| A Airbnb associada ao Turismo de Massas, estão a destruir as cidades Europeias. OVOODOCORVO  |
Airbnb spent $6.1
million on its campaign to defeat San Francisco’s Proposition F,
which would have limited short-term rentals in the city. PHOTO: JOSH
EDELSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
|
Airbnb
to Redeploy Tactics Behind San Francisco Victory
Home-Sharing
Service Hopes to Mobilize Allies in 100 Cities Against Curbs on
Short-Term Rentals
By DOUGLAS MACMILLAN
And
ALEJANDRO LAZO
Nov. 4, 2015 8:05
p.m. ET
Airbnb Inc., seizing
on a hard-fought regulatory victory in its hometown of San Francisco,
plans to build an army of grass-roots supporters in cities around the
world where its home-sharing service is under attack.
At a news conference
at its headquarters on Wednesday, the company said it plans to help
organize and fund groups of volunteers in 100 cities over the next
year, with each “guild” dedicated to fighting regulators and
others imposing limits on short-term apartment and home rentals in
their cities.
On Tuesday, San
Francisco voters soundly rejected a ballot measure that would have
limited short-term rentals in the city. The company waged a
sophisticated political campaign to defeat Proposition F, dubbed the
“Airbnb Initiative,” deploying veteran field organizers, hundreds
of volunteers and heavy television advertising. The company, valued
at $24.5 billion, spent $6.1 million to defeat the effort, after
raising a total of $8 million for the campaign, according to campaign
filings.
Airbnb raised 18
times as much in campaign funds as backers of the measure, and spent
about 16 times as much, according to the most recent information
available.
With all votes
counted, 55% voted to reject the measure, according to unofficial
city election returns.
Chris Lehane, a
former Bill Clinton aide who now runs Airbnb’s policy team, said at
the news conference the company plans to repeat its tactics in San
Francisco elsewhere, mobilizing guests and hosts on the company’s
service into a voting bloc to rival special interests such as the
National Rifle Association in size.
“We are going to
build on the momentum coming from San Francisco,” Mr. Lehane said.
“We are going to give our community access to the finest
grass-roots organizing tools,” he said.
Mr. Lehane said
Airbnb staff would be dedicated to helping each local group, but
declined to offer more specifics on their cost, organization or on
which cities will be included.
Airbnb hopes to
stave off more regulatory battles and quell investor concerns as it
prepares for an eventual initial public offering. The seven-year-old
company hired Laurence Tosi, former chief financial officer of
Blackstone Group LP, as its finance chief earlier this year, in a
move widely regarded as a step toward an IPO.
But while the
victory in San Francisco gave momentum to Airbnb, it could also rally
the opposition. Around the world, Airbnb has met with resistance from
hotel associations, tenants-rights organizations, and others who say
the rising use of home sharing is taking housing units off the
market, helping drive up already-high housing costs.
“We have been in
discussions with people in Santa Monica; Venice, [Calif.,]; Austin,
Texas; New York; and Washington, D.C., and they are all wrestling
with this same problem,” said Dale A. Carlson, a media consultant
who wrote the San Francisco proposition and runs a group that opposes
some activity on home-sharing sites.
Airbnb already has
faced regulatory crackdowns from Santa Monica, Calif., where
homeowners must now be present during the duration of a renter’s
stay, to Berlin, where residential owners next year will have to give
up short-term rentals entirely unless they get special authorization.
Airbnb has 1.75
million listings in over 191 countries. Mr. Lehane said the service
is popular with millennial and middle-class families, groups that
have growing influence over politics within cities.
In San Francisco,
the ballot measure was born from a long-simmering political debate
over Airbnb and other sites that operate in San Francisco. The city’s
Board of Supervisors passed a law last year to regulate home sharing,
limiting it to 90 days a year when a host wasn’t home. But
activists said the law didn’t go far enough.
About $2 million of
the money it spent in San Francisco went to supporting field
operations that included two campaign hubs and veteran field
organizers, according to Airbnb. The company said it recruited 478
volunteers and made contact with 67,000 voters as of the weekend.
Airbnb said the
provision that would have allowed neighbors to sue home-sharing
companies—and those using the services to host their homes—would
be subject to abuse.
Airbnb also opposed
a provision that would have required people who host homes to file
quarterly reports on the number of days the unit was occupied by the
homeowner or primary tenant and when it was rented out. The company
said the measure does nothing to add to affordable housing and that
it would have made it harder for middle-class San Franciscans who
rent out their homes using such services to supplement their income.
Average asking rent
in the city hit $2,828 a month for a studio apartment during the
first nine months of the year, according to real-estate data company
RealFacts. That compares with an average rent of $2,575 for the same
kind of unit in 2014.
San Francisco’s
median home price was $1,097,000 in September, a nearly 17% increase
from a year ago according to real-estate data company CoreLogic.
Mr. Carson’s
group, Share Better, lost its ballot proposition but welcomed one
other outcome from election day. Aaron Peskin, a former member of the
city’s board of supervisors who has supported restrictions on
Airbnb, was elected back to the board. Mr. Carson said his election
renews his hope that the city could pass stricter home-sharing
regulations at the board level.
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