INTRODUCTION

We are San Francisco’s Home Sharers Democratic Club. Our membership consists of home sharers and supporters of home sharing, a large number of which are elders and longtime San Francisco residents, and which include both homeowners and renters.

We support our members through outreach, by representing their rights through advocacy, and by education in the laws, regulations, products, voting issues, and opportunities available when we share our homes, spare bedrooms, and living spaces. We engage in community work, charitable causes, and support of neighborhood merchants.

Compensation for home sharing gives us the means to remain in our homes in one of the most expensive cities in the world. While hosting, we are San Francisco’s ambassadors to the world. Our guests are exposed to unique neighborhoods, small businesses, and local culture in ways only available through home sharing. And home sharing allows San Franciscans who cannot leave their homes to interact with people from around the world.

Thank you for your consideration of San Francisco’s Home Sharers Democratic Club. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.

CANDIDATE QUESTIONNAIRE

1. Please list your qualifications for the office you are seeking.
2. Do you support home sharing in San Francisco? If not, why not?
3. We believe that home sharing is a positive way to keep San Franciscans in their homes and share San Francisco with the world. Do you agree?
4. Why should San Francisco’s Home Sharers Democratic Club endorse your candidacy?
5. We have built great relationships with neighborhood merchants. The San Francisco Council of District Merchant Associations expresses strong support for home sharers. Do you agree that home sharing is beneficial to neighborhood merchants and small businesses?
6. The Home Sharers Democratic Club supports the right of San Franciscans to offer and receive compensation for sharing their homes. Home sharing regulations in San Francisco are among the most prohibitive in the nation. Home sharing is tightly regulated, strictly restricted, very limited, and available only to San Francisco residents. We are resolutely against any additional restrictions. San Francisco voters have soundly rejected tighter prohibitions. If home sharing is further limited, more San Franciscans could lose their homes, only to be replaced by non-San Franciscans who are wealthy enough to afford market-rate properties and rents. Do you believe that there should be no further restrictions to home sharing, so that current San Franciscans can remain San Franciscans?
7. San Francisco home sharers are at a competitive disadvantage to lodging corporations whose owners, unlike home sharers, are not restricted to a single location where they must reside. Unlike the owner of a hotel, a home sharer in San Francisco who spends years building the business is not permitted to move the business to a different location, or to add locations, or to pass that business onto loving heirs. A home sharer may be prohibited from hosting even small groups, while hotels with “event spaces”, “party rooms”, and “conference halls” encourage such. Do you support easing San Francisco’s home-sharing regulations so San Francisco’s home sharers are treated more fairly?
8. Studies show that home sharing augments and does not supplant hotels, especially as home sharers are in neighborhoods with few hotels. By decreasing vacancy periods, home sharing increases neighborhood safety. Harvard Business Review shows that home sharing drives housing creation and that restricting home sharing causes a significant negative impact on local economies and reduces property values. Do you agree that home sharing is an important component of San Francisco’s economy and brings benefits to otherwise underserved areas of the City, does not threaten hotels or hotel workers, and can offer San Francisco hotel workers an additional source of income (by sharing their homes)?
9. San Francisco’s Office of Short-Term Rentals has a history of being out of compliance with the law. While now under new leadership, past Office failures include unlawful months-long processing, accusations made without evidence, fabricated neighbor complaints, technology breakdowns, assumed-guilty standpoints, extreme unresponsiveness, and blaming home sharers for Office failings, repeatedly demonstrating bias against legal home sharing in San Francisco. Do you believe that home sharers are entitled to due process, efficiency, and unbiased implementation of the law? Should staff who demonstrate bias against home sharers be relieved of their duties?
10. Current regulations prevent entire groups of vulnerable San Franciscans, extensively away from the City, from sharing their homes. Examples include deployed members of the military, traveling professionals (flight attendants, pilots, long-haul truckers), educators on sabbatical, veterans receiving out-of-state treatment, union members supporting out-of-town strikes, mutual-aid firefighters, San Franciscans assisting ill family members for extended periods, and seniors away for recuperative retreats. Would you support change, so that such vulnerable San Franciscans may use home sharing to keep their homes in San Francisco?
11. San Francisco entered into a settlement agreement, which took away home sharers’ rights so as to stabilize home sharing in the City. Still, there are groups and individuals (including in government) who have called for the City to violate terms of the settlement agreement by instituting further restrictions. Such actions would reinstate lawsuits against the City and bring about a ballot initiative to fully restore the rights of home sharers. Are you familiar with the City’s settlement agreement? Do you believe the City should abide by its terms?
12. There have been mass shooting incidents at mall, nightclub, school, subway, movie-theater, grocery, mall, festival, public-street, and housing locations, including tenant-rented, owner-occupied, and short-term rental homes. Should all such locations be shut down or do solutions lie elsewhere, such as having guns “well regulated” as the second amendment stipulates?
13. Are you interested in speaking to members and friends of San Francisco’s Home Sharers Democratic Club via video conference? Our meetings are held on the second Thursday of each month, starting at 6:30 PM. Would you like to speak at our next meeting? Thank you for your consideration!

If you’d like to speak at one of our monthly membership meetings (generally the 2nd thursday of the month in the evening) please Email the above form with your answers to our policy committee at [email protected] and someone will schedule your time slot.

You can download a fillable PDF of this form here.