To Airbnb or Not to Airbnb

Proposition F, the contentious San Francisco ballot measure that would impose tighter restrictions on short-term housing rental services such as Airbnb, lost by a sizable margin Tuesday night.

According to the city's election website, the measure was defeated,  55% to 45%, with about 133,000 votes cast and all precincts reporting.

Airbnb raised more than $8 million to oppose Proposition F and put up a series of controversial billboards that touted the $12 million the company has generated in city hotel tax revenue. Supporters of the measure raised about $800,000.

Voters easily gave Mayor Ed Lee a second term after he faced scant opposition, and threw out Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi after one term. Several other housing-related measures were also on the ballot in a city where the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $4,000.

But it was the so-called Airbnb measure that generated wide interest beyond the city as well as fierce debate among local residents. On Monday, protesters in support of the measure stormed the Brannan Street headquarters of Airbnb.

The measure would have capped rentals at 75 days a year, whether or not they are hosted (meaning that the resident is at home during the renter's stay). Current city law limits rentals to 90 days a year for unhosted rentals, while hosted rentals face no such limit.

Proposition F would also have allowed “interested parties” such as neighbors or landlords to sue short-term rental companies such as VRBO and Airbnb if they violate the new rules.

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Meet the Unlikely Airbnb Hosts of Japan

Let me introduce you to Yoppy. Yoppy is young and friendly and lives in a small apartment in the Shinagawa neighborhood of Tokyo. His full name is Yuhsuke Yoshimoto, but at least with visitors who come to stay with him through his listing on Airbnb, he prefers to go by Yoppy. He wears heavy-framed black glasses, has a boyish haircut and likes to talk to foreigners, even though his English is admittedly poor. In the one photo I’ve seen of him — his profile shot on Airbnb — he’s wearing a navy blazer, a collared shirt and a thin silver necklace. He smiles at the camera in a pleasant but not overbearing way. It would be hard, I imagine, not to like Yoppy if you were to meet him at a dinner party or at a gathering of pharmacists or financial planners (according to his profile, Yoppy is both a pharmacist and a financial planner), but still that says little about how you would feel when putting your toothbrush on the sink next to his late at night in a city that’s far, far from home.

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