After months of discussions on how to amend the so-called “Airbnb law” in order to better enforce it, the Board of Supervisors—presented with two competing bills—voted 7-4 on June 9 to postpone their decision for one month.
“We passed a framework last year. Now, let’s take the time to get it right,” said District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell, who along with the mayor’s office, sponsored one of the two proposed bills.
The current law, which was introduced in August of 2014, went into effect Feb. 1, eliminating the city’s long-held ban on residential rentals of less than 30 days in multi-unit buildings. It imposed a series of restrictions including that Airbnb hosts register with the city, paying a $50 fee every two years. Hosts, whether they are the building owner or tenatns, are also required to live in the units they are offering as short-term rentals at least nine months a year; hosts who are tenants must inform their landlords; and a hotel tax of 14 percent must be paid by the host. These regulations, however, were largely considered unenforceable.
Even though more than 6,000 units are listed on Airbnb for San Francisco, the San Francisco Examiner reported that as of May 2015, only 330 were registered with the city.
The Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Legislative Analyst found that between 925 and 1,960 units, or about 23 percent of the city’s vacant units, have been removed from the housing market to be listed on Airbnb—with Mission, Haight, the Castro and Potrero Hill neighborhoods most impacted.
“It’s the neighborhoods with the highest numbers of evictions that see the largest number of Airbnb rentals,” said District 9 Supervisor David Campos, who sponsored the other alternative bill and opposed the postponement of the vote. “The last thing that we need is to give the lobbyists of Airbnb more time to do what they have been doing for the last couple of years.”
District 11 Supervisor John Avalos, who supported the Campos bill and voted against the postponement, agreed.
“A vote for continuance is really a vote for Airbnb,” he said, and then referenced the recent demonstration supporting the failed moratorium on luxury housing in the Mission. “If we vote to continue today … we are saying that their voices don’t matter.”
Almost 40 percent of vacant units in the Mission are being rented through short-term rental agreements like Airbnb and other hosting sites, according to Maria Zamudio, a housing rights organizer with Causa Justa : Just Cause.
“Addressing the housing crisis needs to be a multipronged approach. We need to stop illegal conversions of unregulated hotels, and that’s what [Campos’] measure does,” Zamudio said. “It’s going to be able to keep more people in their homes.”
Two separate approaches to regulation
Both bills included many similar provisions (such as limits to the number of days per year that hosts can rent) to discourage owners from keeping units off the long-term market to make money from platforms such as Airbnb.
While Campos proposed a 60-day cap, Farrell supported a 120-day limit. Also, two things Campos considered crucial for the enforcement of the law were not in Farrell’s legislation: prohibiting hosting platforms from posting units not registered with the city and fining them if they do so; and requiring them to provide data to the planning department.
This last point was the most divisive. For the supporters of Campos’ legislation it was a key element, but for the opponents it was a privacy violation.
“There’s really no way for the City and the Planning Department to know whether a host has slept in their unit that night or not,” District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim said.
Under current law, hosting platforms have no responsibility for the units listed on their websites. According to Campos, just holding the platforms accountable would make sure that the illegal activity stops.
“Even though they are making millions of dollars, they believe that they have no responsibility whatsoever when it comes to the enforcement of this law,” Campos said.
The majority of the supervisors believed there were good points in both bills but they needed more time to find a compromise.
Supervisors Scott Wiener and Julie Christensen believed the Campos’ legislation would make the Airbnb casual users—those who use the platform to make ends meet—pay for the “bad actors.”
“There are many people in this town who are residents in these units, who are making ends meet through short-term rentals in a spare room,” Wiener said. “Sixty days is not going to meet the needs of these people.”
Even though everyone agreed that waiting for the November ballot wasn’t the right way to approach the issue, that might just be what happens if amendments to the law are not approved.
“Let the voters do what the Board of Supervisors should have done a long time ago, which is to make sure that this 20-billion-dollar corporation plays by the rules like everyone else,” Campos said.