Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

San Francisco’s Proposition F fails

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Paul Wallbank

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Proposition F, the local government initiative to restrict short term rentals in San Francsico, failed in that city elections yesterday.

Needless to say, AirBnB is pretty happy about this but the problems of unaffordable cities will continue.

Update: Emboldened by their victory in San Francisco, AirBnB now intends to roll out ‘community groups‘ to fight regulations across the US.

Airbnb says it will provide resources and some infrastructure to these local groups but expects hosts and guests to ultimately run them as the clubs proliferate in the same “grassroots” manner that Airbnb itself has grown. The clubs are meant to organize and advocate for home-sharing with their local city councils and elsewhere in the community. When pressed, Lehane declined to specify how much, exactly, Airbnb would spend on the clubs.

This overt politicising – it’s hard to call it ‘astroturfing’ when the company is so open about it – is interesting on a number of levels and it illustrates shows how the promise of renewed community engagement and activism through the internet has been usurped by corporate interests.

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Comments

2 responses to “San Francisco’s Proposition F fails”

  1. Simon

    Hi Paul,
    As an AirBnB host who essentially reduced the long term rental pool in my suburb by two bedrooms, this is an interesting development and one I’m pleased to see. Happy to pay rates and land tax and comply with safety centric regulations but I suspect being told how I can and can’t commercialise my own property by a Sydney council might not end well.

    One minor point – I find property commentary that mentions “housing affordability” and related terms to be a bit misleading…for any good or service to trade, there needs to be a buyer and a seller agreeing on a price. Certainly for housing the quantum of money involved means there are many people that can’t afford to buy in major global cities such as Sydney, San Francisco and Vancouver, but that doesn’t make the houses that are selling unaffordable…by definition someone (the buyer) can afford them, even if I can’t!

    The broader point you often cover about the consequences of prices pushing the lower and middle classes out of town and the related theme of ‘new economy’ jobs and robotic and computer automation rendering potentially large sections of the current workforce irrelevant are of course valid, and something I believe will be the defining challenge of the next 20 years.

    Reply
    1. Paul Wallbank

      I agree Simon. I think blaming AirBnB and techies for San Francisco’s price rises is misguided, what’s happening in SF is part of a broader phenomenon of rising property prices throughout the world thanks to almost free money being pumped into the global economy.

      If you have access to that money, then nowhere is unaffordable. The anti tech and AirBnB attitudes are an understandable reaction by the people who don’t – which increasingly includes the middle classes – being squeezed out.

      What’s notable here is how AirBnB are seeing this win as validating both their business beliefs and ideology, which conveniently fit into each other.

      Reply

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