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Santa Monica convicts its first Airbnb host under tough home-sharing laws

126 points by lnguyen 10y ago

untilHellbanned 10y ago
> As for Shatford, he’s moving to Denver this week, after 13 years of living in Santa Monica. He said he hopes people are more tolerant there. Skeptical.
- danso 10y ago
  Um, tolerant of what? Is he planning to do short term rentals in Denver? If so, has he not looked up their regulations? Because it seems like Denver passed laws that would highly restrict what he was doing in Santa Monica: http://www.denverpost.com/2016/06/13/denver-city-council-considers-short-term-rentals/ http://www.denverpost.com/2016/06/13/denver-city-council-con... (Short term rentals are allowed in primary residences, but not for vacation homes)
  - cmurf 10y ago
    He doesn't care about the law. He didn't care about it in Santa Monica. And he's completely unrepentant in that case. Naturally he's moving on to the next town to see if he can get away with it there.
    - aminok 10y ago
      Yeah we need snuff out the scourge of voluntary market transactions.
      - vidarh 10y ago
        These transactions have affected parties that are not voluntary participants, such as the neighbours. That is the problem.
        aminok 10y ago
        If tenants are disturbing neighbours the owner should be held liable, whether the tenant is a short term renter or a long term renter. Airbnb has an effective mechanism to ensure good guest behavior: ratings. There is no justification for discriminating against all short term renters to prevent neighbours from being disturbed. The affected parties city governments are pandering to are those looking to rent long-term, and they have no legal or moral claim to renting someone else's asset, let alone dictating the rate at which it is rented out.
        c22 10y ago
        But neighbors don't get to rate the renters of the airbnb next door, so who will give them a negative rating? The business owner who does not reside there and is hoping for no repeat customers?
        aminok 10y ago
        If the city can create a law punishing landlords who rent short term, they can create a law punishing landlords whose tenants disturb neighbours. Once the incentive is there, landlords using Airbnb will be sure to monitor guest behavior toward the commons/neighbours, and report misbehaviour in the ratings they give out.
        c22 10y ago
        But we already have a framework of laws governing the business of offering short term rentals. Why is creating and enforcing this new framework better than asking people who want to run hotels to just follow the existing rules? It doesn't sound simpler.
        aminok 10y ago
        The laws violate human rights. People should not have their right to contract denied. Actions that infringe upon the rights of others, like damaging the common area of an apartment building, or creating noise pollution, can be justifiably prohibited, but not actions that are non-infringing and only deemed to be correlated with the infringing action. In other words, prohibiting short term rentals is a form of repression.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  I'm not sympathetic to the guy but he will likely find no friendlier clime in Denver than Santa Monica. Denver metro real-estate is crazy.
  - themartorana 10y ago
    Is there an inner city whose metro area real estate isn't considered crazy against local suburbs?
    - akiselev 10y ago
      Detroit?
bruceb 10y ago
He is renting 5 homes in Santa Monica? Does he own them or is he subletting? Instead of having a law against short term renting it should just be one against renting for more than a total number of days in a year, say 90. That allows people who are out of town to rent but it not be a permanent hotel.
- abannin 10y ago
  SF has a day limit (within certain conditions) but has no way to enforce it. Hence the recent actions to hold the platform accountable & AirBnB suing the city.
- ModernMech 10y ago
  Yes, that sounds sensible, but I was surprised to read that the Santa Monica law restricts renting for less than 30 days for a stay for a whole unit. This would mean I couldn't rent my place for a week while I'm on vacation, which seems wrong to me.
  - an_account 10y ago
    Do people do that often with Airbnb? In my experience (I live in LA), almost all whole residence Airbnbs are long-term rental units that have been converted to short-term rental units
    - douche 10y ago
      I think all of the AirBnBs I have been to (across a few cities in Europe on vacation), it appears that what happened was one half of a couple moved in with the other half, and, with a lease that they couldn't get out of, rented out on AirBnB rather than eating the months of rent for an apartment they wouldn't be living in.
    - YokoZar 10y ago
      There's some fraction of people who put up a listing and then temporarily stay elsewhere when it gets booked. This tends to happen in cities with plenty of rental inventory, as otherwise they just get booked all the time. The "frequent business traveler" type is probably more likely to let out their space when gone than the "going on vacation for one week" type too.
legohorizons 10y ago
Jared can finally have his apartment back!
- pandaman 10y ago
  Wrong city, Santa Monica is in LA.
  - huac 10y ago
    It's a bit of a tortured analogy anyways, since Jared was an Airbnb host, and in this case, the guy is fleeing California.
    - pandaman 10y ago
      And that whole story makes me wonder how is that Aribnb is not overtaken by squatters in CA yet.
- jsemrau 10y ago
  Ah, it is still so long until the next season. http://imgur.com/gVsJood http://imgur.com/gVsJood
cassieramen 10y ago
Is 1,700 units at all meaningful for Santa Monica housing prices? Is it worth the city expending all these resources to stop what seems like a blip on the radar?
- warriormonk5 10y ago
  Population is 90k, average household size is 1.8. Suggesting that it represents ~3.5% of the housing in the city. Market rate for a (very) modest 1 bed is 2k/mo. 2bed is 3k/mo. I wouldn't call it a blip on a radar.
- arebop 10y ago
  There are 50912 housing units in Santa Monica, 36657 of which are rental units [https://www.smgov.net/Departments/HED/eddContent.aspx?id=23577 https://www.smgov.net/Departments/HED/eddContent.aspx?id=235...]. So 1700 is (generously) 4.6%. Not nothing, but how much really? It's complicated but extrapolating from a San Francisco analysis [http://www.sfhac.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Ted-Egan-Presentation.pdf http://www.sfhac.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Ted-Egan-Pre...] we might expect that 4.6% increase in housing supply would result in a 5.8% decrease in prices. For comparison, Santa Monica has seen about a 25% increase in rental prices this year [http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Santa_Monica-California/ http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Santa_Monica-California/]. Maybe somebody else will actually repeat the Egan analysis with Santa Monica-specific regressions and so forth. Perhaps the model itself could be improved. Also, if there are so many people willing to pay so much to spend a night in Santa Monica, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have both long-term and short-term housing? But it doesn't really matter does it? AirBnB is a political issue in all these places and the rabble don't care about your "data" or "logic." They are fed up with high prices and arrogant "disruptive" tech bros and they are ready to take action!
  - cassieramen 10y ago
    I stand corrected, thanks for the info! That's an interesting supply/price analysis. Airbnb really is moving the needle.
  - sjg007 10y ago
themartorana 10y ago
I can't seem to muster the ability to care. I guess this is supposed to seem like a win? Diligently prosecuting serial renters while people who caused worldwide economic collapse commit economic crimes of thousands of degrees beyond this go free makes it difficult to muster empathy. I'm jaded. Apologies.
unethical_ban 10y ago
>Shen, the prosecutor, said city officials received a complaint from someone who had rented one of Shatford’s properties. The woman was surprised to learn that she was renting a unit that was illegal and was uncomfortable with the situation, Shen said Seems pretty ratty to report on something so victimless, especially after participating.
- mdorazio 10y ago
  It's not victimless. Your neighbors are the victims if you illegally rent out your apartment/house on Airbnb. There are good reasons why zoning laws and rental contracts forbid these things.
  - aminok 10y ago
    Victims of what?
    - Mtinie 10y ago
      Victims of the type of abuses and zoning code violations that lead to Airbnb introducing a product feature to try to deal with the bad PR. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a45400/airbnb-animal-house-neighbor-reporting-button/ http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a45400/airbnb-anim...
      - aminok 10y ago
        How can someone be a victim of a zoning code violation? That's like being victimized by a school uniform violation.
    - JohnTHaller 10y ago
      Increase in noise, especially at odd hours. People on vacation keep wildly different hours than most folks who work 9 to 5. So you have the group who is on vacation basically in a "hotel room" sharing a wall with you on a random Tuesday night and you have to get up in the morning. Additionally, "guests" have a tendency to do things like leave doors open or let people in they don't know to apartment buildings. And, unlike hotels, there's no one watching over the front door or security systems to make up for the increase in non-residents in most apartment buildings. There's also the issue that "guests" have a higher tendency to break things. They're on vacation, they don't live there, they don't care is the attitude of a small percentage. If an apartment is rented out on Airbnb, sooner or later you're going to get some of them. And if they break the building's front door or trash the lobby... sorry, but Airbnb's insurance policy doesn't cover that. It only covers things owned by the Airbnb user, not common areas of an apartment building. So, no thank you, I'd prefer that my apartment building was a proper apartment building where residents live here. As opposed to half apartment building, half unlicensed and unregulated pseudo hotel/hostel.
sologoub 10y ago
Santa Monica has become amazingly expensive, but the town has rent control that is even more draconian than SF. For example, unless the lease prohibits adding additional occupants, rent controlled units can be passed from one resident to another without much restriction, as long as original lease is in effect. Ellis evictions require huge compensation sums. As the result, available rental stock is minuscule and prices are rivaling SF. Due to this supply restrictions, what little AirBNB activity goes on, it actually impacts the overall market substantially. Similar situation is in Venice (city of LA). As a condo owner, Santa Monica makes me very uneasy - if I fall on hard times, I may have no choice but to sell, or risk never being able to re-occupy my own home again or have to pay an extortion to do so...
- jordanthoms 10y ago
  That's a great example of how policies backfire - the 'renter-friendly' laws make it incredibly unattractive to rent places and reduce supply, hurting renters.
  - aminok 10y ago
    Renter friendly laws also make it much less attractive to build new units, since they reduce the ROI in doing so.
  - uola 10y ago
    If it wasn't for "renter-friendly" laws many renters would have had to move already or wouldn't have moved there in the first place. It's like saying that programming would be much better if we required everyone to have an engineering degree. It would, but it would also be a different set of programmers. People who got in to programming because it didn't necessarily require a degree wouldn't be very pleased.
- twblalock 10y ago
  Rent control is so bad that almost all economists are opposed to it, and they rarely agree so strongly about other topics.
werkschuwtuig 10y ago
online rental platforms such as Airbnb could also be fined if they refuse to turn over addresses of rentals that failed to register. This is the part where it is going to get funny, and which will pretty much help shaping the future. So, they are going to fine an online rental platform conveniently located in Argentina that settles all payments in bitcoin? As you can imagine, it will not make Airbnb any more popular if they "turn over" their users. In a version 2.0 iteration of the concept, the platform will just shut its ears for any of that. Of course, then they will be attacked through the payment method, but that is where bitcoin kicks in. In order to make online things comply, you need to strangle their cash inflow. However, if you do not kill it, you will only make it stronger. Bitcoin is really the elephant in the room. Goverments are making lots of trade expensive or impossible unless they are setted in bitcoin. That is pushing the value of bitcoin through the roof. Hence, the final shape of the system, adjusting its shape attack after attack, until it finally has become unassailable.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Except that property rental always have a final thing to attack: Ownership of the property. There are certainly businesses that may become hard to force to comply with laws due to Bitcoin, but property rentals are far down the list, given that there are few things that are harder to move out of "troublesome" jurisdictions.
  - werkschuwtuig 10y ago
    Agreed. The property is unmovable. However, how would they get the information that someone is short-term renting a particular room, flat, or house? It is not enough to prove that this guest is staying in that location. He may just claim to be a friend, especially, if he stands to lose a security deposit on the platform when claiming anything else. The regulator will also have to prove that this person has been paying for his guesthood. You see, in so-called no-go zones in western Europe, the police no longer walk around on foot, because of the dangerous youngsters (usually of Muslim creed), who become impossibly aggressive if they see the police venturing in what they consider to be their neighbourhood. In other words, these places are a bit like Bagdad, where you need armoured vehicles and entire platoons to collect something as menial as outstanding city tax bill. Therefore, physically inspecting houses for guests may not necessarily be feasible either. They would not want angry Hispanics running after them with big knives ...
loudin 10y ago
Why can't we compromise a bit here? I don't think many people have issues with folks renting out their place for a few weeks during the year, but buying property and using it to attract vacationers to a residential area is very different. It can change the city by causing businesses to cater towards more tourists and to reduce available housing stock. What if people could only rent out their primary residence for no more than half the year unless the property is exempt as a vacation home? Perhaps this could be a good compromise for cities to encourage Airbnb while effectively banning the practice of buying homes exclusively for Airbnbers.
- bronson 10y ago
  It might still profitable to rent the house for the busy season and let it sit vacant the other half of the year. A friend who owns three VRBOs in Santa Cruz basically does that. (he's a decent guy but an opportunistic and terrible landlord)
  - tempestn 10y ago
    Perhaps a lower limit then. No more than 10 weeks per year maybe. Or 8.
  - Broken_Hippo 10y ago
    It is possible to think through the law and write it well to avoid that sort of situation. In this case, a clause stating that 1) a primary residence can only be rented out x days a year while the owner is not present, but may be rented an additional x days a year with the owner present 2) A secondary or vacation home can only be rented out x days a year with a minimum of x days between rentals, and the owners must be present at least x days out of year. 3) A non-primary or secondary home may only be leased out x days of the year, with longer x days in between. 4) A unit that would otherwise be a unit for longer habitation can only be rented out a smaller x times a year, and must be offered for long-term renting at competitive prices in between times. 5) All other residences being rented out must be registered and liscenced as a resort or a hotel and uphold the regulations of those. 6. All must register their rentings with the city and obtain the appropriate permits (simple stuff for single home owners looking to supplement income, of course).
seesomesense 10y ago
Rent control can easily be evaded by renting property through AirBNB. Perhaps that is why rent controlled cities like Santa Monica are aggressively shutting down this loophole.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
Discussions under articles about AirBnB, Uber, et al. start to make me wonder recently - why is it so that so many people living in apparently advanced XXI-century civilization need to be explained that following the law is a good thing in general[0]? Like, you know, paying your taxes and not dumping externalities on people around you? How is that not obvious? I mean - should I interpret it as a good sign, of people questioning assumptions to check if they still hold true, or is the society really going so bonkers that the very idea of being a law-abiding citizen is seen in negative light? EDIT - added "in general [0]" and a footnote to clarify. [0] - I mean not "follow all regulations blindly", but "follow regulations by default unless there is a very good reason not to".
- jpadkins 10y ago
  not all laws are good. criticism should be encouraged, so we make the laws better.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Criticism is good, encouraging to break the law and glorification of those to do, in general, is not good in my books.
    - DominikR 10y ago
      It does not work like this. People will not simply criticise new laws that they feel are unjust and then wait for changes. They will simply ignore them. Lawmakers have to carefully consider this and they generally do it.
    - clinta 10y ago
      I suspect that if people weren't willing to break the law we'd probably still have alcohol prohibition. Making a law unenforceable is a very effective way of changing it.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
yladiz 10y ago
Regardless of whether the law is justified or not, it should be very simple for Airbnb to force compliance to these laws. In other words, it should be simple for Airbnb to see a person having multiple properties within this district/city and not allow it if it's against the law, or limit the number of days a person can rent a properly out. However, Airbnb doesn't seem to do this. Airbnb is a great platform, which I've used both domestically (in USA) and internationally, and I really appreciate what it offers. What I don't understand is the flaunting of laws by saying it's not their problem, that they shouldn't police their users and that their users are responsible for what they do. I can understand the argument, but it's not difficult to handle these cases and Airbnb should really do more (arguably their due diligence) to handle them.
- 15thandwhatever 10y ago
  At first, I think this would be just as complicated to enforce as US municipality taxes. There are several taxes to be levied within a given state, with the rates changing based on county/city borders (see New York), regional cooperatives that span multiple towns but not the entire county (see Illinois), multiple taxing districts within a town (see Connecticut). That doesn't even get into the fact of taxes that are levied just for your industry (see the extra taxes on your car rental bill for picking up at the airport, or Arizona's former shared rental facility recovery fee for recouping the cost of building a new rental car facility). This was Amazon's argument against collecting state sales tax. But taking on the opposite view for a second, and siding with you... While it's complicated, all the incumbents in the hotel, rental car, and taxi industry that we're trying to displace for "not being agile enough", have spent the necessary man-hours to build the necessary components into their system to identify a taxable situation and properly deduct and remit taxes. They've hired own in-house staff and relied on external accounting firms to do their due diligence of regulatory matters (even to the extent of arguing against particular new taxes or tax increases). Hertz, Hilton, and Greyhound all operate within these "heavily taxed" confines (in terms of effort, not absolute dollars), and communities/states have gotten used to their compliance, which in turn funds the various operating coffers of a municipality/region/state. So yeah, why not expect the same from Airbnb?

126 points by lnguyen 10y ago

> As for Shatford, he’s moving to Denver this week, after 13 years of living in Santa Monica. He said he hopes people are more tolerant there. Skeptical.

danso 10y ago
Um, tolerant of what? Is he planning to do short term rentals in Denver? If so, has he not looked up their regulations? Because it seems like Denver passed laws that would highly restrict what he was doing in Santa Monica: http://www.denverpost.com/2016/06/13/denver-city-council-considers-short-term-rentals/ http://www.denverpost.com/2016/06/13/denver-city-council-con... (Short term rentals are allowed in primary residences, but not for vacation homes)
- cmurf 10y ago
  He doesn't care about the law. He didn't care about it in Santa Monica. And he's completely unrepentant in that case. Naturally he's moving on to the next town to see if he can get away with it there.
  - aminok 10y ago
    Yeah we need snuff out the scourge of voluntary market transactions.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      These transactions have affected parties that are not voluntary participants, such as the neighbours. That is the problem.
      - aminok 10y ago
        If tenants are disturbing neighbours the owner should be held liable, whether the tenant is a short term renter or a long term renter. Airbnb has an effective mechanism to ensure good guest behavior: ratings. There is no justification for discriminating against all short term renters to prevent neighbours from being disturbed. The affected parties city governments are pandering to are those looking to rent long-term, and they have no legal or moral claim to renting someone else's asset, let alone dictating the rate at which it is rented out.
        c22 10y ago
        But neighbors don't get to rate the renters of the airbnb next door, so who will give them a negative rating? The business owner who does not reside there and is hoping for no repeat customers?
        aminok 10y ago
        If the city can create a law punishing landlords who rent short term, they can create a law punishing landlords whose tenants disturb neighbours. Once the incentive is there, landlords using Airbnb will be sure to monitor guest behavior toward the commons/neighbours, and report misbehaviour in the ratings they give out.
        c22 10y ago
        But we already have a framework of laws governing the business of offering short term rentals. Why is creating and enforcing this new framework better than asking people who want to run hotels to just follow the existing rules? It doesn't sound simpler.
        aminok 10y ago
        The laws violate human rights. People should not have their right to contract denied. Actions that infringe upon the rights of others, like damaging the common area of an apartment building, or creating noise pollution, can be justifiably prohibited, but not actions that are non-infringing and only deemed to be correlated with the infringing action. In other words, prohibiting short term rentals is a form of repression.
wavefunction 10y ago
I'm not sympathetic to the guy but he will likely find no friendlier clime in Denver than Santa Monica. Denver metro real-estate is crazy.
- themartorana 10y ago
  Is there an inner city whose metro area real estate isn't considered crazy against local suburbs?
  - akiselev 10y ago
    Detroit?

bruceb 10y ago

He is renting 5 homes in Santa Monica? Does he own them or is he subletting? Instead of having a law against short term renting it should just be one against renting for more than a total number of days in a year, say 90. That allows people who are out of town to rent but it not be a permanent hotel.

abannin 10y ago
SF has a day limit (within certain conditions) but has no way to enforce it. Hence the recent actions to hold the platform accountable & AirBnB suing the city.
ModernMech 10y ago
Yes, that sounds sensible, but I was surprised to read that the Santa Monica law restricts renting for less than 30 days for a stay for a whole unit. This would mean I couldn't rent my place for a week while I'm on vacation, which seems wrong to me.
- an_account 10y ago
  Do people do that often with Airbnb? In my experience (I live in LA), almost all whole residence Airbnbs are long-term rental units that have been converted to short-term rental units
  - douche 10y ago
    I think all of the AirBnBs I have been to (across a few cities in Europe on vacation), it appears that what happened was one half of a couple moved in with the other half, and, with a lease that they couldn't get out of, rented out on AirBnB rather than eating the months of rent for an apartment they wouldn't be living in.
  - YokoZar 10y ago
    There's some fraction of people who put up a listing and then temporarily stay elsewhere when it gets booked. This tends to happen in cities with plenty of rental inventory, as otherwise they just get booked all the time. The "frequent business traveler" type is probably more likely to let out their space when gone than the "going on vacation for one week" type too.

legohorizons 10y ago

Jared can finally have his apartment back!

pandaman 10y ago
Wrong city, Santa Monica is in LA.
- huac 10y ago
  It's a bit of a tortured analogy anyways, since Jared was an Airbnb host, and in this case, the guy is fleeing California.
  - pandaman 10y ago
    And that whole story makes me wonder how is that Aribnb is not overtaken by squatters in CA yet.
jsemrau 10y ago
Ah, it is still so long until the next season. http://imgur.com/gVsJood http://imgur.com/gVsJood

cassieramen 10y ago

Is 1,700 units at all meaningful for Santa Monica housing prices? Is it worth the city expending all these resources to stop what seems like a blip on the radar?

warriormonk5 10y ago
Population is 90k, average household size is 1.8. Suggesting that it represents ~3.5% of the housing in the city. Market rate for a (very) modest 1 bed is 2k/mo. 2bed is 3k/mo. I wouldn't call it a blip on a radar.
arebop 10y ago
There are 50912 housing units in Santa Monica, 36657 of which are rental units [https://www.smgov.net/Departments/HED/eddContent.aspx?id=23577 https://www.smgov.net/Departments/HED/eddContent.aspx?id=235...]. So 1700 is (generously) 4.6%. Not nothing, but how much really? It's complicated but extrapolating from a San Francisco analysis [http://www.sfhac.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Ted-Egan-Presentation.pdf http://www.sfhac.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Ted-Egan-Pre...] we might expect that 4.6% increase in housing supply would result in a 5.8% decrease in prices. For comparison, Santa Monica has seen about a 25% increase in rental prices this year [http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Santa_Monica-California/ http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Santa_Monica-California/]. Maybe somebody else will actually repeat the Egan analysis with Santa Monica-specific regressions and so forth. Perhaps the model itself could be improved. Also, if there are so many people willing to pay so much to spend a night in Santa Monica, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have both long-term and short-term housing? But it doesn't really matter does it? AirBnB is a political issue in all these places and the rabble don't care about your "data" or "logic." They are fed up with high prices and arrogant "disruptive" tech bros and they are ready to take action!
- cassieramen 10y ago
  I stand corrected, thanks for the info! That's an interesting supply/price analysis. Airbnb really is moving the needle.
- sjg007 10y ago

themartorana 10y ago

I can't seem to muster the ability to care. I guess this is supposed to seem like a win? Diligently prosecuting serial renters while people who caused worldwide economic collapse commit economic crimes of thousands of degrees beyond this go free makes it difficult to muster empathy. I'm jaded. Apologies.

unethical_ban 10y ago

>Shen, the prosecutor, said city officials received a complaint from someone who had rented one of Shatford’s properties. The woman was surprised to learn that she was renting a unit that was illegal and was uncomfortable with the situation, Shen said Seems pretty ratty to report on something so victimless, especially after participating.

mdorazio 10y ago
It's not victimless. Your neighbors are the victims if you illegally rent out your apartment/house on Airbnb. There are good reasons why zoning laws and rental contracts forbid these things.
- aminok 10y ago
  Victims of what?
  - Mtinie 10y ago
    Victims of the type of abuses and zoning code violations that lead to Airbnb introducing a product feature to try to deal with the bad PR. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a45400/airbnb-animal-house-neighbor-reporting-button/ http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a45400/airbnb-anim...
    - aminok 10y ago
      How can someone be a victim of a zoning code violation? That's like being victimized by a school uniform violation.
  - JohnTHaller 10y ago
    Increase in noise, especially at odd hours. People on vacation keep wildly different hours than most folks who work 9 to 5. So you have the group who is on vacation basically in a "hotel room" sharing a wall with you on a random Tuesday night and you have to get up in the morning. Additionally, "guests" have a tendency to do things like leave doors open or let people in they don't know to apartment buildings. And, unlike hotels, there's no one watching over the front door or security systems to make up for the increase in non-residents in most apartment buildings. There's also the issue that "guests" have a higher tendency to break things. They're on vacation, they don't live there, they don't care is the attitude of a small percentage. If an apartment is rented out on Airbnb, sooner or later you're going to get some of them. And if they break the building's front door or trash the lobby... sorry, but Airbnb's insurance policy doesn't cover that. It only covers things owned by the Airbnb user, not common areas of an apartment building. So, no thank you, I'd prefer that my apartment building was a proper apartment building where residents live here. As opposed to half apartment building, half unlicensed and unregulated pseudo hotel/hostel.

sologoub 10y ago

Santa Monica has become amazingly expensive, but the town has rent control that is even more draconian than SF. For example, unless the lease prohibits adding additional occupants, rent controlled units can be passed from one resident to another without much restriction, as long as original lease is in effect. Ellis evictions require huge compensation sums. As the result, available rental stock is minuscule and prices are rivaling SF. Due to this supply restrictions, what little AirBNB activity goes on, it actually impacts the overall market substantially. Similar situation is in Venice (city of LA). As a condo owner, Santa Monica makes me very uneasy - if I fall on hard times, I may have no choice but to sell, or risk never being able to re-occupy my own home again or have to pay an extortion to do so...

jordanthoms 10y ago
That's a great example of how policies backfire - the 'renter-friendly' laws make it incredibly unattractive to rent places and reduce supply, hurting renters.
- aminok 10y ago
  Renter friendly laws also make it much less attractive to build new units, since they reduce the ROI in doing so.
- uola 10y ago
  If it wasn't for "renter-friendly" laws many renters would have had to move already or wouldn't have moved there in the first place. It's like saying that programming would be much better if we required everyone to have an engineering degree. It would, but it would also be a different set of programmers. People who got in to programming because it didn't necessarily require a degree wouldn't be very pleased.
twblalock 10y ago
Rent control is so bad that almost all economists are opposed to it, and they rarely agree so strongly about other topics.

werkschuwtuig 10y ago

online rental platforms such as Airbnb could also be fined if they refuse to turn over addresses of rentals that failed to register. This is the part where it is going to get funny, and which will pretty much help shaping the future. So, they are going to fine an online rental platform conveniently located in Argentina that settles all payments in bitcoin? As you can imagine, it will not make Airbnb any more popular if they "turn over" their users. In a version 2.0 iteration of the concept, the platform will just shut its ears for any of that. Of course, then they will be attacked through the payment method, but that is where bitcoin kicks in. In order to make online things comply, you need to strangle their cash inflow. However, if you do not kill it, you will only make it stronger. Bitcoin is really the elephant in the room. Goverments are making lots of trade expensive or impossible unless they are setted in bitcoin. That is pushing the value of bitcoin through the roof. Hence, the final shape of the system, adjusting its shape attack after attack, until it finally has become unassailable.

vidarh 10y ago
Except that property rental always have a final thing to attack: Ownership of the property. There are certainly businesses that may become hard to force to comply with laws due to Bitcoin, but property rentals are far down the list, given that there are few things that are harder to move out of "troublesome" jurisdictions.
- werkschuwtuig 10y ago
  Agreed. The property is unmovable. However, how would they get the information that someone is short-term renting a particular room, flat, or house? It is not enough to prove that this guest is staying in that location. He may just claim to be a friend, especially, if he stands to lose a security deposit on the platform when claiming anything else. The regulator will also have to prove that this person has been paying for his guesthood. You see, in so-called no-go zones in western Europe, the police no longer walk around on foot, because of the dangerous youngsters (usually of Muslim creed), who become impossibly aggressive if they see the police venturing in what they consider to be their neighbourhood. In other words, these places are a bit like Bagdad, where you need armoured vehicles and entire platoons to collect something as menial as outstanding city tax bill. Therefore, physically inspecting houses for guests may not necessarily be feasible either. They would not want angry Hispanics running after them with big knives ...

loudin 10y ago

Why can't we compromise a bit here? I don't think many people have issues with folks renting out their place for a few weeks during the year, but buying property and using it to attract vacationers to a residential area is very different. It can change the city by causing businesses to cater towards more tourists and to reduce available housing stock. What if people could only rent out their primary residence for no more than half the year unless the property is exempt as a vacation home? Perhaps this could be a good compromise for cities to encourage Airbnb while effectively banning the practice of buying homes exclusively for Airbnbers.

bronson 10y ago
It might still profitable to rent the house for the busy season and let it sit vacant the other half of the year. A friend who owns three VRBOs in Santa Cruz basically does that. (he's a decent guy but an opportunistic and terrible landlord)
- tempestn 10y ago
  Perhaps a lower limit then. No more than 10 weeks per year maybe. Or 8.
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  It is possible to think through the law and write it well to avoid that sort of situation. In this case, a clause stating that 1) a primary residence can only be rented out x days a year while the owner is not present, but may be rented an additional x days a year with the owner present 2) A secondary or vacation home can only be rented out x days a year with a minimum of x days between rentals, and the owners must be present at least x days out of year. 3) A non-primary or secondary home may only be leased out x days of the year, with longer x days in between. 4) A unit that would otherwise be a unit for longer habitation can only be rented out a smaller x times a year, and must be offered for long-term renting at competitive prices in between times. 5) All other residences being rented out must be registered and liscenced as a resort or a hotel and uphold the regulations of those. 6. All must register their rentings with the city and obtain the appropriate permits (simple stuff for single home owners looking to supplement income, of course).

seesomesense 10y ago

Rent control can easily be evaded by renting property through AirBNB. Perhaps that is why rent controlled cities like Santa Monica are aggressively shutting down this loophole.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

Discussions under articles about AirBnB, Uber, et al. start to make me wonder recently - why is it so that so many people living in apparently advanced XXI-century civilization need to be explained that following the law is a good thing in general[0]? Like, you know, paying your taxes and not dumping externalities on people around you? How is that not obvious? I mean - should I interpret it as a good sign, of people questioning assumptions to check if they still hold true, or is the society really going so bonkers that the very idea of being a law-abiding citizen is seen in negative light? EDIT - added "in general [0]" and a footnote to clarify. [0] - I mean not "follow all regulations blindly", but "follow regulations by default unless there is a very good reason not to".

jpadkins 10y ago
not all laws are good. criticism should be encouraged, so we make the laws better.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Criticism is good, encouraging to break the law and glorification of those to do, in general, is not good in my books.
  - DominikR 10y ago
    It does not work like this. People will not simply criticise new laws that they feel are unjust and then wait for changes. They will simply ignore them. Lawmakers have to carefully consider this and they generally do it.
  - clinta 10y ago
    I suspect that if people weren't willing to break the law we'd probably still have alcohol prohibition. Making a law unenforceable is a very effective way of changing it.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago

yladiz 10y ago

Regardless of whether the law is justified or not, it should be very simple for Airbnb to force compliance to these laws. In other words, it should be simple for Airbnb to see a person having multiple properties within this district/city and not allow it if it's against the law, or limit the number of days a person can rent a properly out. However, Airbnb doesn't seem to do this. Airbnb is a great platform, which I've used both domestically (in USA) and internationally, and I really appreciate what it offers. What I don't understand is the flaunting of laws by saying it's not their problem, that they shouldn't police their users and that their users are responsible for what they do. I can understand the argument, but it's not difficult to handle these cases and Airbnb should really do more (arguably their due diligence) to handle them.

15thandwhatever 10y ago
At first, I think this would be just as complicated to enforce as US municipality taxes. There are several taxes to be levied within a given state, with the rates changing based on county/city borders (see New York), regional cooperatives that span multiple towns but not the entire county (see Illinois), multiple taxing districts within a town (see Connecticut). That doesn't even get into the fact of taxes that are levied just for your industry (see the extra taxes on your car rental bill for picking up at the airport, or Arizona's former shared rental facility recovery fee for recouping the cost of building a new rental car facility). This was Amazon's argument against collecting state sales tax. But taking on the opposite view for a second, and siding with you... While it's complicated, all the incumbents in the hotel, rental car, and taxi industry that we're trying to displace for "not being agile enough", have spent the necessary man-hours to build the necessary components into their system to identify a taxable situation and properly deduct and remit taxes. They've hired own in-house staff and relied on external accounting firms to do their due diligence of regulatory matters (even to the extent of arguing against particular new taxes or tax increases). Hertz, Hilton, and Greyhound all operate within these "heavily taxed" confines (in terms of effort, not absolute dollars), and communities/states have gotten used to their compliance, which in turn funds the various operating coffers of a municipality/region/state. So yeah, why not expect the same from Airbnb?