This partisan bickering, like most bickering, ignores the underlying cause of San Francisco’s ridiculously expensive housing — the low property taxes under Prop 13. Cutting property taxes attracts land speculators who fervently compete to see who can bid up the monopoly board. Everyone wants to buy Baltic and Mediterranean and turn them into Boardwalk and Park Place.

San Francisco hotels are overpriced for the same reason that housing is overpriced, and Air BnB is helping reduce the cost of visiting San Francisco (and bringing outside money into the local economy) while indirectly aggravating the cost of living in San Francisco (by bringing outside money into the local economy).

The more money there is, the more the real estate monopolists can jack up housing prices. However, the long-term solution is not to fight people who want to provide a service, but to fight land speculation itself by taxing it away.

The good news is that you don’t have to tax the houses, just the land. California could even let San Francisco give each resident a per capita dividend from real estate taxes so home owners in the aggregate would get a tax decrease and vacant lot owners would bear the brunt of the increase. Even taking small steps in that direction would chase the speculators out of the market and turn San Francisco back over to the people who live there.

Do that, and maybe get rid of the hotel taxes, and Air BnB will disappear on its own, or at least subside.