Once again, instead of responsibly approaching the housing problem by passing measures to incentivize building more supply, the SF government has taken the easy way out by placing more restrictions on what can be done with existing units. This is a convenient regulation for politicians because it appeases certain people and attacks an easy scapegoat, but it will have a minimal effect on the quality and quantity of housing available, and on the price of rent.
The intent of the current batch of legislation is to fix the last attempt, which REMOVED "restrictions on what can be done with existing units." Prior to that, any short-term rental in San Francisco was illegal.
By fixing the law so it's at least somewhat enforceable from a tax-collection standpoint, at least we're potentially going to see the hotel tax revenue, which helps fund subsidized low-income housing.
And until the voters want more housing (which they don't, since they have a financial incentive in keeping supply low so their property values increase), don't expect the supes to jump on the supply & demand bandwagon any time soon. People who want to move to San Francisco but can't afford it don't get to vote in San Francisco elections, so the electorate is--not surprisingly--anti-growth.
I would propose more supply be built on the land owned by developers who want to build more supply.
For reference, the street view below is the heart of the Mission. Unfortunately, most people here would rather preserve the slums than build enough housing to support a diverse bunch of people.
Permits, height laws, comment periods where some nimby will block the development. Otherwise they would of done it already because there is a lot of relative cash to be made to the cost of building.
On a relative per capita basis, SF is building a lot less than lets say houston or similar. And the reason why it's a lot slower is because of all of the above.
It's a chicken and egg situation. Developers propose larger than they want because inevitably the negotiations with city and neighbors reduce their plans.
Even Paris, a city that has banned high-rises, has a population density about 2.5x that of San Francisco. I realize SF doesn't want Miami-style condo towers everywhere, but there's a lot of room to densify just by putting in more mid-rise buildings in the 5-6 story range, rather than having so much of the city be low-rise.
Which would typically require demolition of existing structures. Most property owners don't have the capital to destroy their current structures just to replace them with taller buildings. It would also require displacing current residents, who won't have anywhere else to live while the new building is constructed.
In SF, when a lease "expires" it converts to an indefinite lease with a 30-day notice from the tenant to terminate. The lessor may only terminate for just-cause with varying notice periods and possible compensation to the lessee for damages caused.
Landlords push people out of housing in SF every day. It's often under shameful circumstances. And its not just Ellis Act, though that's a big part of it.
SF companies trying to hire people. Anyone in SF who would like to derive the benefit of the labor of low wage earners (teachers, nannies, chefs, etc).
And the people who would like their pensions to be fully funded due to investment gains from new tech companies in SF, currently hindered by rent. And people who want to use exciting new products built by SF companies which are limited or don't happen due to lack of office space. It's a drag on not only the city but the state, nation, and world.
"But for the tight limits on construction in California’s Bay Area, they reckon, employment there would be about five times larger than it is. In work that has yet to be published they tot up similar distortions across the whole economy from 1964 on and find that American GDP in 2009 was as much as 13.5% lower than it otherwise could have been. At current levels of output that is a cost of more than $2 trillion a year, or nearly $10,000 per person."
Sorry, I meant housing, which raises base salaries, which makes it hard to do a bootstrapped startup (both one's own living expenses, and hiring first 20 employees requiring market salary to survive)
If you could live comfortably in SF on $30k/yr like you can in a lot of college towns, you'd be able to bootstrap a company for a couple years on just your savings, which would increase the variation in startups -- you could see more genuinely ambitious startups which didn't depend on getting funded.
This is actually much worse than it could be, because of this:
> • Treating all short-term rental hosts equally by striking the current difference in the law between “hosted” and “un-hosted” short-term rentals.
Hosted rentals SHOULD have lesser regulation and restrictions. Nobody's going to turn your spare bedroom into a meth lab with you in the apartment. Most of the negative externalities of these types of rentals come when people are able to provide 'unhosted' rentals.
I think you're quite right that unhosted rentals are more problematic. Every short-term rental horror story I've heard has involved unhosted rentals.
However, from an enforcement standpoint, I can see how difficult it could potentially be to have to make distinctions in each and every case. If a host is there to let you in the door and then leaves, is that a "hosted" rental? Does the host need to be in the apartment 100% of the time you're there to count as a "hosted" rental? What if he steps out for an hour? Does the host need to employ some sort of time tracking system as evidence of his presence? What if a host and a guest dispute the amount of time the host is present?
That does seem illogical. It's not some technical aspect of the law, is it, like that if you are in the house for X days of the month then any rental you have in the place that month is considered "hosted"? I'm not familiar with the wording of the law, but it could be out of date in that way or something.
The complaint about the current law is that the city has no way to know whether or not the hosts are present. Along with not requiring hosts to provide any sort license number when offering a place for rent, it basically makes the current regulations completely unenforceable.
Yeah, that one surprised me. Hosted rentals are obviously much, much less risky. Perhaps the enforcement was going to be a problem? Not a great excuse.
I think it'd be more productive if the city was more focused on improving regulation to build more housing in the city for actual residents rather than trying to stem the loss of units to permanent Airbnb'ing. It seems like every policy maker and lobbying group seems to be ignoring the biggest elephant in the room which is this city needs dramatically MORE HOUSING than it is building (and the infrastructure that goes along with it).
I can count off the top of my head at least 8 different housing projects/towers being built. It's going up, and the city is doing everything it can (whist being actively undermined by NIMBY groups).
Also addressing the rampant issue of people taking up rental units with quasi-illegal short term rentals is perfectly fine.
Further, many of the buildings are squat, short, and low density, even near transit. SF suffers from 20 years of planning failure.
Read the last 10 Socketsite articles to get an idea how criminally mismanaged SF's planning is. The AirBNB regulations are to make the city's power brokers look like they can do something about growth other than build.
For comparison: Manhattan issued permits for 4,856 new housing units in 2013 [1], despite having half the land area of SF and already supporting 4 times the population density.
There is additional issue that even if units are going up, a significant percentage is being purchased by foreign investors who are not occupying the units. Maybe I expect too much, but I don't believe the city is doing everything it can. I do understand that this is probably largely due to entrenched interests who are prioritizing preserving property values over the future health, economic growth, & infrastructure of the city.
That likely isn't sufficient to absorb the current population growth, let alone make inroads into the demand/supply imbalance that has built up.
You probably need 3x that construction to start to have any effect.
I don't buy the 'nowhere to put it' argument either. There is tons of ex-industrial land around San Francisco that could be repurposed into high density neighbourhoods. Look at the Canary Wharf development in London for a good example.
I think it's more an issue of proportion and scale than number of towers. If there are 8 new projects, but the population looks to grow enough to fill 10 new projects, then there still need to be more.
If enforced properly this should force investor owned units out of the short term rental market which should help lower annual rental prices somewhat. Big IF.
