Banning AirBnB is just another twist on rent control. AirBnB, and other similar companies, function on a model similar to uber. People are willing to put their houses up on it because the net revenue is significantly higher, and the costs are only marginally higher, when compared to your standard year long lease. You do have to deal with higher vacancy rates, and there's a lot more screening involved, but it is definitely more profitable if you have a prime time tourist location.
There's also some other interesting benefits. You can charge more or less whatever you can get, because it doesn't typically fall under the category of a normal lease, so you can completely bypass rent pricing control. Squatters are often less of a problem because it's not a lease. If someone wants to stay without paying, you probably don't need to go to court to get them out, you can often just call the cops and have them forcibly removed for trespassing. In tenant friendly states like California, this can literally save you 6-12 [b]months[/b] of time because there's dozens of bullshit ways for a professional squatter to tie your hands up with a lease.
San Fran is an area that is thinking about going heavy handed with rent control. Rent control fucking sucks. It's a guaranteed way to turn a nice neighborhood into a slum in under a decade.
It's good that this was shot down. It's worth cracking down hard on people paying the wrong type of taxes, but banning online listings of vacation homes is not only downright asinine, but will have no real impact on the ludicrous housing bubble, and resource shortages plaguing California.
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