Measure to restrict Airbnb rentals in San Francisco losing by wide margin

San Francisco voters are poised to hand a decisive victory to Airbnb and city residents who want to turn their homes into vacation rentals. Proposition F, a measure to curb short-term rentals drastically, was losing by a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent, according to the early count of mail-in ballots.

Prop. F, the most contentious and most expensive issue on the Tuesday ballot, centers on whether vacation rentals divert scarce housing to lucrative illegal year-round hotels, as its backers claimed, or help middle-class people make ends meet, as Airbnb and other opponents said.

Airbnb supporters gathered at the Oasis nightclub in SoMA cheered as early results came in, waving “No on F” signs and raising glasses when campaign manager Patrick Hannan took the stage to announce the numbers.

Meanwhile, at North Beach’s Club Fugazi√, the Yes on F campaign mingled with cautiously optimistic supporters of Aaron Peskin, who had a slim lead over incumbent Julie Christensen for the District Three seat on the Board of Supervisors. A Peskin victory would give six votes, a majority, to the board’s progressive wing, increasing the chances that the supervisors will tighten vacation-rental rules.

Prop. F seeks to limit vacation rentals to 75 days a year; beef up enforcement and penalties; and establish big payoffs for neighbors and others who successfully sued violators. The measure’s backers, a coalition of housing activists, landlords, neighborhood groups and hotel workers’ unions, said the city’s existing regulations for short-term rentals, enacted in February, are toothless, noting that only about 700 of Airbnb’s thousands of hosts complied with a requirement to register their homes as temporary rentals.

Airbnb poured more than $8 million into the campaign to defeat Prop. F, dramatically outspending the measure’s backers, who raised $482,000, the bulk of it coming from Unite Here, the hotel workers’ union. Although Prop. F would curb all short-term rentals — including ones listed by other companies such as HomeAway/VRBO, Flipkey or Craigslist — Airbnb clearly had the most at stake in its hometown and was the only company to fight the measure.

The No on F campaign bombarded voters with TV ads and campaign mailers claiming the measure would spur people to spy on and sue neighbors, and violate privacy. The Internet Archive tracked more than 26 hours of anti-Prop. F ads aired on San Francisco local TV stations from Aug. 25 to Oct. 26, during which time the Yes on F campaign aired just 16 minutes of TV commercials, it said.

Two weeks ago, Airbnb stumbled with an ill-advised corporate advertising campaign that used bus shelters and billboards to congratulate itself for remitting $12 million a year to San Francisco in hotel taxes.

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