San Francisco Rebooting its Airbnb Regulation Efforts

"San Francisco is once again debating how best to regulate short-term rental websites like Airbnb, after a law legalizing the practice went into effect less than four months ago," reports Joshua Sabatini. "City planners have since said the law is unenforceable and needs to change, a position supported by Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors."

Part of the reason for the reboot of Airbnb regulating legislation is a lack of conclusive evidence about the scope of Airbnb's impact on the city's housing stock.

According to Sabatini, however, a report by Budget Analyst Harvey Rose "provides new analysis of the impact of short-term rentals on The City, drawing comparisons between longer-term hosts and evictions and estimating that in some neighborhoods Airbnb units could comprise as much as 40 percent of potential rentals."

"Between 925 and 1,960 units citywide have been removed from the housing market by hosts renting out entire units on Airbnb for more than 58 days, the report estimates. While this total comprises a small fraction of San Francisco’s 244,012 rental units, it does represent up to 23.2 percent of the total citywide vacant units, which are estimated at 8,438, the report says."

The article goes on to explain some of the details of the report, including some of the distinctions between the types of users renting properties through the system and a breakdown by neighborhood of the number of units on the Airbnb market.