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S.F. Airbnb Law Off to Slow Start

The new measure allows permanent residents to rent rooms or homes for less than 30 days after they register with the city.

(Tribune News Service) -- San Francisco’s new vacation-rental law is off to a slow start. Only a fraction of hosts who rent homes to temporary visitors have registered with the city, and many say the process is mired in time-consuming bureaucracy.

That mirrors the situation in Portland, Ore., where new vacation-rental laws took effect in September and February, but haven’t spurred many hosts to register.

In San Francisco, the new measure, dubbed the Airbnb law in tribute to that vacation-rental site’s runaway popularity, came into effect Feb. 1. It allows permanent residents to rent rooms or homes for less than 30 days after they register with the city. Such short-term rentals had long been illegal, but that ban was loosely enforced.

After four full weeks, a total of 159 hosts have applied, while 254 more have appointments booked through the end of April, according to Gina Simi, a spokeswoman for the City Planning Department, which administers the registry. Airbnb has about 5,000 listings in the city while VRBO/HomeAway has about 1,200.

Some Airbnb hosts said they were stymied by rules requiring two in-person visits to city departments. Planning requires hosts to make appointments to meet in person and show a raft of documents, including a business license, which must be obtained in person by waiting in line at the treasurer’s office.

“Hundreds of hosts are working to follow the rules, but we have heard from countless people in Portland and San Francisco who are concerned about the needless red tape involved in the process,” Airbnb spokesman Nick Papas said. “We need to give the law a chance to work and make it easier for people to follow the rules, not harder. We’ve communicated with our hosts about the new rules, and now we need to keep working together on some sensible changes to the process.”

Simi said her department simply wants to implement the ordinance competently and fully.

“We aren’t trying to make anybody crazy but doing the best we can to establish proof of permanent residency for the people who apply,” she said.

The new law requires hosts to prove they live permanently at the short-term rentals to prevent real estate speculators from turning properties into ersatz hotels.

“There are still many ways in which the process can be made more streamlined and efficient, and some procedural roadblocks that are not legislatively mandated can be removed,” said Peter Kwan, head of Home Sharers of San Francisco, a support group for about 1,600 Airbnb hosts. He wrote to the Board of Supervisors asking it to simplify the process. “This registration process does not reflect well for a city located at the heart of technology (that) is supposed to be at the forefront of global Internet innovation.”

For instance, he and other hosts pointed to the requirement that hosts show original utility bills — even though many people pay online. “It’s easy to just call PG&E and ask them to send you a bill,” Simi replied.

The Board of Supervisors’ Budget Committee this week will ask planning to report on what resources it needs to enforce the new law. Critics have pointed out that people can easily circumvent a rule that entire-house vacation rentals be limited to three months a year as planning has no way to monitor that. Hosts pay a $50 registration fee for two years that is supposed to go toward enforcement.

Planning has two full-time staffers handling appointments and soon will add a third. It can accommodate 50 to 60 host visits a week, Simi said. On March 18, it will experiment with a drop-in applications from 4 to 7 p.m.

Addy Williams, who rents out a room via Airbnb in her Bernal Heights house, schlepped down to City Hall on Monday with her 6-week-old twin sons and spent almost two hours to get the business license. Next, she has an April 6 appointment with Planning.

“It’s great they are formalizing this whole process” of short-term rentals, she said. “My only issue is that it’s a bit difficult. It would be nice if they had online registration.”

Planning will issue a report this fall on how the new law is working.

Portland, which Airbnb last year hailed as part of its Shared City initiative, has had more time to observe the workings of its vacation rental law. It legalized short-term room rentals in private homes and duplexes on Aug. 30, and in February extended that to room rentals in multiunit buildings. Both ordinances require hosts to register with Portland and schedule a visit to their homes by a city inspector.

A total of 173 Portland hosts have registered, said Mike Liefeld, a manager with the Bureau of Development Services. That’s only about 10 percent of those listing properties on Airbnb and other sites.

“The compliance rate is low,” he said. “We may have to exercise some enforcement authority. We are prepared to do that to let people know we are serious about compliance.”er: 

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