Over 50 people attended HANC's May meeting on the impact of short term tourist rentals (“Airbnb rentals”) on our neighborhood. The day before the meeting the Board of Supervisors Budget and Legislative Analyst Office issued a report on the impact of short term rentals citry wide (Analysis of the Impact of Short Term Rentals on Housing) which found that the Haight-Ashbury had some 32% of its vacant rental hosing stock being offered as “commercial” Airbnb listings and removed from the rental market with resultant increase in rent . This was the most rental housing removed of any neighborhood in the City. Moreover, the report pointed out, the neighborhood led in the number of evictions that occurred over the same period.
The study was confirmed by personal testimony of neighborhood residents at the meeting who reported their stories of being evicted or having neighbors evicted to make room for the Airbnb rentals.
Tim Redmond, editor of 48 Hills (www.48hills.org) made a persuasive case that the “business model” used by tech companies touting the “sharing economy” was based on violations of local laws and then making “ strategic” political contributions to local officials overseeing the regulation of these acts to turn a blind eye until the companies were “too large to fail”. He cited a long list of contributions made by Ron Conway, a major Airbnb investor, to local officials- including Mayor Lee and Supervisor Breed- charged with overseeing or legislating local housing laws that originally banned Airbnb rentals but were never enforced.
Another speaker was Dale Carlson of ShareBetterSF (http://www.sharebettersf.com), a broad coalition of neighborhood, affordable housing, tenant, landlord and labor organizations engaged in a two-year-long effort to develop local regulations making sure Airbnb rentals did not reduce affordable and rental housing opportunities, protecting neighborhoods and offering building tenants and neighbors an effective say in the conversion to Airbnb uses. Carlson chronicled ShareBetterSF's failed effort to meet and reach a compromise with Mayor Lee on changes and pointed out how the Mayor and Supervisor Farrell have proposed new legislation (to be voted on by the Board on June 9th) that would actually weaken the already weak local laws regulating Airbnb. The Mayor's effort would make it impossible to identify the location of any “registered” Airbnb unit and would bar the City from taking effective legal action to enforce the local law.
Carlson outlined ShareBetterSF’s petition ordinance now being circulated which would close these new loopholes in the local law.
HANC members voted unanimously to support the petition drive and to join ShareBetter SF. People seeking the petition can email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to arrange delivery.
The PowerPoint presentation made at the meeting can be downloaded here