Airbnb Legislation Story

New Airbnb Legislation Could Transform Character of San Francisco

By: Andrew Noerr

            After years of debate and protest in San Francisco, the city has finally acted upon the Airbnb crisis. Mayor Ed Lee on Monday signed a new law that makes Airbnb legal in San Francisco after the Board of Supervisors voted and approved of it by a tally of 7-4. It had technically been an illegal hotel business since it was first established in 2008.

            As noted by Patrick Hoge of the San Francisco Business Times, this comes at the heels of vigorous debate that had occurred between members of the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco about whether to make Airbnb legal in a city that is suffering from an immense housing crisis. The San Francisco-based company serves as a middleman, allowing property owners, tenants, and landlords to rent out their space to anyone from all over the world. They would post the info about potential vacancies on the Airbnb website, and then people seeking to temporarily stay in the city can rent out rooms or even entire homes for whatever price is demanded by the person allowing the space to be rented.

            However, this new legislation has not resolved the controversy that has surrounded this issue in San Francisco. Tim Redmond of 48hills.com has noted numerous times that a combination of landlord groups, tenant protection activists, and hotel workers have all opposed the Airbnb legislation due to the potential impact that the new legislation could have on the housing crisis in San Francisco, the ability of the city to collect taxes from Airbnb, and the concept of community that is lost when rooms or apartments are rented out by tourists instead of being occupied by long-term residents.

            Mara Math, a counselor at the San Francisco Tenants Union, said, “I’m disappointed about the legislation. It does not address the fundamental problems of Airbnb. It didn’t even include the proposed amendments that we wanted.”

            There were numerous amendments that were proposed to the legislation. One would be that all rooms on Airbnb could only be rented out for 90 days per year. Another proposed amendment was that Airbnb would only become legal if they paid their back taxes first, as they owe approximately $25 million. Those taxes would be the money that they owe to San Francisco that they haven’t paid since the company was first established in 2008.

Ultimately, these amendments were not passed, although the Board of Supervisors did agree to some other suggested amendments. One is that neighborhood groups, tenants, and non-profit organizations are allowed to sue Airbnb if they are not following the law. Examples of this include someone on Airbnb renting out an entire home for less than 30 days, as that is still forbidden in San Francisco, or if someone rents out a room in a building that has been subject to Ellis Act evictions in the past.

Still, the failed attempt to limit rentals to 90 days per year has alarmed many people who are concerned about the health of the housing market in San Francisco. If one looks at the Airbnb website and checks how expensive it is to rent a room in the city, one will notice that prices range anywhere from $70-$199 per night, although they are usually on the more expensive side. Since there are no limits to how long a room can be rented, landlords or others could simply allow a room to be rented out all year by numerous customers through Airbnb instead of making the room available to residents of San Francisco.

“The San Francisco Tenants Union doesn’t like Airbnb because landlords have been evicting tenants so that their property can turn into Airbnb hotels,” Math said.

Indeed, it can be more lucrative for landlords to rent out rooms through Airbnb to tourists than to rent them out to long-term tenants. Through Airbnb, for example, if a private room is posted for $150 per night, the landlord could make $4,500 per month off that room. In comparison, if one looks at Craigslist and checks how much a private room costs for long-term renting, prices range from $700-$2,000 per month. This, according to Math, has instilled fear into many people about the motives of landlords for evicting tenants in San Francisco.

Another hot issue with the Airbnb legislation is the desire from many people for the company to pay its back taxes. According to Mai-Cutler, it owes around $25 million in taxes in San Francisco, as it should have been paying taxes that commercial hotels must pay annually. The amendment that would have forced Airbnb to pay those taxes was denied though, as it was ambiguous as to how the company would pay them and how long it would take. This issue has stirred its own controversy among many people in San Francisco.

“(San Francisco residents) inherit the financial burden from Airbnb not paying their taxes,” Math said. “That money would go into the General Fund to benefit the residents of San Francisco. Instead, we’ll get asked to sign on for bond measures for things such as libraries or roads that should have already been funded by those taxes.”
            One last protest that people have brought up is that the concept of having housemates in one’s home will soon cease to exist. Redmond of 48hills.com said that more homes could become Airbnb hotels and be filled with tourists looking to stay on a short-term basis, and the community feeling that is prevalent among long-term residents in San Francisco would diminish.

“I enjoy my housemates,” said Victor Gavallos, a senior undergraduate at USF who lives in the Richmond District. “Having housemates means that I always have people that I am close to at home. We have our own micro-community that is supportive, and I can turn to them when I need it.”

            After much debate, the Airbnb legislation was still passed by Mayor Ed Lee, and according to the CBS San Francisco report, it will be in effect starting on February 1, 2015. Other rules were included in the legislation such as people who allow their rooms to be rented out must be San Francisco residents, they must live in the unit for at least nine months per year, they must register with the city first, have liability insurance, and pay a 14% hotel tax in San Francisco. Even with these rules, some San Franciscans have lamented that the city has lost some of its character as a result of the new legislation.

            “It’s bad for community,” Math said. “The San Francisco Tenants Union is here to protect the interests of tenants, and we know that this is bad for what makes San Francisco a great city.”

Yet Another Source for My Political Beat

John W. Higgins has been associated with commercial and non-commercial media for over three decades. His experience includes work in production, management, performance and research; he has served on governing boards for community-based cable television and broadcast radio organizations. The author of several articles exploring community-based media, Higgins has served as a member and president of the board of directors of the San Francisco Community Television Corporation, the non-profit organization managing the city’s and county’s public access cable television facilities and channel from 1999 to 2009. He has been active in U.S. and international organizations practicing, promoting, and studying community-based media.

Dr. Higgins is a communications consultant in San Francisco and adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco. He has developed media facilities and educational programs and taught at colleges and universities in the U.S. and overseas. A former associate professor in communication and media at Menlo College in Atherton, California, he holds a Ph.D. in Communication, an M.A. in Telecommunications, and a B.A. in Communication Arts.

Dr. Higgins’ areas of expertise include community-based media; multi-media production; advanced media technologies and social networking; critical pedagogies; and storytelling and oral history as art and social science.

Another of Higgins’s long-standing interests is storytelling and puppetry. As the creator and director of “Night Vision Puppets” he performed internationally utilizing a one-man, “street theater” approach to performance from 1974 to 2001. In the late 1970s the troupe appeared regularly on local children’s and late night television programs. For three decades the troupe conducted workshops and performed at art museums, universities, and outdoor festivals, including a 1995 performance at the United Nations' 50th anniversary celebration in Nicosia, Cyprus. In 2008 Higgins and the puppets returned to performances on occasion.

Higgins’ interest in narratives led to pursuits in electronic media and academia; it has always been focused on the stories told by people within communities. An outgrowth of this is “digital storytelling,” which fuses individual and group narratives of struggle and transformation, personal reflexivity, ethnographic research, and digital distribution. Digital storytelling is a natural extension of his experiences as a storyteller, street performer, and educator – blended with digital ethnographic methodologies.

Dr. Higgins is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholar grant from the Cyprus Fulbright Commission. He was in Cyprus in Fall 2010, utilizing digital storytelling, oral history . . . and puppetry . . . as methods of peace and community-building between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities.  He returned to the island for additional projects in 2011 and 2013 with groups across the island, including the US Embassy, the Cyprus Fulbright Commission, United Nations Development Programme-Action for Cooperation and Trust in Cyprus, and the Cyprus Community Media Centre.

Another Source for My Political Beat

Joe Murphy
Environmental Safety Manager

He has been the Environmental Safety Manager at the University of San Francisco for almost 20 years. His education includes the University of San Francisco and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. He has advanced degrees in Biology, Toxicology, and Environmental Management.

As the Environmental Safety Manager he is responsible for the occupational and environmental regulatory compliance for the campus. This includes workplace safety, hazardous materials and hazardous waste management, as well as biological and radiological safety. In addition, he oversees the campus recycling program as well as direct some of the campus sustainability efforts which include coordinating events such as Recyclemania and Earth Day.

Another Source for My Political Beat

Michael Lenert. Professor Lenert teaches media law at the University of San Francisco as an adjunct in the Department of Media Studies. He recently completed a five-year term as a Professor at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada at Reno. He has been a consultant on Internet and telecommunications issues for the Ford Foundation, The Asia Foundation, the City of San Francisco, the City of New York, and the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute. He is past president of the New York State Communication Association and former co-chairman of World Wide Web Artists Consortium, a digital broadcasting special interest group. Lenert graduated magna cum laude from the University of California at Berkeley. He earned a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., and is licensed to practice law in California. 

USF Values Students over Government Compliance

USF Values Students over Government Compliance

By: Andrew Noerr

With all of the mayhem that has surrounded the National Security Agency and citizens’ invasion of privacy, there is perhaps one group of people that have been overlooked in all of this chaos, and that group is college students. Student data such as grades, health records, and housing information can all be seen as valuable in the eyes of the NSA. However, a careful examination of the policies that the University of San Francisco has in place considering data privacy would convince anyone that the school cares about its students more than complying with government requests for sensitive information.

            In fact, this issue could matter a lot more in the coming months. Later this fall, an international student-run organization called the Student Net Alliance will be grading universities on a myriad of topics such as how schools protect student data, whether universities have strong online privacy policies, how they support student developers, and other subjects as well. The grades will then be published in their “Campus Internet Policy Gradebook.”

            Even though the online group hasn’t released the gradebook yet, the criteria for it were released during the previous summer. Luckily, USF has posted some of their privacy policies online. An inspection of these policies and a discussion with the Information Security Officer of the ITS Department at USF named Walter Petruska has shed a lot of light on how USF could potentially be graded this fall.

            For starters, the Student Net Alliance advocates for universities to have policies considering encryption of data, free speech on campus, and cyberbullying. For the most part, USF does impose rules on those subjects. The university has its policy on data encryption posted online, and it specifically states that “Confidential or Highly Confidential” data such as academic, financial, and disciplinary data among other types are absolutely encrypted for the means of protecting it from unauthorized use. Encryption of data refers to the process of converting data into a code so that it can be protected from potential hackers.

            As for free speech on campus, USF does not have a specific policy for that, but freedom of students on campus is mentioned in the school’s core values. As listed on the USF website, one of the core values of the school is to promote “freedom and the responsibility to pursue truth and follow evidence to its conclusion.”

            Cyberbullying also does not have its own policy, but USF does have general rules concerning acts of harassment on campus. Specifically, according to the USF Fogcutter Student Handbook, acts of intolerance such as showing hatred towards a person for his or her ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or other things is strictly forbidden, and that is especially true if it is done on the Internet.

            The Student Net Alliance also favors universities that notify their students when government agencies such as the NSA request any of their data. In most situations, USF does alert students if their data is requested by any outside organization. However, according to Petruska, not all students are granted full privacy when it comes to their sensitive data.

            “International students are treated differently,” Petruska said. “It’s all about them having visas. They have to be in school if they want to be in the United States. So, if a government agency requested data such as their academic records to make sure they’re in class, they would automatically get it.”

            Still, Petruska disclosed that in cases when a government agency requests data about students such as where they work or where they live on campus, then that data would not be disclosed without the consent of the student. Also, student data is generally protected by law under FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act). According to the National Law Review, FERPA doesn’t allow third parties to receive educational records of students over 18 years old without the consent of students and their parents, although there are many exceptions.

There is still more that the Student Net Alliance asks of colleges today though.  The group also hopes that colleges advocate for student developers who wish to develop technology such as apps to be allowed to release data about on-campus activities. For example, the Student Net Alliance favors colleges who allow students to make data sets about stats such as course registration and dining hall data. Afterwards, they would be allowed to make that data public.

            Fortunately, they are indeed allowed to do so at USF. According to Petruska, the ITS Department permits student developers to make technology such as apps that include USF data.

            Petruska said, “I definitely encourage our students to use USF data to make apps. The ITS Department hires students to work in our labs to work on projects like that. I’m all for it.”

            One example of an app that incorporates USF data is one called “USFmobile.” According to the webpage on the USF website dedicated to this app, USFmobile allows students to learn about campus events, check their schedules and their grades, and check registration holds. The app presents an example of USF data that can be accessed on mobile devices.

            All of the criteria previously described indicates that USF does value data privacy, but there is still another bar that schools are asked to climb. The Student Net Alliance also inquires about if schools allow students to install what has become notorious software called “Tor.”

            Tor has proven to be extremely useful while also controversial at the same time. According to the official Tor website, the software prevents outside people or organizations from learning users’ locations and from doing traffic analyses on users’ browsing habits. Outside groups such as the NSA would then theoretically not be able to discover how users of Tor use the Internet and what sites they check on a daily basis.

            The invention of this new software has raised some intriguing concerns. While it certainly is useful for online privacy, it can also help hackers and other criminals to commit crimes and not have their actions be detected by any outside organizations.

            With this in mind, Petruska revealed that USF still allows students to have the software on their computers, even though it may not be a popular decision.

            “USF students are allowed to have Tor. However, lots of colleges block Tor on their campuses,” Petruska disclosed. “Students are allowed to have it until they are caught using it illegally. I believe that I have a legal obligation to approach students in those cases.”

            Presumably, this hasn’t been a problem at USF since not many college students would know how to commit serious crimes online or do any serious hacking. Still, Tor has become an interesting option for those who truly value online privacy.

            Examination of all of these criteria would indicate that USF should be graded highly this fall in the Campus Internet Policy Gradebook. Although there were other small criterion such as school’s viewpoints on patent reform, training on how to use Tor, NSA recruitment programs, university transparency reports, and legal options for students who are threatened by outside hackers, Petruska noted that USF doesn’t have or need policies on those topics. He believes overall that the school does a quality job in valuing student data over government compliance.

“The ITS Department cares about privacy of student data greatly,” Petruska said. “We do whatever we can to protect the community.”