8 ms·

Squatter doesn't sit well with Airbnb host

98 points by kqr2 12y ago

klenwell 12y ago
Title (article's own) makes it sound like this is some sort of trend. But unless I missed something, this is just one unfortunate host's struggles with a jerk tenant.
- dang 12y ago
  In that case maybe we'll change the title to use the singular instead of the plural.
  - nathanb 12y ago
    I like the new title better, thanks.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Perhaps Airbnb should post a warning to hosts allowing tenants to rent more than X days if its going to give those tenants renter's rights in their jurisdiction.
- DanBlake 12y ago
  Did you know that if someone rents a airbnb listing in SF for more than 30 days, they can stay there forever , so long as they continue paying the same rate they did from airbnb ? I bet you didnt. In order to get them out, you would need to ellis act or do a owner move in eviction- Both of which cost well over 25k and can only be done once for the lifetime of the property.
zyxley 12y ago
This isn't really Airbnb's problem, though I imagine they could do a better job of showing what lengths of stay would make tenant rights' laws or other legal complications kick in.
padobson 12y ago
This seems to be as much a problem with eviction laws as with Airbnb. In Ohio, the eviction process isn't exactly landlord friendly, but it doesn't require a lawyer either. And in most cases, deadbeat tenants aren't going to show up at the court date anyhow - then it's trivial to get a ruling in your favor. You'll lose out on 60-90 days of rent, but if that bankrupts you, your margins are too tight. And Airbnb has, by far, returned me the highest margins I've ever gotten, so it's certainly worth the risk of squatters.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > You'll lose out on 60-90 days of rent, but if that bankrupts you, your margins are too tight. And if the tenant trashes the place in the meantime? You're not out your margins, you're out actual damages that need to be repaired. Disclaimer: Was a landlord. Once.
  - zo1 12y ago
    That's what insurance is for. And the court system so you can get the tenant to pay back damages. Either that, or filter your tenants a little better. Disclaimer: I know people that got burned by "tenants", and they're resolving it just fine through the legal system.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      Disclaimer: I, and others I know, have been burned by tenants as well. We attempted to resolve it through the legal system. If the tenants have no assets, and no income (which they did have at time of lease execution), you have little to no recourse. A judgement against a stone is useless.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - larrys 12y ago
        Did your property insurance cover the damage? I've had damage happen and my insurance, less dedictible, covered the damage from paint spilled on carpeting. (Got all new carpeting as a result).
gabemart 12y ago
I found a message board thread in which the Airbnb host this article is written about describes the issue and asks for advice. http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/136498-evicting-renter-from-a-vacation-rental-property http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/136498-evictin...
- re-anon 12y ago
  I'm in real estate and was able to locate the owner's condo. It's part of a HOA. The HOA's CCRs forbids leases for "transient or hotel purposes." The typical meaning of this is leases of under 30 days. The CCRs also require that permitted leases be in writing. The sfgate article says that the owner was renting this out for $450/week to help cover her mortgage and expenses so it is probable that some of her activity was in violation of the CCRs. It also sounds like she didn't actually have a written lease with the squatter tenant who booked a 44 day reservation and therefore has tenants rights. I am not a fan of AirBNB but AirBNB doesn't deserve blame for this. This owner thought it would be cool to become a real estate investor and she didn't know what she was doing. Now shes paying the price...
  - calbear81 12y ago
    Sometimes, I think the "friendly" community of AirBnB needs to be a bit more business when dealing with squatter scumbags. Once AirBnB couldn't collect the money, the rental should have been terminated and the host should have immediately call the cops to vacate the property well before the 30 days was up. I'm not sure why they tried to work out something with the renter. Maybe they tried to be "nice" but if some situation starts to smell fishy, handle it quickly.
    - re-anon 12y ago
      You don't get it. The squatter has been in the home for 30 days. On that 30th day he has tenants rights and the owner has to go through the process. If the owner knew what she was doing or hired somebody competent to manage her property she wouldn't be in this situation. AirBNB isn't a property manager. If you don't know what you're doing you shouldn't be renting out your home as a business.
mershad 12y ago
Could someone explain why he is still considered a tenant even though he pays no rent or utilities at the property? I am curious as to why he can't just be considered a trespasser and removed by police.
- MattGrommes 12y ago
  After you are allowed to stay in a home more than 30 days you become a "tenant" and are subject to renter protection laws. I'd imagine these short term rental companies will get much stricter about 30+ stays real soon now.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Does this apply even to people I would allow to stay in my home for free? Or does this only kick in when money changes hands?
    - sjg007 12y ago
      Yep, even free.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Landlord lives in San Francisco. Her unwanted tenant lives in Palm Springs, which is in Riverside county in Southern California. 30-day tenancy rights are a matter of state rather than city/county law.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    The property in question is hundreds of miles from San Francisco.
danso 12y ago
So...help me out here. The host met a stranger and rented out the apartment (even after herself seeing warning signs) in such a way that her renter has renter's rights under California law? I'm relatively young and have never been a landlord: in the pre-Internet days, did landlords not rent to people they didn't know well? Did they not have to comply to certain state laws? If we switched "Airbnb" with "Craigslist" or "San Francisco Chronicle's Classifieds Section"...would this be a story in the SF Chronicle?
- dobbsbob 12y ago
  Yep, media usually hypes these delinquent tenant stories though they are probably rare. Lot's of "Freeman-on-the-land" stories of squatters refusing to pay rent for 1-3 mos and landlord's can't evict them. Every story they interview some shady property management corp who insists all renter laws must be weakened. A story the media hasn't done yet is how often traveling sex workers use Airbnb for incall. 2-3 workers will travel to different cities together and then use the apartment to turn tricks. Perfect incall solution instead of using hotels which charge extra for guests or clamp down on visitors. I'm sure there's a small minority of tenants using Airbnb to import narcotics or fraud hardware like ATM skimmers too, can always claim the previous tenant ordered the box full of drugs and you had no knowledge.
  - fred_durst 12y ago
    Airbnb as an address to get illegal things shipped and dropped off sounds just too easy. So easy to deny responsibility. Even just for using a courier service.
NPMaxwell 12y ago
This highlights how staff who handle emails or calls needs to be part of the business plan of a b-to-c startup. Or at least an explanation of why it's OK to NOT handle customer contacts.
mikeash 12y ago
I'm baffled at how people rent out houses without doing the research first. I bet that if you asked to rent their car, they'd go check it out first. Call their insurance company, find out what the legal requirements are, etc. Yet do the same thing with an item that costs 10, 20, 30 times as much money and people's approach seems to be, hey, free money, woooooo. Maybe it's just a case of only hearing about the rare fools.
- bronson 12y ago
  It's because AirBNB makes becoming a landlord point-and-click simple. "It's so popular and easy! It's a big website, it must be legal!" The moment an AirBNB site for cars comes along, you'll see it.
  - cowsandmilk 12y ago
    RelayRides? JustShareIt? Getaround? etc.
  - frostmatthew 12y ago
    > The moment an AirBNB site for cars comes along, you'll see it. https://relayrides.com/ https://relayrides.com/
    - jbigelow76 12y ago
      It came along... 14 years ago when Zipcar was founded.
      - mikeash 12y ago
        Not remotely similar. Zipcar owns and maintains the cars they rent.
analog31 12y ago
Do hotels have different eviction laws?
- cowsandmilk 12y ago
  yes. This is why many chains have separate long-term stay places and hotels. Most hotels will not let you stay long enough to be a "tenant".
trhway 12y ago
obligatory educational material - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100318/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100318/
fiatmoney 12y ago
The historical solution to this (illegal tenant in an illegal short-term sublet doesn't want to move out) would be to have some vowel-suffixed friends encourage them to move out. Which isn't exactly "nice", but at least has the virtue of being nicely economically efficient.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  I was thinking something similar, the AirBnb host however doesn't think of themselves as doing anything illegal so they constrain their thinking in that way. I have certainly met people over the years who exploit this in others.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- notastartup 12y ago
  that's true, I guess a lot of underground markets, black markets operate under the hand of physical enforcement or intimidation, I guess the more unregulated a market is, even lead to death. ex. drugs, prostitution etc.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Landlord ends up in jail, and property ends up destroyed. Since the landlord probably doesn't have insurance, or has voided that insurance several different ways, it's an expensive method to achieve nothing. And that's if the tenents decide to leave, because they could just stay.
- superuser2 12y ago
  > some vowel-suffixed friends Sorry for OT, but I've never seen this phrasing before. I assume from context that you mean the mafia, but why "vowel-suffixed"?
  - jsmthrowaway 12y ago
    It's a way of saying "Italians" while trying to avoid appearing racist by directly saying it. Many Italian surnames end in a vowel.
leot 12y ago
Sounds like the guy might be using the host's electricity to do bitcoin mining. Super scammy. This kind of thing should be criminal.
- espringe 12y ago
  If the tenant is supposedly blasting the aircon, with the windows open in 114 degree heat ... I'm not sure an alternate explanation is needed. (Not to mention, bitcoin mining requires a lot more than cheap-to-free electricity)
alixander 12y ago
That first sentence is so poorly written.
DanBlake 12y ago
I wrote about this exact situation and the legality's regarding it in 2012. http://harknesslabs.com/post/32179239260/gaming-airbnb-in-san-francisco-courtesy-of-rent-control http://harknesslabs.com/post/32179239260/gaming-airbnb-in-sa... The gist of it, is that San Francisco and California's rental and rent control laws will supersede any private contract you can write. No way around it. If there was a way around it, you can bet that landlords would simply be including clauses in all new leases they say "rent control not valid here". What I wrote in the above article amazingly still stands today. You can even find a 1bedroom in Nob Hill for a affordable 2200 a month! https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1605304 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1605304? There is so much education AirBnB should be doing for their hosts in CA and SF especially. Did you know that if someone rents a airbnb listing in SF for more than 30 days, they can stay there forever, so long as they keep paying rent? Yeah, no mention of that when you create a new listing on the site.
- YokoZar 12y ago
  Well not exactly. If the AirBNB host is a tenant themselves, then the subtenant relationship will end when the AirBNB host vacates the property. Not all SF landlords are opposed to their tenants rerenting the units on AirBNB. Some even deliberately rent for minimums of 30 days, to avoid running into zoning regulations against short term stays. AirBNB promised to start collecting hotel taxes in SF, but such taxes wouldn't apply in this case either.
  - DanBlake 12y ago
    That is not entirely accurate. If you were renting a room in a apartment (you being the master tenant) and you still resided in the apartment in another bedroom AND also showed/informed the new tenant a copy of San Francisco Rules & Regulations 6.15C- then yes, you could evict them. Otherwise, you cant- and the tenant takes over the defacto 'lease' from you. Costa Hawkins (which I believe you are referring to) is a landlord/owner option. You as a tenant cannot initiate it and would be shit out of luck. You might be able to get your landlord to initiate the lawsuit for you, but I doubt they want to come out of pocket on legal expenses on your behalf.
- 12y ago
ForHackernews 12y ago
I have very little sympathy for Airbnb landlords: they want to make a quick buck without following the laws to run a real hotel, then they don't get the legal protections of hotels.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  When honest people fall victim to scam artists, I do sympathize even if they could have avoided it with better legal knowledge.
batbomb 12y ago
Why can't she so 3 day pay or quit (plus eviction) and/or give 30 day notice for chronically late payments?
kaivi 12y ago
I remember reading a story in the recent Priceonomics book about a similar tenant conflict in SF. Tl;dr, a 75-yr-old lady was thrown out into the cold, but only after months of hearings and lots of money wasted on lawyers. Why do such laws exist at all in CA? Why not just send out several warnings in advance, explaining whole situation and the available options for tenant? These two guys are just asking for a good old ass whooping. Throw them out, then let them try and prove that they were renting the place to begin with. Whatever the premises, you could certainly make it be your words against theirs.
aaron695 12y ago
Similar situation with a nanny refusing to leave. http://time.com/2941176/nightmare-nanny-leaving/ http://time.com/2941176/nightmare-nanny-leaving/ Like any business decision you do need to risk manage it. Extremes like this are rare, which is why it's in the news but you do need to be aware of what you're investing in and the risks involved.
Stealx 12y ago
First thought was a meth lab or grow house.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
malandrew 12y ago
AirBnB could just suggest to people to only rent a unit for 29 days, find another AirBnB property for 2-3 days to "break the streak" and the have the person in question return to the unit for another 29-day streak. I would imagine that all you really need to do is break the the contractual relationship into 29-day chunks with a provable different contractual relationship (another AirBnB host) for the interim between sub one month stays.

98 points by kqr2 12y ago

Title (article's own) makes it sound like this is some sort of trend. But unless I missed something, this is just one unfortunate host's struggles with a jerk tenant.

dang 12y ago
In that case maybe we'll change the title to use the singular instead of the plural.
- nathanb 12y ago
  I like the new title better, thanks.
toomuchtodo 12y ago
Perhaps Airbnb should post a warning to hosts allowing tenants to rent more than X days if its going to give those tenants renter's rights in their jurisdiction.
DanBlake 12y ago
Did you know that if someone rents a airbnb listing in SF for more than 30 days, they can stay there forever , so long as they continue paying the same rate they did from airbnb ? I bet you didnt. In order to get them out, you would need to ellis act or do a owner move in eviction- Both of which cost well over 25k and can only be done once for the lifetime of the property.

zyxley 12y ago

This isn't really Airbnb's problem, though I imagine they could do a better job of showing what lengths of stay would make tenant rights' laws or other legal complications kick in.

padobson 12y ago

This seems to be as much a problem with eviction laws as with Airbnb. In Ohio, the eviction process isn't exactly landlord friendly, but it doesn't require a lawyer either. And in most cases, deadbeat tenants aren't going to show up at the court date anyhow - then it's trivial to get a ruling in your favor. You'll lose out on 60-90 days of rent, but if that bankrupts you, your margins are too tight. And Airbnb has, by far, returned me the highest margins I've ever gotten, so it's certainly worth the risk of squatters.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
> You'll lose out on 60-90 days of rent, but if that bankrupts you, your margins are too tight. And if the tenant trashes the place in the meantime? You're not out your margins, you're out actual damages that need to be repaired. Disclaimer: Was a landlord. Once.
- zo1 12y ago
  That's what insurance is for. And the court system so you can get the tenant to pay back damages. Either that, or filter your tenants a little better. Disclaimer: I know people that got burned by "tenants", and they're resolving it just fine through the legal system.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Disclaimer: I, and others I know, have been burned by tenants as well. We attempted to resolve it through the legal system. If the tenants have no assets, and no income (which they did have at time of lease execution), you have little to no recourse. A judgement against a stone is useless.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - larrys 12y ago
      Did your property insurance cover the damage? I've had damage happen and my insurance, less dedictible, covered the damage from paint spilled on carpeting. (Got all new carpeting as a result).

gabemart 12y ago

I found a message board thread in which the Airbnb host this article is written about describes the issue and asks for advice. http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/136498-evicting-renter-from-a-vacation-rental-property http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/136498-evictin...

re-anon 12y ago
I'm in real estate and was able to locate the owner's condo. It's part of a HOA. The HOA's CCRs forbids leases for "transient or hotel purposes." The typical meaning of this is leases of under 30 days. The CCRs also require that permitted leases be in writing. The sfgate article says that the owner was renting this out for $450/week to help cover her mortgage and expenses so it is probable that some of her activity was in violation of the CCRs. It also sounds like she didn't actually have a written lease with the squatter tenant who booked a 44 day reservation and therefore has tenants rights. I am not a fan of AirBNB but AirBNB doesn't deserve blame for this. This owner thought it would be cool to become a real estate investor and she didn't know what she was doing. Now shes paying the price...
- calbear81 12y ago
  Sometimes, I think the "friendly" community of AirBnB needs to be a bit more business when dealing with squatter scumbags. Once AirBnB couldn't collect the money, the rental should have been terminated and the host should have immediately call the cops to vacate the property well before the 30 days was up. I'm not sure why they tried to work out something with the renter. Maybe they tried to be "nice" but if some situation starts to smell fishy, handle it quickly.
  - re-anon 12y ago
    You don't get it. The squatter has been in the home for 30 days. On that 30th day he has tenants rights and the owner has to go through the process. If the owner knew what she was doing or hired somebody competent to manage her property she wouldn't be in this situation. AirBNB isn't a property manager. If you don't know what you're doing you shouldn't be renting out your home as a business.

mershad 12y ago

Could someone explain why he is still considered a tenant even though he pays no rent or utilities at the property? I am curious as to why he can't just be considered a trespasser and removed by police.

MattGrommes 12y ago
After you are allowed to stay in a home more than 30 days you become a "tenant" and are subject to renter protection laws. I'd imagine these short term rental companies will get much stricter about 30+ stays real soon now.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Does this apply even to people I would allow to stay in my home for free? Or does this only kick in when money changes hands?
  - sjg007 12y ago
    Yep, even free.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Landlord lives in San Francisco. Her unwanted tenant lives in Palm Springs, which is in Riverside county in Southern California. 30-day tenancy rights are a matter of state rather than city/county law.
- mikeash 12y ago
  The property in question is hundreds of miles from San Francisco.

danso 12y ago

So...help me out here. The host met a stranger and rented out the apartment (even after herself seeing warning signs) in such a way that her renter has renter's rights under California law? I'm relatively young and have never been a landlord: in the pre-Internet days, did landlords not rent to people they didn't know well? Did they not have to comply to certain state laws? If we switched "Airbnb" with "Craigslist" or "San Francisco Chronicle's Classifieds Section"...would this be a story in the SF Chronicle?

dobbsbob 12y ago
Yep, media usually hypes these delinquent tenant stories though they are probably rare. Lot's of "Freeman-on-the-land" stories of squatters refusing to pay rent for 1-3 mos and landlord's can't evict them. Every story they interview some shady property management corp who insists all renter laws must be weakened. A story the media hasn't done yet is how often traveling sex workers use Airbnb for incall. 2-3 workers will travel to different cities together and then use the apartment to turn tricks. Perfect incall solution instead of using hotels which charge extra for guests or clamp down on visitors. I'm sure there's a small minority of tenants using Airbnb to import narcotics or fraud hardware like ATM skimmers too, can always claim the previous tenant ordered the box full of drugs and you had no knowledge.
- fred_durst 12y ago
  Airbnb as an address to get illegal things shipped and dropped off sounds just too easy. So easy to deny responsibility. Even just for using a courier service.

NPMaxwell 12y ago

This highlights how staff who handle emails or calls needs to be part of the business plan of a b-to-c startup. Or at least an explanation of why it's OK to NOT handle customer contacts.

mikeash 12y ago

I'm baffled at how people rent out houses without doing the research first. I bet that if you asked to rent their car, they'd go check it out first. Call their insurance company, find out what the legal requirements are, etc. Yet do the same thing with an item that costs 10, 20, 30 times as much money and people's approach seems to be, hey, free money, woooooo. Maybe it's just a case of only hearing about the rare fools.

bronson 12y ago
It's because AirBNB makes becoming a landlord point-and-click simple. "It's so popular and easy! It's a big website, it must be legal!" The moment an AirBNB site for cars comes along, you'll see it.
- cowsandmilk 12y ago
  RelayRides? JustShareIt? Getaround? etc.
- frostmatthew 12y ago
  > The moment an AirBNB site for cars comes along, you'll see it. https://relayrides.com/ https://relayrides.com/
  - jbigelow76 12y ago
    It came along... 14 years ago when Zipcar was founded.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      Not remotely similar. Zipcar owns and maintains the cars they rent.

analog31 12y ago

Do hotels have different eviction laws?

cowsandmilk 12y ago
yes. This is why many chains have separate long-term stay places and hotels. Most hotels will not let you stay long enough to be a "tenant".

trhway 12y ago

obligatory educational material - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100318/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100318/

fiatmoney 12y ago

The historical solution to this (illegal tenant in an illegal short-term sublet doesn't want to move out) would be to have some vowel-suffixed friends encourage them to move out. Which isn't exactly "nice", but at least has the virtue of being nicely economically efficient.

ChuckMcM 12y ago
I was thinking something similar, the AirBnb host however doesn't think of themselves as doing anything illegal so they constrain their thinking in that way. I have certainly met people over the years who exploit this in others.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
notastartup 12y ago
that's true, I guess a lot of underground markets, black markets operate under the hand of physical enforcement or intimidation, I guess the more unregulated a market is, even lead to death. ex. drugs, prostitution etc.
DanBC 12y ago
Landlord ends up in jail, and property ends up destroyed. Since the landlord probably doesn't have insurance, or has voided that insurance several different ways, it's an expensive method to achieve nothing. And that's if the tenents decide to leave, because they could just stay.
superuser2 12y ago
> some vowel-suffixed friends Sorry for OT, but I've never seen this phrasing before. I assume from context that you mean the mafia, but why "vowel-suffixed"?
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  It's a way of saying "Italians" while trying to avoid appearing racist by directly saying it. Many Italian surnames end in a vowel.

leot 12y ago

Sounds like the guy might be using the host's electricity to do bitcoin mining. Super scammy. This kind of thing should be criminal.

espringe 12y ago
If the tenant is supposedly blasting the aircon, with the windows open in 114 degree heat ... I'm not sure an alternate explanation is needed. (Not to mention, bitcoin mining requires a lot more than cheap-to-free electricity)

alixander 12y ago

That first sentence is so poorly written.

DanBlake 12y ago

I wrote about this exact situation and the legality's regarding it in 2012. http://harknesslabs.com/post/32179239260/gaming-airbnb-in-san-francisco-courtesy-of-rent-control http://harknesslabs.com/post/32179239260/gaming-airbnb-in-sa... The gist of it, is that San Francisco and California's rental and rent control laws will supersede any private contract you can write. No way around it. If there was a way around it, you can bet that landlords would simply be including clauses in all new leases they say "rent control not valid here". What I wrote in the above article amazingly still stands today. You can even find a 1bedroom in Nob Hill for a affordable 2200 a month! https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1605304 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1605304? There is so much education AirBnB should be doing for their hosts in CA and SF especially. Did you know that if someone rents a airbnb listing in SF for more than 30 days, they can stay there forever, so long as they keep paying rent? Yeah, no mention of that when you create a new listing on the site.

YokoZar 12y ago
Well not exactly. If the AirBNB host is a tenant themselves, then the subtenant relationship will end when the AirBNB host vacates the property. Not all SF landlords are opposed to their tenants rerenting the units on AirBNB. Some even deliberately rent for minimums of 30 days, to avoid running into zoning regulations against short term stays. AirBNB promised to start collecting hotel taxes in SF, but such taxes wouldn't apply in this case either.
- DanBlake 12y ago
  That is not entirely accurate. If you were renting a room in a apartment (you being the master tenant) and you still resided in the apartment in another bedroom AND also showed/informed the new tenant a copy of San Francisco Rules & Regulations 6.15C- then yes, you could evict them. Otherwise, you cant- and the tenant takes over the defacto 'lease' from you. Costa Hawkins (which I believe you are referring to) is a landlord/owner option. You as a tenant cannot initiate it and would be shit out of luck. You might be able to get your landlord to initiate the lawsuit for you, but I doubt they want to come out of pocket on legal expenses on your behalf.
12y ago

ForHackernews 12y ago

I have very little sympathy for Airbnb landlords: they want to make a quick buck without following the laws to run a real hotel, then they don't get the legal protections of hotels.

seanflyon 12y ago
When honest people fall victim to scam artists, I do sympathize even if they could have avoided it with better legal knowledge.

batbomb 12y ago

Why can't she so 3 day pay or quit (plus eviction) and/or give 30 day notice for chronically late payments?

kaivi 12y ago

I remember reading a story in the recent Priceonomics book about a similar tenant conflict in SF. Tl;dr, a 75-yr-old lady was thrown out into the cold, but only after months of hearings and lots of money wasted on lawyers. Why do such laws exist at all in CA? Why not just send out several warnings in advance, explaining whole situation and the available options for tenant? These two guys are just asking for a good old ass whooping. Throw them out, then let them try and prove that they were renting the place to begin with. Whatever the premises, you could certainly make it be your words against theirs.

aaron695 12y ago

Similar situation with a nanny refusing to leave. http://time.com/2941176/nightmare-nanny-leaving/ http://time.com/2941176/nightmare-nanny-leaving/ Like any business decision you do need to risk manage it. Extremes like this are rare, which is why it's in the news but you do need to be aware of what you're investing in and the risks involved.

Stealx 12y ago

First thought was a meth lab or grow house.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

malandrew 12y ago

AirBnB could just suggest to people to only rent a unit for 29 days, find another AirBnB property for 2-3 days to "break the streak" and the have the person in question return to the unit for another 29-day streak. I would imagine that all you really need to do is break the the contractual relationship into 29-day chunks with a provable different contractual relationship (another AirBnB host) for the interim between sub one month stays.