Posting Your Property on Airbnb Is Now Punishable Offense in Sausalito, Bay Area
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Sausalito, a Bay Area city, has made posting rental ads on Airbnb a punishable offense, sparking debate among residents and short-term rental hosts about the city's regulatory approach and its impact on property owners.
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"The Supreme Court issued several opinions supporting that use of the Commerce Clause. Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964), ruled that Congress could regulate a business that served mostly interstate travelers."
Heart of Atlanta Motel made the argument that people who wanted to rent a room were neither goods nor services which crossed state lines, and argued they had a constitutional right of association so should be free to racially discriminate.
The Interstate Commerce Clause even applies to crops you grow for yourself, which aren't on the market. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
"An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm. The U.S. government had established limits on wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer, to stabilize wheat prices and supplies. Filburn grew more than was permitted and so was ordered to pay a penalty. In response, he said that because his wheat was not sold, it could not be regulated as commerce, let alone "interstate" commerce (described in the Constitution as "Commerce ... among the several states"). The Supreme Court disagreed ... The Court decided that Filburn's wheat-growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for animal feed on the open market, which is traded nationally, is thus interstate, and is therefore within the scope of the Commerce Clause. Although Filburn's relatively small amount of production of more wheat than he was allotted would not affect interstate commerce itself, the cumulative actions of thousands of other farmers like Filburn would become substantial. Therefore, the Court decided that the federal government could regulate Filburn's production."
This interpretation also applies to medical marijuana, quoting again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause
"In a 2005 medical marijuana case, Gonzales v. Raich, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the argument that the ban on growing medical marijuana for personal use exceeded the powers of Congress under the Commerce Clause. Even if no goods were sold or transported across state lines, the Court found that there could be an indirect effect on interstate commerce and relied heavily on a New Deal case, Wickard v. Filburn, which held that the government may regulate personal cultivation and consumption of crops because the aggregate effect of individual consumption could have an indirect effect on interstate commerce."
Frameup is a big fucking deal.
> The coastal town of about 7,000 residents has prohibited rentals under 30 days since January 2019, but is now making simply posting an ad for one of these illegal properties a punishable offense. Each day an advertisement remains online counts as a new violation, according to the new ordinance that was passed unanimously on Oct. 21, and the fines escalate sharply: $1,500 for a first offense, $3,000 for a second violation within the same year, and $5,000 for each additional violation.
> Sausalito code enforcement officer Justin Goger-Malo, who took the position in February of this year, explained why this change was so crucial at a City Council meeting on Tuesday. Previously, enforcing proved to be a frustrating bottleneck as property owners disputed citations. “We’ll send out a citation, the property owner will then send us a screenshot which says, ‘Look, here it says my account’s been suspended and I canceled two reservations,’” Goger-Malo said. “It’s very easy to fake something like that.” Goger-Malo described working through six or seven cases simultaneously and receiving various forms of pushback from property owners claiming they had stopped short-term rentals or switched to longer terms.
> The advertising ban eliminates this enforcement gap. “It’s going to allow us to say, ‘You advertised it. We see that it says there’s been a rental completed,’” said Goger-Malo. “Even if you’ve canceled that rental, we now have the means going forward to be able to take some of our time back in investigating these claims and say it’s the advertising that you’re being fined for now.”
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