A new chapter for home-sharing
On Jan. 16, two of the major short-term rental platforms (Airbnb and Home Away) deactivated thousands of unregistered listings in San Francisco. This was the result of a settlement agreement from a lawsuit they had filed against the city, challenging a new law that penalized them for taking bookings from unregistered listings.
This is a major milestone in a political battle that has seen years of bitter fights over attempts to restrict home sharing that has involved a ballot measure, further restrictions by the Board of Supervisors and a mayor’s veto.
The city’s Office of Shortterm Rentals reported that the settlement agreement has resulted in a gradual reduction of listings on Airbnb from a peak of 8,700 in December 2016 to 3,400 by the final deadline on Tuesday.
The anti-home sharing lobby would like to portray the recent delisting results as the mass culling of units denied to the long-term rental market. A more realistic view is that it is a long overdue pruning of inactive or seldom active listings.
The total number of nights booked on Airbnb since last fall has not been substantially affected by the deactivations, meaning those deactivated listings weren’t the main players in the market to begin with.
The real test is whether we will see a significant decrease in rents or an increase in the number of available long-term rental units in the market immediately post-deactivation. If not (and I suspect we won’t), then it’s safe to assume that home-sharing wasn’t causing the housing crisis all along and scapegoating hosts and platforms isn’t, and was never, the solution.
The settlement agreement has also led to the implementation of a much easier registration process, where new hosts can apply for a permit directly from the listing platforms. This has already led to a surge in permit applications from new hosts attracted by the cut in red tape.
The lawsuit was an unfortunate chapter in this political saga, but its results have brought compromises and improvements. From now on, every San Francisco listing will be legal, meaning that every listing will be in a primary residence — a host’s own home. A residential unit wholly devoted to full-time short-term rental has never been legal and now will not be listed on a short-term rental platform.
With these changes, all the major issues raised concerning home sharing are addressed. All listings will be registered and paying taxes. None will be taking a long-term rental unit off the market. Hopefully, this will usher in a period of political peace. The hosts who are your neighbors, relatives and friends, many of whom depend on home-sharing and derive much pleasure from hosting, deserve nothing less.