"Tech companies have followed a familiar pattern for decades now: Break the law, fend off enforcement, then hire enough lobbyists and give politicians enough money to get your activities retroactively legalized. That's what Uber did. It's what Airbnb did. Now apparently it's what a company called Brownstone Shared Housing is doing, according to former Sup. Dean Preston. Brownstone's model is pretty dystopian from the start."
"Under state law, landlords can't rent these sorts of beds. As Preston points out: [California Civil Code] Section 1950 prohibits what's known as "double letting." The idea is that if a landlord rents out a room to someone, the person is entitled to the entire room. A landlord cannot then rent the room, or any part of it, to another person."
"That would suggest that the entire model is illegal, and the city shouldn't have approved it: It's unclear how Brownstone thinks they will get around this. Maybe their lawyers didn't catch it. Or maybe they did, but like so many tech startups, they figured they could violate the law and never get in trouble. The difference here is that while tech-backed politicians are unlikely to intervene, Brownstone's business mode"
Tech companies frequently break laws, resist enforcement, then use lobbying and political donations to seek retroactive legalization. Brownstone Shared Housing offers single beds in dorm-style units for about $700 per month, highlighting San Francisco's affordable-housing failures. The city has approved an initial set of units described as "coffins." California Civil Code §1950 prohibits "double letting," entitling a person who hires part of a room to possession of the whole room and barring landlords from renting parts of that same room to others. That statute suggests Brownstone's single-bed rentals may be illegal, and it is unclear how the company will address this conflict.
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