ShareBetter San Francisco, a coalition of housing and neighborhood organizations has filed to put another short-term rental law on the ballot for November.
The intent to petition was filed this week with the Elections Department. The initiative’s key points are imposing fines on hosting platforms that list illegal or unregistered short-term rental units, requiring quarterly reports of rental nights from hosts, and hosting websites, and caps the number of allowable rental nights at 75 per year.
Currently there is no limit on the number of nights a host can rent out a spare room, as long as the host is also present, but since enforcement is difficult, some Supervisors at City Hall have tried to cap the number of nights for all short-term rentals.
The initiative also provides for a notification system for neighbors of short-term rental hosts, when registrations are issued.
Why now? ShareBetter SF’s Dale Carlson said they tried last year to work with City Hall on getting legislation passed, and while some amendments were, it wasn’t enough to ensure enforcement. After months of drafting and rewriting the language, Carlson said, they were ready to file now.
“We want to run on parallel tracks,” said Carlson, who said that it might be possible for the Board of Supervisors to pass an amendment with “significant” enforcement mechanisms, but won’t wait for them to.
Carlson said they are “very confidant” they will get the signatures needed to put the initiative on the ballot.
“Last year we got 16,000 signatures in less than four weeks,” said Carlson. “This time we have longer.”
ShareBetterSF dropped their plan to get that initiative on the ballot when City Hall passed the recent short-term rental registration law.
San Francisco has passed several ordinances in the last six months to regulate the short-term rental industry, but enforcement has been difficult. Without records from Airbnb about their hosts, and the number of nights a unit is rented as a short-term rental it can only be a “complaint-driven enforcement system,” which many have said will make the legislation unenforceable.
Requests from the Planning Department for Airbnb’s records on hosts have been ignored, and Supervisor Campos has said that short of a subpoena Air bnb has no plans to give in.
At last week’s Planning Commission meeting, a proposal to require Airbnb to report quarterly the number of nights a unit is rented as a short-term rental, failed to pass.
This has led some, like Supervisor Campos to say that that taking the matter to the ballot may be the only way to push through the legislation.
Carlson said after the City Attorney looks over the initiative, they plan to begin gathering signatures for the initiative by mid May. They will need 9700 valid signatures by July 6th to get the initiative approved for the ballot.