Gaming AirBnB in San Francisco courtesy of Rent Control

http://doubledbl.tumblr.com/post/32179239260/gaming-airbnb-in-san-francisco-courtesy-of-rent-control

by DanBlake • 14 years ago

65 24 14 years ago

doubledbl.tumblr.com

Good on you. AirBnB should not be allowed to succeed with a business model that supplements people's income in an absurdly high rent market.

DanBlake3• 14 years ago

Didnt even get into the issue of what happens if you already have a rent controlled apartment that you use airbnb to make a profit from. Theres a entire gamut of issues around airbnb that have yet to be explored and frankly I dont see how they will continue to be able to operate.

Right now its on the outskirts, since they are faciliating vs doing it themself. They have some ToS which says "You confirm you have a BnB permit" but of course no verification happens

Maxious• 14 years ago

Sounds like Government-as-a-Platform would be useful here. SF rolls out an API to access BnB permits of the kind you would need to rent out an apartment. Except since they claim AirBnB is illegal, it would be a blank text file ;)

joering2• 14 years ago

what did you expect from people like this (CEO): http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/27/airbnb-spam-allegations/

Side note: really low ball from PG that he is willing to get his hands dirty to deal with someone like this, just in the name of unsustainable profits.

Evbn• 14 years ago

Are all the residents of SF absurd for living there?

trafnar• 14 years ago

San Francisco seems like a great place to be a tenant and a horrible place to be a landlord. The San Francisco Tenants Union (http://www.sftu.org/) publishes a Tenants Handbook that is very fascinating. You'll be surprised how many rights tenants have and how few landlords have.

I can't help but wonder if there would be more housing supply and therefore lower rents if the city was more friendly towards landlords.

(I'm a renter in San Francisco)

fleitz• 14 years ago

If Paul Krugman and Thomas Sowell agree then it's probably true. I'm not certain if it is still true but apparently Sweden saw great successes with removing rent control, Sowell mentions it in his intro to econ.

mseebach2• 14 years ago

> I can't help but wonder if there would be more housing supply and therefore lower rents if the city was more friendly towards landlords.

Though experiment: If you were tasked to invest a sum of money in residential property, all other things being equal, would you choose to become a SF landlord over being a landlord in another city?

timr• 14 years ago

I can't help but wonder if there would be more housing supply and therefore lower rents if the city was more friendly towards landlords."

I don't lose any sleep over it. San Francisco is a postage stamp of a city. It's not as if there are vast tracts of persistently unbuilt land, or apartments sitting vacant for months (indeed, there are usually bidding wars and half-hour showings of new rentals). And new construction (since it isn't covered by rent control), tends to cost more per square foot than the older stuff. All evidence suggests that rent control caps prices in the city.

You can argue that without rent control, landlords would be free to expel the fabled rent-controlled "freeloaders" who have been living in Pac Heights apartments since 1953. Okay. So rent on those units goes up to market rate, the supply of market-rate housing goes up by a few units, and an equal number of tenants are now homeless, competing for market-rate housing. Not a recipe for lower rents.

Another argument is that rent control reduces the economic incentives for landlords to build new units. That's fine, except again, new construction isn't covered by rent control laws. So it's actually in a landlord's interest to rebuild. And it happens -- right now, there are a number of projects underway all over the city.

I don't think rent control has much to do with the rents here. The city is 47 miles square, and is the second most densely populated city in the US. Meanwhile, 3/4 of the land area is plastered with low-density bungalows and low-rise apartment buildings -- and that's never going to change. San Francisco is zoned like a beachside village. It's the source of the city's charm, and the reason that it will never have the high-density housing that might actually lower rents. Rent control is probably incidental.

rayiner• 14 years ago

> Meanwhile, 3/4 of the land area is plastered with low-density bungalows and low-rise apartment buildings -- and that's never going to change. San Francisco is zoned like a beachside village.

True. Shockingly retarded, but true.

tylermenezes• 14 years ago

tl;dr: old business is unhappy about new business models disrupting their income. Instead of adapting, tries to scare people with legislation and provisions in lease agreements.

DanBlake3• 14 years ago

Just so we are clear- The point of the post is to inform AirBnB hosts that their guest could possibly stay forever. Would you not want to know about that? Nothing to do with pro-landlord or otherwise.

ricardobeat• 14 years ago

That's not how you sound in the post at all.

ChuckMcM2• 14 years ago

My grandfather once told me that sometimes the only way to change something was to break it. He was talking about civil rights laws (he was a US Attorney in Memphis) and explaining to me that even though it was "obvious" that the laws that were on the books didn't make sense, people who liked them that way could talk all day and all night about how some day they were going have everything they needed to change them and somehow they never had everything. It was a strategy of 'agreeing' to change so that nothing would change. People grew tired of that, and they started willfully, and with forethought, breaking the law. It forced the issue, it forced the conversation, and things can be changed in a courtroom whether or not the people making the laws want them to change.

That really changed the way I looked at civil disobedience. I was young, Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination was something I still remembered as a news event. Strangely when I read about AirBnB and Uber and their "reckless disregard for the law" I think about my Grandfather sometimes. Would I rather live in a world where it was illegal to rent out your room to someone who needs a place to stay, or is that just between you and your temporary roommate?

I don't doubt for a minute that these companies are pushing and perhaps crossing the line into illegality. I think that because they do that we are going to be able to finally have a conversation about whether or not the public good is served by these laws, and make some changes.

angryasian• 14 years ago

human rights violations and deregulating the hotel industry by lowering standards are on two entirely different levels.

chii• 14 years ago

when the industry has somehow captured the regulators (like the taxi industry), this sort of civil disobedience is warrented!

cshesse• 14 years ago

I was under the impression that in the event your tenant does a sublease when the lease forbids such a sublease, that the subtenant can be evicted at any point with 3 days notice. Is this not the case?

rootedbox2• 14 years ago

This plan won't work.. 1 issue...The only person left in the the unit when the rental agreement expires is a subtenant who has not been approved by the landlord.. Which is a legal reason to evict. Also you can not pay rent while being evicted but you'll still owe that rent(plus interest, legal fee's, and allowed early termination fees). Plus because of your stated goal is to 'game' a system; and how you are doing things you are actually perpetrating this little thing called 'fraud'..

Also.. Not saying you are giving 'legal' advice.. does not free you from any legal liabilities. It's fairly equivalent to a truck with a bunch of rocks in the back, and having a sign saying "not responsible for windshield damage".. because the truck DOES have a legal responsibility for windshield damage they are only trying to scare people from suing them.

P.S. My worry if I was Air BnB is if that the attorney general eventually sees there business as fraudulent because they essentially enable so many leasers to do something which there lease specifically does not allow them to do.

jessedhillon• 14 years ago

At least in Oakland, tenants have a practically unlimited right to sublease (caveat, that's based on my reading of the just cause eviction law) -- the landlord may only object under a few specific circumstances, and if the subtenant agrees to be bound by all the rules to which the main tenant is bound, almost no reasonable objection is possible.

I would not expect Oakland to be more liberal than SF in this regard, but I could be wrong.

See: http://www2.oaklandnet.com/oakca/groups/ceda/documents/polic...

DanBlake3• 14 years ago

1: All leases in SF automatically convert into month-to-month leases upon termination (in rent controlled units). Hence why it doesnt matter if your long term tenant wont sign a new lease, they dont need to. The crux of rent control.

2: Subtenants have the full power of a normal tenant in that they assume the lease from the original tenant. Since its obvious the landlord is complicit in AirBnB activitys by continuing use, that constitutes approval.

3: Not paying rent while being evicted- This is false. For instance, in a ellis act eviction you must continue to pay rent for the duration else be liable for getting sued.

4: Legal fees - Only if the lease specifies this, most specify one way for the landlord or not at all.

5: Gaming a system is not akin to fraud.

6: That analogy makes very little sense. Please apply it to a WebMD post, where they say "WebMD does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment." - Its very well established disclaimers are valid

7: I think its a great business but needs to be amended to protect both landlords, tenants and would-be-renters. Currently it has some baked in risk.

8: A great related thing to google about this is "evicting roommates" as its of course the crux of the issue with subtenants and master tenants. You will find that subtenants inherit full protection in most cases.

* Disclaimer - This post is a opinion not to be construed as fact and not to be taken as legal advice for I am not a lawyer.

rootedbox2• 14 years ago

1: I understand rent control, and I understand the auto month-to-month. Rent control, and eviction are 2 separate things. And under SF eviction law if the only subtenant in a spot is not approved by the land lord then that subtenant can be evicted; Independent of rent.

2: Subtenants do not assume the lease of the original tenant. A lease is not a license, and can not be transfered in that manor. However subtenants are offered the full power of rent control, and a master tenant can not raise rent.

3: we agree? you must pay rent while being evicted or else you will owe the back rent upon eviction.

4: If your lease specifies then your landlord will recoup whatever legal fees they wish. If the lease doesn't specify then under California law your landlord would be able to get "reasonable" fees. Either way your going to pay something.

5: I think your blog post shows that you are participating int the 5 rules that make up fraud.

(1) a false statement of a material fact (2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue (3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim (4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement (5) injury to the alleged victim as a result.

6: WebMD is not giving medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.. You should read there articles more closely.

7: I agree on both counts.

8: Evicting roommates is different that evicting a single tenant; as in California they have master tenants.

Gaming AirBnB in San Francisco courtesy of Rent Control

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