly believe will happen is that ~800 market rate units will be delayed for 18 months, nothing else will change and the politicians who pushed this won't be taken to task because they're all terming out and eyeing Sacramento.


The city has found that the temporary moratorium would have no effect on pricing. http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2015/09/long-term-effect-...


Isn't the moratorium there to give the city time to come up with a plan? So by itself it wouldn't have an effect, but whatever the city comes up with should have the effect (whether it does or not depends on which crystal ball you're looking at).


Out of curiosity, what is the actual "alarming rate" of people getting just-cause evicted from their homes? I know that Ellis Act evictions dropped from 2013 to 2014. I'm guessing that the trend held steady. The number of units city-wide is also still in the hundreds, not thousands. That doesn't sound like a crisis.


sorry, tim, but this sounds like a moratorium on building new housing. nobody should support this.


I'm also VERY upset that I cannot downvote this into oblivion. Yet Another NIMBY.


The Sharebetter campaign website mentioned is totally biased, it's true, and it does seem likely that hotel interests are in no small part behind Yes on F. And I have no doubt F contains (perhaps really bad!) flaws.

But this Medium post is also rife with misleading statements and hyperbole, and therefore hypocritical in light of the author's "here's the facts" tone (not a huge surprise since the author earns income from Airbnb, but still annoying):

> (Imagine if we were living under the “MySpace Law” of 2006, eh?)

Hyperbole and strawman; who is calling it the "Airbnb Law"?

> to assist anyone to offer (emphasized twice) > What does “assist” mean? Cleaning a house before guests arrive? Proofreading someone’s listing? Helping a family member find temporary housing? Nobody knows because it’s undefined in the text, even in the lengthy Definitions section. The judge will decide what it means.

Clearly this is referring to the marketplaces and holding them accountable. If I can figure that out, any judge can.

> But wait, there’s more! How do you feel about criminal penalties? ... Six months? (in jail)

The author is a "long-time SF resident" and pretending that an SF judge would want to jail somebody over renting out on Airbnb illegally?

> If you host someone in a room in your home for less than 30 days, you best not miss a quarterly report of dates and durations. You’ll be violating the new law.

If it's a paid rental. That's the whole point of the law! In order to regulate the short-term rentals, the city needs you to report your rentals. And remember, up until this year it was completely illegal to rent for less than 30 days.

> Why are in-laws banned, even for one night per year? Nobody knows.

The reason Prop F bans in-laws that they are a hot-button issue, generally speaking, to do with the legality of the construction of the units and the connection thereof with new rent-controlled housing units (IE the city may be willing to bless your unpermitted in-law, if you rent it out under rent control).

ps. did anybody else get "Aw snap!" opening the post in Chrome?


> The author is a "long-time SF resident" and pretending that an SF judge would want to jail somebody over renting out on Airbnb illegally?

It seems like giving judges that power because "they obviously won't use it" has gotten us into a lot of trouble in the past.


Agreed, the law shouldn't say you can send someone to jail for 6 months if we don't think that is reasonable


For sure. My point is the author's hyperbole doesn't elevate the conversation, but rather the opposite.


I don't follow your train of thought on in-laws. Because they're small, they're unlikely to serve for 'hosted' rentals and more likely to be only short term rentable up to 90 days. e.g. when the existing renter in the in-law goes on vacation. So why does this proposition want to ban that use case entirely instead of just restrict it to 75 days?


There is recent legislation enabling the legalization of unpermitted in-laws and creation of new in-laws. Therefore short-term in-law rentals are disallowed by Prop F, idea being the new in-laws are hoped to contribute to regular (mostly rent-controlled I believe) housing. See http://hoodline.com/2015/09/supervisors-approve-in-law-legis... .


In-laws and regular rental apartments are quite different things, so if they hope that this would make a difference in the market I think they would be disappointed. If somebody has unused space that is not being rented or occupied already then converting it to a rentable unit would be a considerable expense, especially if one has to be ADA-compliant, etc. I doubt that a lot of people would go to that expense only to rent out the units well under market prices (otherwise, there's no point in rent-controlling them).

> idea being the new in-laws are hoped to contribute to regular (mostly rent-controlled I believe)

No, the idea is to increase specifically rent-controlled stock, with the preference of no new rental space at all over new rental space that is not rent-controlled. At least this is how it looks from the proposals.


I'm not sure what you are trying to say. I don't support rent control either, but I suspect there is still money to be made building rent control in-laws in these boom times - and perhaps even more money to be made putting in-laws on Airbnb. Also re: ADA the point that the new in-laws are generally on the ground floor seems to me a plausible reason why ADA-compliance may be easier than otherwise.

I agree that's how it looks from proposals, I think you have articulated the politics in a helpful way.


> who is calling it the "Airbnb Law"?

I think a lot of people do, not only in SF. Same for Uber laws, etc. Of course, they don't call it exactly that, but the intent is clear.

> Clearly this is referring to

Judging laws by "clearly this is referring to" is rather risky proposition, unless you are one of the nine people who have the power to actually decide such questions (aka The Supreme Court). Because otherwise you won't be deciding it, the judge or jury would, and what is clear to you may not be as clear to them. And you can land in a big trouble for it.

Not to mention being pursued by regulators is a very expensive and complicated thing even if you win. And regulators can be very zealous in their prosecutions, and they would try to twist every letter against you. There are numerous cases where judges had to rebuke regulators and prosecutors for excessive zeal and misinterpretation of the law. You do not want to be on the wrong end of that. So any law that leaves opening for that is extremely dangerous for the citizen.

> SF judge would want to jail somebody over renting out on Airbnb illegally?

It doesn't have to get to the judge even. It can be just "do you want to close your business now or do you want to risk prosecution that can land you in jail?" Criminalization of regular business behavior is dangerous because it grant immense powers to prosecutors by leveraging the threat of imprisonment - even if imprisonment itself does not follow. I.e. if prosecutors want something from you (like testify on unrelated case) and they discovered you let your friend stay in your apartment and took money for it, or even helped one friend to star at other friend's house (and you had no idea if any money changed hands, but prosecutors say they did so you are prosecutable now for "assisting") - they can threaten you with 6 months in jail now. Would you risk it, relying on the kindness of SF judges, or would you just bend over and do what the prosecutors tell you to do? Criminalizing common behavior may not land you in jail immediately, but it makes you more and more dependent on the good mood of the law enforcement. It is not a good thing.

> If it's a paid rental.

"Paid" is a very stretchable term. Any consideration can be considered payment. Did they offer to pay for your tickets on the game you go to see together as thanks for hosting them? This can be treated as the same as rent - you hosted them and got something in exchange. Etc., etc.

> And remember, up until this year it was completely illegal to rent for less than 30 days.

"It was worse in the past" is not really an argument for it being good currently. You can always think of something worse.

> The reason Prop F bans in-laws

is that they want less rentals unless it's under conditions under which people do not want to rent. Somehow it does not sound to me like and argument for, but a rather strong argument against.


Thanks for the response! Your points are reasonable - in fact I fully agree with several - but I am afraid you misunderstood my meaning.

I am not arguing for or against the proposition - I just don't think the OP is a quality article around which to have this debate. It's a political scare piece.


It is political, of course - which is only appropriate when discussing questions of policy. I disagree with it being "scare piece" - it describes a bad proposal, and it is appropriate to emphasize the potential dangers and problems, and the claims in the article I personally consider reasonably founded.

For example, private right to action is very scary - it generates immense amount of abuse for such things as ADA and Prop 65, most of which only reallocates money from businesses to slimy lawyers while contributing exactly nothing to the welfare of the intended beneficiaries. And to add one-way attorney fees shifting to that? This moves it from the "bad idea" territory to "these guys are completely insane, everybody, turn and run!" territory. This is practically begging for the law to be abused. I think with such starting point one has to work very hard to write a piece that would be scary enough.


Now we're talking. Because of private right to action plus one-way attorney fees, the proposition stands to cause a lot of harm. See, it's not that hard to focus your argument and take a stand without resorting to hyberbole.

The OP on the other hand, well I really tried in my first comment to show the OP's hypocrisy, I am not going to be able to do a better job here.

I suppose one measure is, how much did private right to action and one-way attorney fees come up in the HN discussion of the article? Not enough, and never (?) with the kind of historical context you are hereby providing (also missing from the OP). I'd posit that the OP did successfully scare more than 0 readers into considering voting against the proposition. So while the article may not be entirely without social utility (scare pieces have utility!), it's not a "smart" article, and it didn't do a good job of explaining the real critical problems with F. And it successfully made me feel alienated from and judgemental toward the No On F crowd.




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