Don’t throw us under the bus with Prop F!

Just months after passing a set of short-term rental rules, SF is voting to replace them next Tues. But this time, Prop F would bully small hosts out of existence and make rogue investor listings harder to catch.

If you’ve been following the Proposition F debate, you might have seen us speak out against F on social media, in the press, and at neighborhood debates. We are home sharers. We rent out spare rooms in our own homes to make ends meet. We aren’t much different from your average San Franciscan, though we’re more likely to be older, married, and have kids. So, our living situations are often more amenable to travelers than to roommates.

I started hosting when my employer went bankrupt a few years ago. Hosting helped me hang on in SF while I relaunched my career. I host lots of family visits for neighbors. For years, an 80-yr old from Brooklyn would stay with me so she could walk to her grandkids’ birthday parties. Another guest drives up from LA whenever her sister gets treated at nearby UCSF. I believe my neighborhood benefits from my affordable and close-by stays.

Our current law took years to craft.

Home Sharers has been meeting as a group before anyone had heard of Airbnb. We became politically active three years ago to fight real estate investors who were converting whole units or even buildings into short-term rentals. Since we ourselves were mostly operating in the gray, we knew we needed formal regulations.

After two years of meetings, hearings, and negotiations with Supervisors, Planning, and other stakeholders, a plan was reached that most could live with. The draft even incorporated feedback from major property owner and tenant groups. Our current STR law passed 7–4 at the Board of Supervisors. The law took effect this February and was amended in July.

SF already has common-sense STR legislation!

Our current law limits home sharing to permanent residents and protects housing units from converting to full-time short-term rentals. A host must:

• be the permanent resident (owner or tenant) of the residential unit where you wish to rent short-term.
• register only one residential unit. If you own a multi-unit building, you can only register the specific residential unit in which you reside.
• have lived in that unit for at least 60 consecutive days prior to application.
• live in that unit for at least 275 nights a year.
• obtain a Business Registration Certificate from San Francisco Treasurer & Tax Collector’s Office.
• provide liability insurance of no less than $500,000.

Taxation, Registration, & Enforcement are working now!

There’s a lot of misinformation about these topics. So, allow me to clarify from my experience. Since October 2014, SF Treasurer & Tax Collector has been accepting the 14.5% guest transient occupancy tax automatically from Airbnb. Platforms also issue 1099 Forms straight to the IRS for our federal & state income taxes. Believe me, there’s no way around taxes.

Registration has been challenging, honestly. Planning has been super-thorough in making sure applicants are really permanent residents of their STR units, which is not a bad thing. I had to play voicemail tag with a planning officer, pass a phone screen, register with two City departments in person, present multiple proofs of residence in a live interview, then wait for results by mail. My process took a concerted six weeks. I heard the backlog stretched to several months at one point before the City established the Office of Short Term Rentals.

To help hosts through this process, Home Sharers held 4 registration workshops in February, March, August, and September of this year. We were especially worried about immigrant hosts getting lost, and offered guidance in Chinese and Russian.

It seemed farfetched to me for a planning staffer to label the law “unenforceable” a few weeks after enactment. I was one of the first to start registration; most of us were still stuck in their queue at that time. Any new government process takes time to iron out. (Remember healthcare.gov?) Hosts swamped Planning with applications. Staffers were stressed, caught in this game of political football.

In July, the City formed the Office of Short Term Rentals. Under their leadership, the registration crunch is easing. They upgraded interview scheduling to to an online process. They’ve ramped up enforcement. The Office of STR issued $155,000 in fines in its first 2.5 weeks, and continues to staff up and work through the backlog. Just this week, another landlord and tenant were fined $7744 for operating an illegal STR in North Beach.

Prop F would bury law-abiding hosts.

Prop F would not fix any of the challenges mentioned above. Instead, there are three aspects of Prop F that together would push legitimate small hosts out of the market.

• A cap of 75 days per year — Prof F would enforce a minimum vacancy of 80% on STRs, even when the host is present. Imagine if the gov’t limited every sandwich shop in your neighborhood to operate 1.5 days a week!
• Private awards for neighbor lawsuits— Neighbors within 100 feet already have the right to sue, but fines are currently payable to the City and not complainants. Prop F would allow neighbors to sue and collect fines of up to $1000/day plus attorney fees if they prevail. Conversely, the accused would not recover attorney fees if exonerated.
• Signage and notification — These are basically an invitation for a lawsuit. Seems obvious, right?

In short, risks would far outweigh benefits for those who want to do it right.

So, who’s really behind F?

The idea of anti-STR ballot measure has been around for a few years now. Last year, retired options trader Doug Engmann funded a similar measure which did not gather enough signatures to qualify. This year’s narrative seems to be hotel interests vs Airbnb.

Rarely mentioned is the influence of affluent neighborhood groups, which has repeatedly tried to ban STRs in Single-Family Home (RH1/D zoned) areas only. When that didn’t work, they got those three key provisions incorporated into Prop F to push STRs out of their neighborhoods. The low hosting cap, private awards for neighbor lawsuits, and signage & notifications—all came from their group meetings.

“[The current legislation] leaves neighbors and their associations with no recourse except costly lawsuits… [without] prior notification to neighbors … how will neighbors and neighborhood associations even be able to learn who is running an Airbnb?” — WTPCC group statement 4/23/15

They’re working to keep their neighborhoods exclusive, not affordable!

Lawyers have also identified Prop F as a potential growth opportunity. We won’t single anyone out, but you can get a flavor by searching for videos under “lawyer for SF airbnb owner.” Prop F would create yet another legal cottage industry unique to San Francisco.

Prop F Does Nothing to Prevent Displacement.

Prop F supporters claim they’re trying to keep people from getting evicted for short-term rentals. But that’s already illegal, and Prop F contains no new eviction protection provisions.

Prop F supporters have argued that the strict cap on hosting days would create an economic incentive against short-term guests in favor of a long-term roommate. However, even if hosts are able to make that switch, the “break even” point is much higher, at 200+ days in most neighborhoods.

“But, I’m pissed off and want to vote against Airbnb!”

Airbnb is the biggest platform for SF hosts today, but platforms come and go. Yesterday, we used Craigslist and VRBO. If you invent a service that works better than Airbnb, we’ll use that tomorrow.

We want the City to hold platforms accountable too. Having Airbnb in town put us in a unique position to do that, while running them out of town with Prop F doesn’t. If Prop F sponsors had asked us to support requiring the platforms to display registration numbers, we likely would have. But that alone is not a solution. The North Beach violator cited this week was advertising on 13 sites.

“But, we must do something about the housing crisis!”

We agree! We home sharers are just as stressed as you are about displacement, housing prices, and the changing character of the City. If Prop F passes, many of us would be displaced by wealthier new residents who don’t need to home share.

Recent studies have identified 348 homes taken off of the market due to STR, though some of those might be a bed and bathroom suite rather than a full housing unit. In a crisis, every unit is valuable; the problem of illegal full-time STRs is real. But 348 is a relatively small piece of the problem. They are already illegal, and would be no more so under Prop F.

To address the housing shortage, Home Sharers support policies that result in more housing for everyone.

Let’s work together on this.

There is a lot of misinformation out there on STRs in San Francisco. We’re on the ground and can help you tell truth from fiction. If you are interested in building a new political culture here in SF, based on solutions rather than fear, we want to chat with you! The only thing we ask is to please be respectful and ask real questions, as we’ve seen how online conversations can devolve into personal attacks.

Vote No on F!

Short-term rentals are a rapidly evolving situation; a fixed ballot measure is not the way to respond. Registration and enforcement is ramping up. Let our civil servants do their jobs. No on F is the fair thing to do, not just for us hosts but for the communities we serve.