The Board of Supervisors plans to vote today on revisions to the city’s short-term rental ordinance, and while proposals differ on the number of allowable days, all agree that enforcement is the biggest concern.
Without an effective enforcement mechanism, no ordinance will reduce the impact of short-term rentals on San Francisco’s worsening housing crisis, experts and city officials agree. It is a mantra that has been repeated by City Planning officials and studies for months.
Supervisor David Campos’s proposal, co-sponsored by Supervisors John Avalos and Eric Mar, puts the onus of enforcement on hosting platforms by compelling sites to pull listings in bad standing with the city.
Campos would also like quarterly data from hosting platforms indicating the number of nights a unit has been rented out, an earlier recommendation of the Planning Department.
The proposal by Supervisor Mark Farrell and Mayor Ed Lee, on the other hand, calls for a new enforcement office to “streamline” registration and enforcement. The new Office of Short Term Rental Administration is already funded and would be staffed by the Planning Department, the Office of the Treasurer, and the Department of Building Inspection.
These are the same agencies that have already said they have no means of enforcement without verification that a host has rented out a unit for the allowed number of days, something quarterly data from hosting platforms would provide.
The two proposals also differ on the cap of allowable days. Current law sets the cap at 90 days for units where the host is absent and has no limit for units where the host is present. All agree that the differentiation is unworkable because it is impossible to monitor.
Both proposals before the Board today remove this distinction, Campos favoring a 60-day cap and Farrell a 120-day cap.
A spokesperson for Campos’s office said pulling listings that have exceeded their limit is key, and emphasized that without quarterly data enforcement will not work.
Farrell’s proposal does not compel the hosting platforms to act in any way.
Jess Montejano, a legislative aide to Farrell, said they are taking “a holistic approach to short-term rentals in San Francisco” by creating a new enforcement office to “streamline the registration process” and “better laser focus on the most egregious violators.”
Montejano added that Farrell was not “focused on one actor” because there are many other websites where hosts who have maxed out could go to rent their units.
But it’s unclear that that’s an issue, since Campos’s legislation would compel all hosting platforms, not just Airbnb, to pull listings in bad standing.
“I’m not optimistic”
Supervisor Campos, however, is unenthusiastic about his chances.
“I’m not optimistic that my legislation will pass. It will either be killed or continued,” he said, adding that the supervisors may simply wait until the November elections in a bid to stall regulation.
“One possibility is that they will continue it indefinitely because they don’t want the Board to act, so that they can tell voters ‘You don’t need to pass anything because we are working on something.’ That’s a possibility,” he said.
The initiative on the ballot is similar to Campos’s proposal but lowers the annual cap to 75 days and prohibits short-term rental of in-law units.
If true, it wouldn’t be the first time regulation of the short term rentals has been delayed. Legislation prohibiting short-term rentals was unenforced for years before the Board changed the law in February to implement a 90-day cap.
But even then no enforcement mechanism was included despite pleas from the Planning Department that their hands were tied.
When asked why regulation was so slow-coming, Campos pointed to campaign contributions.
“I think it is political muscle,” he said. “Airbnb has a lot of political clout. Airbnb and its investors have not been shy about using money to back the people who are friendly to them, and against the people who aren’t.”
When Campos was running against David Chiu for State Assembly last fall, Airbnb investors poured more than half a million dollars into Chiu’s campaign, helping him win his current seat. Chiu was also the author of the current short-term rental law, which was seen as friendly to Airbnb.
Ron Conway, a Silicon Valley investor who donated to Chiu and has invested in Airbnb, also helped raise some $600,000 for Mayor Lee’s election in 2011.
Enforcement Nationwide
Enforcement problems aren’t new. In Austin, one of top locales for short-term rentals nationwide, city council members recently passed a program to monitor short-term rentals and investigate enforcement because the system was so flawed.
And in New York, which is embroiled in its own housing crisis and took a strong stance against home-sharing sites like Airbnb by subpoenaing anonymized user data last May, enforcement is still largely complaint-based.
This means the almost 75 percent of its short-term rentals that are illegal are investigated slowly and only when neighbors call in.
As in New York, Airbnb listings are located in the most impacted neighborhoods: The Mission, SoMa, and the Western Addition are the areas with the most listings, according to a recent investigation by the Chronicle. (The Mission has a staggering 789 listings according to the report, more than double the number of the next highest, SoMa’s 388 listings.)
The fear from all sides is that without adequate enforcement of the city’s annual cap — whatever that cap may be — hosts may gravitate towards short-term renters instead of long-term tenants, making hosting platforms a small but significant factor in San Francisco’s housing shortage.
Lydia Chavez contributed reporting.
This city is great because of it’s lack of enforcement of the law. Drinking and partying in the streets is way easier here than almost any other city in the U.S. save Vegas and New Orleans. It’s a santuary city where they ignore federal laws so undocumented folks can roam free. You can throw your trash in the streets and no one cares because there are so many homeless folks everywhere. IT’s a little like the wild wild west and that is a good thing. If they can’t enforce other laws, why would they be able to enforce this law?
On a related note, the mission and western addiiton have the least amount of snitches in their neighborhoods. NOt sure about SOMA. People around here don’t like to rat out their neighbors which leads to less law enforcement.
More platitudes from out civic leaders that will lead to nothing substantial in terms of fixing the problem.