S.F. staffing:

Public defender gets approval to hire lawyers to defend immigrants facing deportation .

I first heard about Chris Lehane when he was serving as a political strategist for the Clinton White House and I was running Salon, the online publication that burst into the national spotlight with investigative stories about special prosecutor Kenneth Starr and the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that was determined to impeach President Clinton for lying about a consensual sex act. Our reporters tried to steer clear of the Clinton spin machine, but I had to admire the work of the Lehane operation. Finally, here was a Democratic Party team that knew how to play Washington-style hardball, taking the offense against the highly politicized prosecution of the president.

But these days I often find myself on the opposite side of former Democratic power players like Lehane, who is now the chief policy strategist for Airbnb. He is part of the brain drain from the Clinton-Obama camps that has flowed into the top ranks of the tech industry, using their political savvy and connections to avoid or rewrite government regulations and to crush opponents who get in their companies’ way.

Lehane was hired by Airbnb in 2015 to lead the battle against San Francisco’s Proposition F, the initiative that would have restricted shortterm rentals to 75 days a year and compelled hosts to pay hotel taxes and follow city codes. Lehane brought his

scorched-earth philosophy to San Francisco politics. “Here’s how you run a ballot campaign,” he told Airbnb executives, according to his own account in the Washington Post. “You kick the s— out of the other guy; you drive them into the ground.”

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky balked at demonizing the supporters of Prop. F the way Lehane had vilified the GOP impeachment mob. In the end, the company simply used its enormous campaign war chest to crush its opponents, spending over $8.5 million to defeat the measure.

Lehane’s stroke of political genius was to enlist Airbnb hosts in his No-on-F campaign, since they had an economic stake in the outcome. He called it a “revolutionary movement” that empowered all the “mom and pop” hosts who were clinging to their homes in expensive markets like San Francisco. But Airbnb opponents dismissed this as political marketing, aimed at hiding the true astroturf character of this “grassroots movement.” They argued Airbnb itself was largely responsible for driving up the cost of local housing by encouraging landlords to convert apartments and homes to Airbnb hotels.

Share Better SF, an anti-Airbnb coalition funded partly by the hotel industry and the hotel workers union, estimates that as many as 14,000 units have been taken off the market in San Francisco because of the short-term rental industry. The group says that the great majority of local listings are advertised by commercial landlords, not mom-and-pop hosts. “With more than 7,700 active hosts, and only 1,800 of them registered with the city, you can see why Airbnb is threatened,” says Share Better SF’s Dale Carlson. According to Carlson, the “unregistered hosts can’t sign up with the city because they’re not renting primary residences, but second homes and other investment properties.”

Airbnb spokesman Nick Papas disputes Share Better SF’s figures, saying “the overwhelming majority of hosts in San Francisco offer one listing — they are doing it on an individual basis.” But a 2015 report by The Chronicle found heavy use of the Airbnb platform by commercial landlords.

This Airbnb colonization of cities like San Francisco can be felt building by building and neighborhood by neighborhood, as the families or elderly couples you once knew as friendly anchors in your daily life disappear, to be replaced by a flow of random strangers wheeling their suitcases along the sidewalk and fiddling with the lockboxes that are now our city’s new urban jewelry.

Lehane insists that Airbnb has taken steps to kick out thousands of illegal commercial hosts. But as a recent article in the Washington Post noted, “the efforts are largely pro forma.”

Airbnb also touts its new cooperative spirit with officials in San Francisco and other cities that feel besieged by the short-term rental colossus. “We appreciate the opportunity to continue talking with the city and remain hopeful we can reach a solution that protects the city’s housing stock and enables San Franciscans to continue sharing their homes,” Airbnb’s Papas emailed me.

But Lehane’s smashmouth tactics can still be seen in the company’s hard-fought lawsuit to block the 2016 San Francisco ordinance that would finally compel Airbnb to enforce the local ban on commercial listings. “I’ve got no problem with legitimate, law-abiding homesharing,” Supervisor Aaron Peskin, one of the law’s architects, told me. “But the facts are clear: Airbnb continues to take precious housing off the market. And to add insult to injury, they’re suing their hometown. The appropriate response is to stand up for your constituents against this kind of bullying.”

A growing coalition of hotel industry officials, union leaders and housing activists is doing just that. Representatives from this coalition sat down with Mayor Ed Lee in December to win his support for another Board of Supervisors measure that would have lowered the cap on short-term rentals to 60 days a year from the current 90. The unusual business-labor alliance thought they made a persuasive case, despite the mayor’s close ties to Airbnb investor Ron Conway. But within hours of the meeting, Lee vetoed the measure.

“I get it — Ron Conway has a lot of clout with the mayor,” Mike Casey, president of the San Francisco Labor Council, told me. “But for the mayor to take the side of one company against this type of broad, unprecedented labor-business alliance is just mind-boggling to me.

“Working families are being forced out of the city at an alarming rate,” he continued. “For the first time, Local 2 (the hotel and restaurant workers union) has more people living outside the city than within it.”

After he vetoed the 60-day Airbnb cap, Lee said he would convene a working group to hammer out better legislation, but no such group was assembled. Deirdre Hussey, the mayor’s spokeswoman, says Lee is waiting for the Airbnb lawsuit to be resolved.

A federal judge has signaled that he will likely rule against the company, upholding the San Francisco law that would compel Airbnb to boot commercial landlords off its platform or face stiff fines. The imminent ruling, expected next month, could gut Airbnb’s business, Carlson says, and would likely be appealed by the company.

In the meantime, as the Airbnb battle rages, Lehane and I are talking about having a drink together. He’ll probably want to know why I joined the “vast anti-Airbnb conspiracy.” And I want to ask him how he justifies joining the dark side, turning his guns on the labor and community groups that are the bedrock of the Democratic Party.

It should be a lively discussion.