A group of people protesting San Francisco evictions marches down 18th Street. "Out of the bakery and into the streets," they yell when they reach Tartine. Photo by Molly Oleson

There may be more of these lawsuits to come. This one is going on over an apartment in Russian Hill, writes the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Instead, he said, the owner shuffled around existing tenants and listed two of the four units in the building on short-term rental site Airbnb for $125 and $145 a night – considerably more than the $1,840 a month Butler paid.

“There are laws in place for decades related to these types of issues,” he said. “They forced me out of a home I loved. It was incredibly difficult to find a place, especially because I have a really old dog. I ended up paying over double what I was paying there.”

Anyone in the Mission know of places that are taking the Airbnb route to profits?

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4 Comments

  1. As stated, the case may have no merit. Rentals of less than 30 days do not fall under rent control anyway. And as long as this unit was the primary home of the owner, then he does not have to be there 100% of the time to satisfy the constraints of an OMI

    And of course there is certainly no law against doing an AirBnB of your primary home, either when you are away or by AirBnB’ing a room.

    The law really hasn’t caught up with the shareable economy that is reforming the lives of so many. But in this case I am not sure the law needs to be changed anyway.

    As a landlord, I am more tempted by AirBnb’ing my units that taking on a new tenant, at least for those units that fall under rent control. Although the frequent turnover does impose an extra level of work, the extra rents you can get compensate for it. But the over-riding factor is not being stuck with a “lifer”.

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  3. A number of my neighbors are because they’ve had nightmare tenant situations. Renting is too scary these days for small mom and pop landlords.

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