28 ms·

I Have Read Prop F

238 points by _sentient 11y ago

Marazan 11y ago
If you had to divide the world into people who are pro or anti airbnb then I am anti-airbnb. But prop F is horrible beyond belief.
- TranquilMarmot 11y ago
  Why would you say you are anti-airbnb? Just curious if it's their business practices, renters themselves, or what. I've only had positive experiences with airbnb.
  - lemworld 11y ago
    I also have had only positive experiences with Airbnb, though I've only stayed in "whole apartment" listings. Maybe the OP had some negative experiences with a host they stayed with?
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    i'm anti-airbnb. i prefer to stay in hotels or professionally managed vacation rental units. for example, there's absolutely ZERO chance a hotel will cancel your room on you 12 hours before you show up in europe.
    - omarrr 11y ago
      > there's absolutely ZERO chance a hotel will cancel your room on you 12 hours before you show up in europe. wrong
    - kleinsch 11y ago
      Clearly you've never showed up at a hotel that's full despite having a reservation. I have.
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      Not in Europe, but I've had it happen twice in the US. Once in Dallas, once in Avalon on Catalina Island. (That one was, "Um, sorry, we only have you booked for one night, and we don't have any openings for the second night.")
    - morgante 11y ago
      It sounds like you personally prefer not to stay in an AirBnB. That's fine. I likewise prefer hotels to AirBnBs. But why are you anti-airbnb?
    - austenallred 11y ago
      Exactly that has happened to me probably half a dozen times
  - slg 11y ago
    I'm not specifically anti-Airbnb, but I'm anti "disruption is euphemism for just ignoring the law". It is common with companies like Uber, Airbnb, and the most recent uproar is over DraftKings and FanDuel. These companies have a disregard for the law as part of their business model and that rubs me the wrong way.
    - bcoates 11y ago
      There is a specific, long-standing exception in Federal gambling laws for what DraftKings and FanDuel is doing. They're not ignoring or even bending the law. The weasel-wording they use in their ads is to get around TV network (and sports league) squeamishness about running ads for sports betting.
      - slg 11y ago
        There might be a federal exception for most of their games, but the exception might not apply to all of their games. There are also several states where their games are pretty clearly illegal and these companies are just operating there until they either get shutdown or get enough lobbying power to push through their own exceptions.
  - zorpner 11y ago
    Exploitation of marginal utility is fundamentally disconcerting, and it should be -- as tech people, we could think of it as being paid for time spent in a chair, or lines of code. It exploits an inefficiency which exists because of an absolute measurement that mis-assesses the situation. In the case of housing, at the basic level, we pay a monthly rate in order to have a place to sleep (and maybe live & eat). But embedded in our rules and laws are assumptions about how that works, and one of those core assumptions is stability (that is, people who make this exchange of money for housing will remain in the housing for longer spans). Our noise ordinances are based on long timelines for investigation, monitoring, and enforcement because they embed the assumption of stable tenancy. Our building codes assume certain occupancies and our maintenance schedules assume certain rates of wear. Our building security practices assume that people with the keys have an invested interest in restricting access. These assumptions may or may not be desirable, but they exist, and because of their existence renting an apartment (I have different feelings regarding owned single-family dwellings) for short-term AirBnB-style rentals violates not only the social contract with neighbors, but the unwritten contract involving a number of ambient practices with potentially negative consequences. I'm not 100% against short-term subletting, and I'm certainly not against having relatives stay over, for example. But this is a classic example of both money and automation fundamentally changing an existing practice -- people are "doing the same thing", but at a scale and in a way that results in an emergent difference.
    - IIAOPSW 11y ago
      wadr why is any of this "bad". I agree 100% with everything you said about built in assumptions in our laws yet I come to the opposite conclusion that such laws ought to be diminished. IMO the assumption of stability creates a de facto serfdom in which people are tied to the land and don't even realize it. If the best opportunity of your life suddenly popped up half way around the globe, how fast can you be on a plane? For me the answer is "next flight out". I do not mean to say that having a permanent traditional life is less desirable to some people. I simply think that the laws of our land should respect freedom of choice and thus not bias any particular lifestyle. I think it is especially egregious to have laws telling people what they can and cannot do with their own home in a manner that has no tangible effect on their neighbors. I find it dubious (and empirically unsupported) that the presence of airbnb guests has any measurable effect on any neighborhood.
  - geebee 11y ago
    This is a (slightly updated) repost of an earlier response of mine on this topic. Everyone has an opinion about airbnb. Here's my big worry. San Francisco's population of children has plummeted in my lifetime (I grew up in SF in the 70s). In this time, I think it has gone from about 22% to a current rate of 14% or so. I guess it's just important to me that SF continue to be a place people are from, rather than a place where young people move prior to having families, or (increasingly) a place where empty nesters move and enjoy the city after having families. Here's the thing, I consider this to be a very economically vulnerable stretch of life. I have two kids, in SFUSD, and I'm starting to see just how colossal a disadvantage a family with two kids would be in a bidding war against someone who intends to put the extra bedrooms in a SFH or a 3 bedroom apartment on airbnb instead. It's no secret that housing is in short supply in SF, and that the price of a house or apartment in SF reflects what the highest bidder is able to pay. It's also probably not surprising that kids are very expensive. A two income family (pretty tough to live in SF if you aren't) means daycare - and daycare costs, conservatively, over $2,000 a month per kid. Even if they're in SFUSD ("free"), after care at school with run you about $4,000 a year per kid, and summer camps will add another $3000 or so per kid, if you're doing things the inexpensive way. Now, imagine that a family with two kids now has to compete against a bidder who plans to put the "spare" bedrooms on airbnb, and who factors that into the bid. The family has two very expensive, non-revenue generating children. The airbnb buyer has a massive advantage here, and I see it as another factor that could potentially put massive new pressures on an already collapsing population of families with children. It could also reduce turnover - someone who no longer needs the extra bedrooms and might have in the past downsized (opening up a SFH for a new family) now rents the bedrooms out full time on airbnb. Sure, these problems could have existed with permanent, long term tenants, but I do think that it was less likely. Airbnb definitely makes it far easier and more profitable to do this - this is one big reason why the company is so large and profitable itself. Is this happening? I don't know, I don't have the data. Until then, it's just a fear, though not (in my opinion, obviously) an unfounded one. But if they company won't open up the data and recognize the possible danger, my guess is that the public will support strict regulations.
    - bsimpson 11y ago
      I'm curious what you think of all the young people who move into the city after college and become roommates with one another. I've lived with people who make $50,000 per year, and with people who make 2 or 3 times that much. Because studios and one-bedrooms have become so expensive, we've started renting spaces with anywhere from 2 to 6 bedrooms. Having 6 adults who can afford to collectively pay $9000+ a month bidding against you has got to be almost as much fun as bidding against someone who's going to Airbnb the extra rooms, but at the end of the day, we all need somewhere to live.
- thechao 11y ago
  I can't even possibly fathom any reason to be either pro or anti airbnb. It's like being pro- or anti- fuchsia, to me. Could you explain why you don't like airbnb? Did the CEO kick you in the puppies, or something?
  - pbreit 11y ago
    It's more like being pro or con U2 or bee stings. How could you not have an opinion? Personally, I think AirBnB has not done a very good job helping communities figure out what the best situation should be. Many/most leases and HOAs forbid short-term leases for very good reason and yet AirBnB turns an eye. And for people who own their residences, many areas are zoned non-commercial, again for very good reasons, and AirBnB turns an eye. Prop F looks terrible but if it somehow manages to pass, AirBnB has no one to blame but itself for not participating constructively in a reasonable solution.
    - fredkbloggs 11y ago
      I find it very easy to not have an opinion. Whether my neighbor wants to rent out part of his property via airbnb, craigslist, or not at all makes no difference to me. It does not affect my quality of life, does not interfere with my enjoyment of my own property, and is a private transaction among 3 (or more) parties of which I am not one. I just don't care, at all. That doesn't mean that his tenants might not cause me problems, but in that case I will deal with the tenants themselves and/or my neighbor concerning the actual problem. Such things have nothing to do with airbnb and can and do happen regardless of whether tenants are short- or long-term (or the owners themselves). People who are either pro-airbnb because they feel it makes some kind of political or economic statement or places them into some kind of club they like, or are anti-airbnb because they are busybodies and like to find things to be outraged over or similarly feel that being so places them in a club they like, find it impossible to imagine having no opinion of airbnb. Personally, I find it impossible to imagine myself in either of those camps. To each of us the limits of our own imagination, I suppose.
      - tmuir 11y ago
idlewords 11y ago
This is a really laudable write-up, whether or not you agree with prop F. The problem of "sounds good in principle" propositions that are terribly or deceptively drafted is one that makes every California election a minefield.
- cheepin 11y ago
  That's why a strangely sound election strategy is to just vote no on every proposition. Most of them have heavy corporate sponsorship and are written to deceive the public.
  - DiabloD3 11y ago
    I don't know why this guy is being downvoted. I've heard the exact same thing from many friends of mine who have or still do live in SF: just vote no on all of them, and force the city to do it's job by legislating the usual way.
    - simoncion 11y ago
      Downvotes on HN are... strange and capricious. Things that are downvoted for no apparent reason do tend to get voted back up, though. (I wish there was a meta.n.y.c where we could discuss things like this. Alas.)
  - azernik 11y ago
    And even if you are willing to put in the time to read some props and convince yourself they're a good idea, vote no on all the ones you can't be bothered to research.
  - skuhn 11y ago
    I find the proposition system extremely aggravating. Even for propositions that I largely or wholly agree with I have to ask myself: does this deserve to be an amendment of the state constitution or city charter? That's the power that voter initiatives essentially have, after all. When you think about it that way, they almost all look pretty ridiculous. Should the San Francisco city charter have an amendment about whether one particular construction project in 2014 can be built at a certain height? Should we have a ballot initiative every time a new building needs to be built? That might make sense in some alternate reality if we lived in a direct democracy with routine voting and people actually informed themselves about the issues they were deciding. I think it's pretty safe to say that we aren't living in that world today.
Mz 11y ago
Wow: This is where it’s clear the authors overreached and created a toxic spill waiting to happen. If the City finds you did indeed host someone or assisted someone else as such, even for one night, then the City can take action against you. But then it gets absolutely bonkers. If you didn’t host anyone, or it was just your Aunt Rose visiting for the weekend, then your cranky neighbor can still sue you anyway, and the City has to help them do it. And we’re not just talking about filing suit so the City can collect its fines and fees, but filing for “special damages” that the neighbors get to keep for themselves. This sounds incredibly bad.
- abalone 11y ago
  It's a bit overblown. Civil lawsuits cost money to prosecute, so they're unlikely to be pursued unless there's a good chance of winning.
  - cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
    Have you ever lived in a community with an HOA? Some of the people there take finding violations, infractions, and actionable offenses as their second job, and will not hesitate to sue you just because. So enabling these people by requiring the city to help them sue is like dumping a tanker full of kerosene on a forest fire.
    - abalone 11y ago
      No doubt the point of the law is to tap into community activism. But it's different from suing your neighbor over the hedge you don't like. Prop F is much more objective and substantive about what constitutes a violation than your typical HOA covenant: illegal hosting. Neighbors and their legal teams are unlikely to sue over that unless they think they can really prove a violation.
  - Mz 11y ago
    I wasn't really thinking of the "you could get sued" angle so much as the "you could get sued BECAUSE you let your Aunt visit for the weekend" angle. It sounds like the law basically outlaws having family come visit, among other things. It sounds just fucking crazy to me. Though I don't live in SF and likely never will, so I guess if SF wants to get even crazier than it already is, it can. I have no power to vote in city level stuff in SF.
on_ 11y ago
I Have Read this Medium Post. The author makes a great case against Prop F, prop F seems like a totally shitty law and isn't going to fix the housing problem. It sounds like that isn't what the law is about anyway, but there is a great way to fix the housing problem. The argument he seems to allude to in his notes, is that people seem to choose sides based on their sentiment surrounding the current resedential/housing market. In economics there are 2 forces at the heart of most problems. These are called "supply" and "demand" and they govern price. SF has not been keeping up with it's infrastructure, is a decade behind in new construction, and building new resedential properties will take ~5-10 years to complete. They are not actively building properties that will sufficiently meet demand even now. So this won't go away. Unfortunately, people who paid a lot for houses have a vested interest in not raising supply, and the amount of regulation surrounding new construction creates massive amounts of friction. It will be interesting to see how this problem get's solved. I agree with the author though: It is not going to be Prop F.
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  Of course, California also interferes with the market to discourage selling real estate. Proposition 13 disconnected property tax rates from the value of the property (by capping the increase in assessed value at 2% per year, far below the increase in actual market value). Which created a massive incentive to hold real estate as long as possible without selling, since the only time the tax rate can reset to being based on market value is at the time of sale.
  - gnopgnip 11y ago
    This is true but in most cases it doesn't matter because your next best alternative is not changed. If you have owned a home for 10 years and want to buy a new home in another area, you will still want to sell your home. If you just moved to CA and want to own a home, you will still want to buy despite prop 13.
    - bmelton 11y ago
      > If you have owned a home for 10 years and want to buy a new home in another area, you will still want to sell your home. Actually, as an outsider looking in, the incentives seem set up such that you'd be far more inclined to rent your existing home than sell it.
pbreit 11y ago
AirBnB needs to step up and suggest what it thinks are some of the right ways to handle this. The fact is, many/most leases and HOAs forbid short term rentals, and for good reasons. As well, many areas are zoned non-commercial, again for good reasons. But people certainly should have some degree of autonomy when it comes to their personal property. The question is, what is it? What I never understood is why short term rental regulations aren't modeled more closely off BnB laws than hotel laws. Many jurisdictions have BnB laws and AirBnBs obviously compare much more closely to BnBs. BnBs typically have lighter regulation, different taxes, are frequently in residential areas, etc.
- bsder 11y ago
  > But people certainly should have some degree of autonomy when it comes to their personal property. The question is, what is it? That is why we elect people. To answer these kinds of hard questions. > What I never understood is why short term rental regulations aren't modeled more closely off BnB laws than hotel laws. Part of the whole kerfuffle is because AirBnB was encouraging people to break the laws that actually existed. For example, if I buy a house in an area zoned "residential", I don't expect to have someone next to me running different people in an out every week as part of AirBnB. If you want to do that you should have to be zoned "commercial", thanks. Then, we'll get to discuss this at the next council meeting when you ask for a zoning exemption. If it's your hunting lodge, probably nobody is going to object. If it's right next to the elementary school, people are probably going to complain. etc.
  - fraserharris 11y ago
    The heart of your argument is that there is some clear distinction between residential and commercial which doesn't actually exist. Residential properties have always been used for profit - its called an apartment. These visitors are renting in a residential area precisely because they want a residential experience. The "burden" on your neighbors from short-term visitors is highly overblown. What actual impact on the elementary school is short-term visitors going to have? Is their driving to & from the home ever so more frequent than a full-time occupant? Do you think they are having rowdy parties despite self-selecting to stay in a residential neighborhood? Or that they would be a pedophile (which federal laws already ban from staying within a short distance from an elementary school?)
No1 11y ago
I saw some campaign propaganda today. One side of the flier has a guy named Aaron Peskin imploring me to vote yes on Prop F and Prop I. Prop F is the mess thoughtfully critiqued in this write-up, Prop I is a moratorium on building new market-rate housing. Oh, and he's on the "more affordable rent" campaign platform, because if you want to make rent more affordable, clearly the best way is by preventing construction of market-rate housing. It's like SF voters are brain-dead. The flip side of the flier derided another candidate. If the point of the flier was to make me aware of which candidate to not to vote for, mission accomplished.
- geebee 11y ago
  Prop I is just a moratorium in the mission right? Doesn't really matter, I think it's a bad idea as well. However, I think you may find that voters are far more opposed to prop I than prop F. My guess is that if someone supports I, they will almost certainly support F, but not the other way around. Time will tell, though.
- thrwwy707 11y ago
  >Prop I is a moratorium on building new market-rate housing Are these people completely insane? Shouldn't there be propositions for denser zoning, land reclamation, or other measures that would increase the SF housing stock? Houston has famously lax zoning laws, and as a consequence has seen much greater population growth (31% vs 18% from 1980-2010 per wikipedia) yet experienced none of these same problems.
  - MCRed 11y ago
    They're actually operating in a way that is very profitable to them. If you own property- a house or business real estate- you want a moratorium on new supply. Because not giving new supply will cause the value of your current property to go up. Of course its an "anti-affordable housing" position... but it's not insane. The anti-development types are taking a very profitable position for themselves.
  - bsder 11y ago
    Actually, it would seem that San Francisco's (population density 18,187/sq mi (7,022/km2)) zoning laws worked much better than Houston's lack thereof (population density (3,662/sq mi (1,414/km2)). However, the real problem is that San Francisco is water locked on three sides and boundary locked on the fourth. It has no way of adding housing that doesn't offend some entrenched interest.
gkop 11y ago
The Sharebetter campaign website mentioned is totally biased, it's true, and it does seem likely that hotel interests are in no small part behind Yes on F. And I have no doubt F contains (perhaps really bad!) flaws. But this Medium post is also rife with misleading statements and hyperbole, and therefore hypocritical in light of the author's "here's the facts" tone (not a huge surprise since the author earns income from Airbnb, but still annoying): > (Imagine if we were living under the “MySpace Law” of 2006, eh?) Hyperbole and strawman; who is calling it the "Airbnb Law"? > to assist anyone to offer (emphasized twice) > What does “assist” mean? Cleaning a house before guests arrive? Proofreading someone’s listing? Helping a family member find temporary housing? Nobody knows because it’s undefined in the text, even in the lengthy Definitions section. The judge will decide what it means. Clearly this is referring to the marketplaces and holding them accountable. If I can figure that out, any judge can. > But wait, there’s more! How do you feel about criminal penalties? ... Six months? (in jail) The author is a "long-time SF resident" and pretending that an SF judge would want to jail somebody over renting out on Airbnb illegally? > If you host someone in a room in your home for less than 30 days, you best not miss a quarterly report of dates and durations. You’ll be violating the new law. If it's a paid rental. That's the whole point of the law! In order to regulate the short-term rentals, the city needs you to report your rentals. And remember, up until this year it was completely illegal to rent for less than 30 days. > Why are in-laws banned, even for one night per year? Nobody knows. The reason Prop F bans in-laws that they are a hot-button issue, generally speaking, to do with the legality of the construction of the units and the connection thereof with new rent-controlled housing units (IE the city may be willing to bless your unpermitted in-law, if you rent it out under rent control). ps. did anybody else get "Aw snap!" opening the post in Chrome?
- toby 11y ago
  > The author is a "long-time SF resident" and pretending that an SF judge would want to jail somebody over renting out on Airbnb illegally? It seems like giving judges that power because "they obviously won't use it" has gotten us into a lot of trouble in the past.
  - gkop 11y ago
timr 11y ago
It's really quite remarkable that you can know so little about something, yet be so judgmental about it at the same time. Go 'mericuh! Prop I is a temporary (18 month) moratorium in one neighborhood (the Mission), for only a limited subset of projects, coupled with the requirement that the city has to create a "neighborbood stabilization plan" by the end of that period [1]. It is not a "moratorium on building new market-rate housing", as you say. The idea is that the Mission is undergoing a land-grab by speculators, that poor people are losing (they are), and that the battle will be over by the time a coherent plan is formulated to do anything about it. Whether or not you believe this to be the correct approach, it does nobody any good to mischaracterize it as something that is obviously and painfully stupid. I realize it's not at all fashionable on HN to point out that life is more complicated than chapter one, paragraph one of a high-school economics textbook...but prop I might actually be a good idea over here in the real world, where actual poor people are being evicted from the only places they can afford in the city, at alarming rates. [1] http://ballotpedia.org/City_of_San_Francisco_Mission_District_Housing_Moratorium_Initiative,_Proposition_I_(November_2015) http://ballotpedia.org/City_of_San_Francisco_Mission_Distric...
- toby 11y ago
  Just want to point out that some of us have read the full text of the Proposition, know exactly what it does, and the rationale, and still think it will be completely ineffective. For example, SF's Chief Economist: http://sfcontroller.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=6742 http://sfcontroller.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid...
  - timr 11y ago
    The point of the moratorium is not to affect prices; it's to give the city a chance to come up with a plan that will protect affordable housing in this one neighborhood, without losing the ability to act. Viewed in that light, this report is a vote for the plan, not against it: it gives a little breathing room, and probably won't affect prices either way. Whether or not it "works" is entirely speculative: someone has to come up with an actual solution in the longer term. I believe the advocates of this proposition want the city to buy the remaining vacant lots in the Mission, and use them to build affordable housing projects, but I could be wrong about that.
luckydata 11y ago
reading the proposition would help, but that's beside the point ain't it? Someone really needed to let us know how fantastic things are when the gubmint gets out of the way. Got it.
- noyounoyounoyou 11y ago
  Get over your self satisfied prejudices and actually think for a minute. Other cities don't have the same housing crisis as San Francisco and guess what, those cities also don't have bizarre and impossible restrictions on new constructions. So yeah, it is the city government causing the problem and suggestioning they only need another 18 months to come up with a plan is myopoc bullshit, they've had twenty years and still failed. So so so amazing how people will refuse to actually examine their assumptions.
  - dang 11y ago
    > Get over your self satisfied prejudices and actually think for a minute > tells me all i need to know of your cognitive powers We've banned this account for breaking the HN guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - noyounoyounoyou 11y ago
      Cool dude, continue your BS Mod policy that allows group think and personal insults but ban the account that points out your double standard.
- dang 11y ago
  Please stop posting uncivil comments to Hacker News. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281311 and marked it off-topic.
bsder 11y ago
Edit: Thread parent lost due to moderator detach: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281311 Houston also has four freakin' beltways (I610, TX 8, TX 6, and TX 99). Comparing a city that is the poster child for "sprawl" with a chunk of real estate that is more than a little landfill and locked on 3 sides with water is more than a little disingenuous. Houston's second beltway would encircle San Mateo, some of Oakland, and Sausalito if transplanted to San Fransico. If transplanted to San Francisco, Houston's fourth beltway (TX 99--currently under construction) would encompass almost all of San Pablo bay, Walnut Creek (maybe even as far as Concord), easily all of Oakland, Hayward, and Redwood City. And be more than 50% underwater. The differences are more than the "gubmint reg-you-lashion" my good man.
- noyounoyounoyou 11y ago
  San Fransisco is no where near the top when you measure population density, other cities can fit more people in less space, San Francisco is not unique, it simply represents the failure of local laws. Also, what's with constant 'gub' slurs, are people on HN little children who must insult people who are willing to criticize inept policy makers?
  - bsder 11y ago
    > San Fransisco is no where near the top when you measure population density, other cities can fit more people in less space, San Francisco is not unique, it simply represents the failure of local laws. Actually, you are factually wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... San Francisco is only behind New York, Los Angeles, and Miami in density. It's probably in or close to the top 20 in Europe. Sure, none of our cities compares to anything in Asia. We also don't seem to like to live that dense. > Also, what's with constant 'gub' slurs, are people on HN little children who must insult people who are willing to criticize inept policy makers? Invoking a lack of regulations as proof of success when the factual metrics (Houston's population density is ridiculously, laughably low) easily refute said statement is going to provoke a response appropriate for someone who clearly is impervious to fact.
beatpanda 11y ago
>I have been a part-time homesharer You have not. You are a rentier. You are running a business. Please stop this violence against the English language. I use hospitality exchange websites to actually share my home, that is offer my home as a place to stay free of charge. What people do on AirBnB, VRBO, and others is not sharing, it's commerce, and we have different words for describing that. Appropriating the language of mutual aid and generosity to describe a business transaction is insulting. Please stop it.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Yeah I agree that abuse of "sharing" as a term is silly. I'm no longer a software designer. I'm a "Software Design Knowledge Sharer".
- joeevans1000 11y ago
  Absolutely agree. He tipped his hand a little there. It's clear at the end he may be biased against the proposition for personal reasons. He cites very valid reasons against the proposition, but these are points for adjustment in the proposal down the road. Something like this will pass sooner or later in one form or another. The basic gist of the proposition will be approved by some means sooner or later.
rl3 11y ago
Serious question: has subterranean housing ever been considered for SF? If you can't build out or up, may as well build under. Feasibility aside, the only problem I see is it'd create a literal underclass—as opposed to the proverbial one that exists now as a result of absurd rent prices.
- smsm42 11y ago
  Or you can just live outside of San Francisco, and take 20 min train :)
- steven2012 11y ago
  It's either bedrock you'd have to drill through, or sand. I don't think it's a good place to have underground dwelling.
- eru 11y ago
  > If you can't build out or up, may as well build under. You can only not build up because of regulation. Building under probably comes with regulation, too.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  Going down more than a floor gets stupidly expensive. The underclass would be the ones on the surface.

238 points by _sentient 11y ago

If you had to divide the world into people who are pro or anti airbnb then I am anti-airbnb. But prop F is horrible beyond belief.

TranquilMarmot 11y ago
Why would you say you are anti-airbnb? Just curious if it's their business practices, renters themselves, or what. I've only had positive experiences with airbnb.
- lemworld 11y ago
  I also have had only positive experiences with Airbnb, though I've only stayed in "whole apartment" listings. Maybe the OP had some negative experiences with a host they stayed with?
- beachstartup 11y ago
  i'm anti-airbnb. i prefer to stay in hotels or professionally managed vacation rental units. for example, there's absolutely ZERO chance a hotel will cancel your room on you 12 hours before you show up in europe.
  - omarrr 11y ago
    > there's absolutely ZERO chance a hotel will cancel your room on you 12 hours before you show up in europe. wrong
  - kleinsch 11y ago
    Clearly you've never showed up at a hotel that's full despite having a reservation. I have.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    Not in Europe, but I've had it happen twice in the US. Once in Dallas, once in Avalon on Catalina Island. (That one was, "Um, sorry, we only have you booked for one night, and we don't have any openings for the second night.")
  - morgante 11y ago
    It sounds like you personally prefer not to stay in an AirBnB. That's fine. I likewise prefer hotels to AirBnBs. But why are you anti-airbnb?
  - austenallred 11y ago
    Exactly that has happened to me probably half a dozen times
- slg 11y ago
  I'm not specifically anti-Airbnb, but I'm anti "disruption is euphemism for just ignoring the law". It is common with companies like Uber, Airbnb, and the most recent uproar is over DraftKings and FanDuel. These companies have a disregard for the law as part of their business model and that rubs me the wrong way.
  - bcoates 11y ago
    There is a specific, long-standing exception in Federal gambling laws for what DraftKings and FanDuel is doing. They're not ignoring or even bending the law. The weasel-wording they use in their ads is to get around TV network (and sports league) squeamishness about running ads for sports betting.
    - slg 11y ago
      There might be a federal exception for most of their games, but the exception might not apply to all of their games. There are also several states where their games are pretty clearly illegal and these companies are just operating there until they either get shutdown or get enough lobbying power to push through their own exceptions.
- zorpner 11y ago
  Exploitation of marginal utility is fundamentally disconcerting, and it should be -- as tech people, we could think of it as being paid for time spent in a chair, or lines of code. It exploits an inefficiency which exists because of an absolute measurement that mis-assesses the situation. In the case of housing, at the basic level, we pay a monthly rate in order to have a place to sleep (and maybe live & eat). But embedded in our rules and laws are assumptions about how that works, and one of those core assumptions is stability (that is, people who make this exchange of money for housing will remain in the housing for longer spans). Our noise ordinances are based on long timelines for investigation, monitoring, and enforcement because they embed the assumption of stable tenancy. Our building codes assume certain occupancies and our maintenance schedules assume certain rates of wear. Our building security practices assume that people with the keys have an invested interest in restricting access. These assumptions may or may not be desirable, but they exist, and because of their existence renting an apartment (I have different feelings regarding owned single-family dwellings) for short-term AirBnB-style rentals violates not only the social contract with neighbors, but the unwritten contract involving a number of ambient practices with potentially negative consequences. I'm not 100% against short-term subletting, and I'm certainly not against having relatives stay over, for example. But this is a classic example of both money and automation fundamentally changing an existing practice -- people are "doing the same thing", but at a scale and in a way that results in an emergent difference.
  - IIAOPSW 11y ago
    wadr why is any of this "bad". I agree 100% with everything you said about built in assumptions in our laws yet I come to the opposite conclusion that such laws ought to be diminished. IMO the assumption of stability creates a de facto serfdom in which people are tied to the land and don't even realize it. If the best opportunity of your life suddenly popped up half way around the globe, how fast can you be on a plane? For me the answer is "next flight out". I do not mean to say that having a permanent traditional life is less desirable to some people. I simply think that the laws of our land should respect freedom of choice and thus not bias any particular lifestyle. I think it is especially egregious to have laws telling people what they can and cannot do with their own home in a manner that has no tangible effect on their neighbors. I find it dubious (and empirically unsupported) that the presence of airbnb guests has any measurable effect on any neighborhood.
- geebee 11y ago
  This is a (slightly updated) repost of an earlier response of mine on this topic. Everyone has an opinion about airbnb. Here's my big worry. San Francisco's population of children has plummeted in my lifetime (I grew up in SF in the 70s). In this time, I think it has gone from about 22% to a current rate of 14% or so. I guess it's just important to me that SF continue to be a place people are from, rather than a place where young people move prior to having families, or (increasingly) a place where empty nesters move and enjoy the city after having families. Here's the thing, I consider this to be a very economically vulnerable stretch of life. I have two kids, in SFUSD, and I'm starting to see just how colossal a disadvantage a family with two kids would be in a bidding war against someone who intends to put the extra bedrooms in a SFH or a 3 bedroom apartment on airbnb instead. It's no secret that housing is in short supply in SF, and that the price of a house or apartment in SF reflects what the highest bidder is able to pay. It's also probably not surprising that kids are very expensive. A two income family (pretty tough to live in SF if you aren't) means daycare - and daycare costs, conservatively, over $2,000 a month per kid. Even if they're in SFUSD ("free"), after care at school with run you about $4,000 a year per kid, and summer camps will add another $3000 or so per kid, if you're doing things the inexpensive way. Now, imagine that a family with two kids now has to compete against a bidder who plans to put the "spare" bedrooms on airbnb, and who factors that into the bid. The family has two very expensive, non-revenue generating children. The airbnb buyer has a massive advantage here, and I see it as another factor that could potentially put massive new pressures on an already collapsing population of families with children. It could also reduce turnover - someone who no longer needs the extra bedrooms and might have in the past downsized (opening up a SFH for a new family) now rents the bedrooms out full time on airbnb. Sure, these problems could have existed with permanent, long term tenants, but I do think that it was less likely. Airbnb definitely makes it far easier and more profitable to do this - this is one big reason why the company is so large and profitable itself. Is this happening? I don't know, I don't have the data. Until then, it's just a fear, though not (in my opinion, obviously) an unfounded one. But if they company won't open up the data and recognize the possible danger, my guess is that the public will support strict regulations.
  - bsimpson 11y ago
    I'm curious what you think of all the young people who move into the city after college and become roommates with one another. I've lived with people who make $50,000 per year, and with people who make 2 or 3 times that much. Because studios and one-bedrooms have become so expensive, we've started renting spaces with anywhere from 2 to 6 bedrooms. Having 6 adults who can afford to collectively pay $9000+ a month bidding against you has got to be almost as much fun as bidding against someone who's going to Airbnb the extra rooms, but at the end of the day, we all need somewhere to live.
thechao 11y ago
I can't even possibly fathom any reason to be either pro or anti airbnb. It's like being pro- or anti- fuchsia, to me. Could you explain why you don't like airbnb? Did the CEO kick you in the puppies, or something?
- pbreit 11y ago
  It's more like being pro or con U2 or bee stings. How could you not have an opinion? Personally, I think AirBnB has not done a very good job helping communities figure out what the best situation should be. Many/most leases and HOAs forbid short-term leases for very good reason and yet AirBnB turns an eye. And for people who own their residences, many areas are zoned non-commercial, again for very good reasons, and AirBnB turns an eye. Prop F looks terrible but if it somehow manages to pass, AirBnB has no one to blame but itself for not participating constructively in a reasonable solution.
  - fredkbloggs 11y ago
    I find it very easy to not have an opinion. Whether my neighbor wants to rent out part of his property via airbnb, craigslist, or not at all makes no difference to me. It does not affect my quality of life, does not interfere with my enjoyment of my own property, and is a private transaction among 3 (or more) parties of which I am not one. I just don't care, at all. That doesn't mean that his tenants might not cause me problems, but in that case I will deal with the tenants themselves and/or my neighbor concerning the actual problem. Such things have nothing to do with airbnb and can and do happen regardless of whether tenants are short- or long-term (or the owners themselves). People who are either pro-airbnb because they feel it makes some kind of political or economic statement or places them into some kind of club they like, or are anti-airbnb because they are busybodies and like to find things to be outraged over or similarly feel that being so places them in a club they like, find it impossible to imagine having no opinion of airbnb. Personally, I find it impossible to imagine myself in either of those camps. To each of us the limits of our own imagination, I suppose.
    - tmuir 11y ago

idlewords 11y ago

This is a really laudable write-up, whether or not you agree with prop F. The problem of "sounds good in principle" propositions that are terribly or deceptively drafted is one that makes every California election a minefield.

cheepin 11y ago
That's why a strangely sound election strategy is to just vote no on every proposition. Most of them have heavy corporate sponsorship and are written to deceive the public.
- DiabloD3 11y ago
  I don't know why this guy is being downvoted. I've heard the exact same thing from many friends of mine who have or still do live in SF: just vote no on all of them, and force the city to do it's job by legislating the usual way.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    Downvotes on HN are... strange and capricious. Things that are downvoted for no apparent reason do tend to get voted back up, though. (I wish there was a meta.n.y.c where we could discuss things like this. Alas.)
- azernik 11y ago
  And even if you are willing to put in the time to read some props and convince yourself they're a good idea, vote no on all the ones you can't be bothered to research.
- skuhn 11y ago
  I find the proposition system extremely aggravating. Even for propositions that I largely or wholly agree with I have to ask myself: does this deserve to be an amendment of the state constitution or city charter? That's the power that voter initiatives essentially have, after all. When you think about it that way, they almost all look pretty ridiculous. Should the San Francisco city charter have an amendment about whether one particular construction project in 2014 can be built at a certain height? Should we have a ballot initiative every time a new building needs to be built? That might make sense in some alternate reality if we lived in a direct democracy with routine voting and people actually informed themselves about the issues they were deciding. I think it's pretty safe to say that we aren't living in that world today.

Mz 11y ago

Wow: This is where it’s clear the authors overreached and created a toxic spill waiting to happen. If the City finds you did indeed host someone or assisted someone else as such, even for one night, then the City can take action against you. But then it gets absolutely bonkers. If you didn’t host anyone, or it was just your Aunt Rose visiting for the weekend, then your cranky neighbor can still sue you anyway, and the City has to help them do it. And we’re not just talking about filing suit so the City can collect its fines and fees, but filing for “special damages” that the neighbors get to keep for themselves. This sounds incredibly bad.

abalone 11y ago
It's a bit overblown. Civil lawsuits cost money to prosecute, so they're unlikely to be pursued unless there's a good chance of winning.
- cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
  Have you ever lived in a community with an HOA? Some of the people there take finding violations, infractions, and actionable offenses as their second job, and will not hesitate to sue you just because. So enabling these people by requiring the city to help them sue is like dumping a tanker full of kerosene on a forest fire.
  - abalone 11y ago
    No doubt the point of the law is to tap into community activism. But it's different from suing your neighbor over the hedge you don't like. Prop F is much more objective and substantive about what constitutes a violation than your typical HOA covenant: illegal hosting. Neighbors and their legal teams are unlikely to sue over that unless they think they can really prove a violation.
- Mz 11y ago
  I wasn't really thinking of the "you could get sued" angle so much as the "you could get sued BECAUSE you let your Aunt visit for the weekend" angle. It sounds like the law basically outlaws having family come visit, among other things. It sounds just fucking crazy to me. Though I don't live in SF and likely never will, so I guess if SF wants to get even crazier than it already is, it can. I have no power to vote in city level stuff in SF.

on_ 11y ago

I Have Read this Medium Post. The author makes a great case against Prop F, prop F seems like a totally shitty law and isn't going to fix the housing problem. It sounds like that isn't what the law is about anyway, but there is a great way to fix the housing problem. The argument he seems to allude to in his notes, is that people seem to choose sides based on their sentiment surrounding the current resedential/housing market. In economics there are 2 forces at the heart of most problems. These are called "supply" and "demand" and they govern price. SF has not been keeping up with it's infrastructure, is a decade behind in new construction, and building new resedential properties will take ~5-10 years to complete. They are not actively building properties that will sufficiently meet demand even now. So this won't go away. Unfortunately, people who paid a lot for houses have a vested interest in not raising supply, and the amount of regulation surrounding new construction creates massive amounts of friction. It will be interesting to see how this problem get's solved. I agree with the author though: It is not going to be Prop F.

ubernostrum 11y ago
Of course, California also interferes with the market to discourage selling real estate. Proposition 13 disconnected property tax rates from the value of the property (by capping the increase in assessed value at 2% per year, far below the increase in actual market value). Which created a massive incentive to hold real estate as long as possible without selling, since the only time the tax rate can reset to being based on market value is at the time of sale.
- gnopgnip 11y ago
  This is true but in most cases it doesn't matter because your next best alternative is not changed. If you have owned a home for 10 years and want to buy a new home in another area, you will still want to sell your home. If you just moved to CA and want to own a home, you will still want to buy despite prop 13.
  - bmelton 11y ago
    > If you have owned a home for 10 years and want to buy a new home in another area, you will still want to sell your home. Actually, as an outsider looking in, the incentives seem set up such that you'd be far more inclined to rent your existing home than sell it.

pbreit 11y ago

AirBnB needs to step up and suggest what it thinks are some of the right ways to handle this. The fact is, many/most leases and HOAs forbid short term rentals, and for good reasons. As well, many areas are zoned non-commercial, again for good reasons. But people certainly should have some degree of autonomy when it comes to their personal property. The question is, what is it? What I never understood is why short term rental regulations aren't modeled more closely off BnB laws than hotel laws. Many jurisdictions have BnB laws and AirBnBs obviously compare much more closely to BnBs. BnBs typically have lighter regulation, different taxes, are frequently in residential areas, etc.

bsder 11y ago
> But people certainly should have some degree of autonomy when it comes to their personal property. The question is, what is it? That is why we elect people. To answer these kinds of hard questions. > What I never understood is why short term rental regulations aren't modeled more closely off BnB laws than hotel laws. Part of the whole kerfuffle is because AirBnB was encouraging people to break the laws that actually existed. For example, if I buy a house in an area zoned "residential", I don't expect to have someone next to me running different people in an out every week as part of AirBnB. If you want to do that you should have to be zoned "commercial", thanks. Then, we'll get to discuss this at the next council meeting when you ask for a zoning exemption. If it's your hunting lodge, probably nobody is going to object. If it's right next to the elementary school, people are probably going to complain. etc.
- fraserharris 11y ago
  The heart of your argument is that there is some clear distinction between residential and commercial which doesn't actually exist. Residential properties have always been used for profit - its called an apartment. These visitors are renting in a residential area precisely because they want a residential experience. The "burden" on your neighbors from short-term visitors is highly overblown. What actual impact on the elementary school is short-term visitors going to have? Is their driving to & from the home ever so more frequent than a full-time occupant? Do you think they are having rowdy parties despite self-selecting to stay in a residential neighborhood? Or that they would be a pedophile (which federal laws already ban from staying within a short distance from an elementary school?)

No1 11y ago

I saw some campaign propaganda today. One side of the flier has a guy named Aaron Peskin imploring me to vote yes on Prop F and Prop I. Prop F is the mess thoughtfully critiqued in this write-up, Prop I is a moratorium on building new market-rate housing. Oh, and he's on the "more affordable rent" campaign platform, because if you want to make rent more affordable, clearly the best way is by preventing construction of market-rate housing. It's like SF voters are brain-dead. The flip side of the flier derided another candidate. If the point of the flier was to make me aware of which candidate to not to vote for, mission accomplished.

geebee 11y ago
Prop I is just a moratorium in the mission right? Doesn't really matter, I think it's a bad idea as well. However, I think you may find that voters are far more opposed to prop I than prop F. My guess is that if someone supports I, they will almost certainly support F, but not the other way around. Time will tell, though.
thrwwy707 11y ago
>Prop I is a moratorium on building new market-rate housing Are these people completely insane? Shouldn't there be propositions for denser zoning, land reclamation, or other measures that would increase the SF housing stock? Houston has famously lax zoning laws, and as a consequence has seen much greater population growth (31% vs 18% from 1980-2010 per wikipedia) yet experienced none of these same problems.
- MCRed 11y ago
  They're actually operating in a way that is very profitable to them. If you own property- a house or business real estate- you want a moratorium on new supply. Because not giving new supply will cause the value of your current property to go up. Of course its an "anti-affordable housing" position... but it's not insane. The anti-development types are taking a very profitable position for themselves.
- bsder 11y ago
  Actually, it would seem that San Francisco's (population density 18,187/sq mi (7,022/km2)) zoning laws worked much better than Houston's lack thereof (population density (3,662/sq mi (1,414/km2)). However, the real problem is that San Francisco is water locked on three sides and boundary locked on the fourth. It has no way of adding housing that doesn't offend some entrenched interest.

gkop 11y ago

The Sharebetter campaign website mentioned is totally biased, it's true, and it does seem likely that hotel interests are in no small part behind Yes on F. And I have no doubt F contains (perhaps really bad!) flaws. But this Medium post is also rife with misleading statements and hyperbole, and therefore hypocritical in light of the author's "here's the facts" tone (not a huge surprise since the author earns income from Airbnb, but still annoying): > (Imagine if we were living under the “MySpace Law” of 2006, eh?) Hyperbole and strawman; who is calling it the "Airbnb Law"? > to assist anyone to offer (emphasized twice) > What does “assist” mean? Cleaning a house before guests arrive? Proofreading someone’s listing? Helping a family member find temporary housing? Nobody knows because it’s undefined in the text, even in the lengthy Definitions section. The judge will decide what it means. Clearly this is referring to the marketplaces and holding them accountable. If I can figure that out, any judge can. > But wait, there’s more! How do you feel about criminal penalties? ... Six months? (in jail) The author is a "long-time SF resident" and pretending that an SF judge would want to jail somebody over renting out on Airbnb illegally? > If you host someone in a room in your home for less than 30 days, you best not miss a quarterly report of dates and durations. You’ll be violating the new law. If it's a paid rental. That's the whole point of the law! In order to regulate the short-term rentals, the city needs you to report your rentals. And remember, up until this year it was completely illegal to rent for less than 30 days. > Why are in-laws banned, even for one night per year? Nobody knows. The reason Prop F bans in-laws that they are a hot-button issue, generally speaking, to do with the legality of the construction of the units and the connection thereof with new rent-controlled housing units (IE the city may be willing to bless your unpermitted in-law, if you rent it out under rent control). ps. did anybody else get "Aw snap!" opening the post in Chrome?

toby 11y ago
> The author is a "long-time SF resident" and pretending that an SF judge would want to jail somebody over renting out on Airbnb illegally? It seems like giving judges that power because "they obviously won't use it" has gotten us into a lot of trouble in the past.
- gkop 11y ago

timr 11y ago

It's really quite remarkable that you can know so little about something, yet be so judgmental about it at the same time. Go 'mericuh! Prop I is a temporary (18 month) moratorium in one neighborhood (the Mission), for only a limited subset of projects, coupled with the requirement that the city has to create a "neighborbood stabilization plan" by the end of that period [1]. It is not a "moratorium on building new market-rate housing", as you say. The idea is that the Mission is undergoing a land-grab by speculators, that poor people are losing (they are), and that the battle will be over by the time a coherent plan is formulated to do anything about it. Whether or not you believe this to be the correct approach, it does nobody any good to mischaracterize it as something that is obviously and painfully stupid. I realize it's not at all fashionable on HN to point out that life is more complicated than chapter one, paragraph one of a high-school economics textbook...but prop I might actually be a good idea over here in the real world, where actual poor people are being evicted from the only places they can afford in the city, at alarming rates. [1] http://ballotpedia.org/City_of_San_Francisco_Mission_District_Housing_Moratorium_Initiative,_Proposition_I_(November_2015) http://ballotpedia.org/City_of_San_Francisco_Mission_Distric...

toby 11y ago
Just want to point out that some of us have read the full text of the Proposition, know exactly what it does, and the rationale, and still think it will be completely ineffective. For example, SF's Chief Economist: http://sfcontroller.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=6742 http://sfcontroller.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid...
- timr 11y ago
  The point of the moratorium is not to affect prices; it's to give the city a chance to come up with a plan that will protect affordable housing in this one neighborhood, without losing the ability to act. Viewed in that light, this report is a vote for the plan, not against it: it gives a little breathing room, and probably won't affect prices either way. Whether or not it "works" is entirely speculative: someone has to come up with an actual solution in the longer term. I believe the advocates of this proposition want the city to buy the remaining vacant lots in the Mission, and use them to build affordable housing projects, but I could be wrong about that.

luckydata 11y ago

reading the proposition would help, but that's beside the point ain't it? Someone really needed to let us know how fantastic things are when the gubmint gets out of the way. Got it.

noyounoyounoyou 11y ago
Get over your self satisfied prejudices and actually think for a minute. Other cities don't have the same housing crisis as San Francisco and guess what, those cities also don't have bizarre and impossible restrictions on new constructions. So yeah, it is the city government causing the problem and suggestioning they only need another 18 months to come up with a plan is myopoc bullshit, they've had twenty years and still failed. So so so amazing how people will refuse to actually examine their assumptions.
- dang 11y ago
  > Get over your self satisfied prejudices and actually think for a minute > tells me all i need to know of your cognitive powers We've banned this account for breaking the HN guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - noyounoyounoyou 11y ago
    Cool dude, continue your BS Mod policy that allows group think and personal insults but ban the account that points out your double standard.
dang 11y ago
Please stop posting uncivil comments to Hacker News. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281311 and marked it off-topic.

bsder 11y ago

Edit: Thread parent lost due to moderator detach: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10281311 Houston also has four freakin' beltways (I610, TX 8, TX 6, and TX 99). Comparing a city that is the poster child for "sprawl" with a chunk of real estate that is more than a little landfill and locked on 3 sides with water is more than a little disingenuous. Houston's second beltway would encircle San Mateo, some of Oakland, and Sausalito if transplanted to San Fransico. If transplanted to San Francisco, Houston's fourth beltway (TX 99--currently under construction) would encompass almost all of San Pablo bay, Walnut Creek (maybe even as far as Concord), easily all of Oakland, Hayward, and Redwood City. And be more than 50% underwater. The differences are more than the "gubmint reg-you-lashion" my good man.

noyounoyounoyou 11y ago
San Fransisco is no where near the top when you measure population density, other cities can fit more people in less space, San Francisco is not unique, it simply represents the failure of local laws. Also, what's with constant 'gub' slurs, are people on HN little children who must insult people who are willing to criticize inept policy makers?
- bsder 11y ago
  > San Fransisco is no where near the top when you measure population density, other cities can fit more people in less space, San Francisco is not unique, it simply represents the failure of local laws. Actually, you are factually wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... San Francisco is only behind New York, Los Angeles, and Miami in density. It's probably in or close to the top 20 in Europe. Sure, none of our cities compares to anything in Asia. We also don't seem to like to live that dense. > Also, what's with constant 'gub' slurs, are people on HN little children who must insult people who are willing to criticize inept policy makers? Invoking a lack of regulations as proof of success when the factual metrics (Houston's population density is ridiculously, laughably low) easily refute said statement is going to provoke a response appropriate for someone who clearly is impervious to fact.

beatpanda 11y ago

>I have been a part-time homesharer You have not. You are a rentier. You are running a business. Please stop this violence against the English language. I use hospitality exchange websites to actually share my home, that is offer my home as a place to stay free of charge. What people do on AirBnB, VRBO, and others is not sharing, it's commerce, and we have different words for describing that. Appropriating the language of mutual aid and generosity to describe a business transaction is insulting. Please stop it.

MichaelGG 11y ago
Yeah I agree that abuse of "sharing" as a term is silly. I'm no longer a software designer. I'm a "Software Design Knowledge Sharer".
joeevans1000 11y ago
Absolutely agree. He tipped his hand a little there. It's clear at the end he may be biased against the proposition for personal reasons. He cites very valid reasons against the proposition, but these are points for adjustment in the proposal down the road. Something like this will pass sooner or later in one form or another. The basic gist of the proposition will be approved by some means sooner or later.

rl3 11y ago

Serious question: has subterranean housing ever been considered for SF? If you can't build out or up, may as well build under. Feasibility aside, the only problem I see is it'd create a literal underclass—as opposed to the proverbial one that exists now as a result of absurd rent prices.

smsm42 11y ago
Or you can just live outside of San Francisco, and take 20 min train :)
steven2012 11y ago
It's either bedrock you'd have to drill through, or sand. I don't think it's a good place to have underground dwelling.
eru 11y ago
> If you can't build out or up, may as well build under. You can only not build up because of regulation. Building under probably comes with regulation, too.
Dylan16807 11y ago
Going down more than a floor gets stupidly expensive. The underclass would be the ones on the surface.