Judge rejects Airbnb bid to halt San Francisco ordinance
Although (in typical San Francisco fashion) this implementation seems likely to be expensive and only moderately successful in the long run, is anyone else cautiously optimistic in the direction that many large cities are heading with respect to AirBnB use?I for one have always enjoyed using the service, but am thoroughly convinced that allowing the rental of entire suites is having a considerable impact on local housing availability.This is going on in San Francisco, but I don't think to quite the same extent as what was happening in Berlin. I made a trip there a year and a half back where I stayed at about five different AirBnB units over a three week period. It was quite obvious that every one of them without exception was "professional" in that they were reserved for use by AirBnB 100% percent of the year and oftentimes had paid clean up crews who were _not_ the owner. I did speak to one owner about it, and he said that he was now running this unit along with four others full time on AirBnB. In a world without this option, it's hard to believe that these wouldn't have been normal rental stock.Recently the city passed Zweckentfremdungsverbot [1] to help counteract the effect. Nowadays AirBnB is still allowed, but only for single rooms in shared units. This strikes me as exactly the right balance.[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/01/berlin-au...