A spate of sudden, dramatic rent increases has hit San Francisco, with one North Beach resident saying he recently received a notice from his landlord that his rent was increasing from $1,800 to $8,000 per month.
President Barack Obama will appear at Stanford University in Silicon Valley on Friday to be keynote speaker at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), which will highlight his commitment to building bridges to Muslim-majority countries around the world. Obama has
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is taking on the companies that make up the “gig economy” — though they provide the jobs, and services, that are increasingly popular among the young, “progressive” Americans who are the core of Warren’s support.
On Thursday, Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey signed a bill that prohibits cities and local municipalities from banning short-term rentals like Airbnb and HomeAway.
Berlin has begun restricting private property rentals through Airbnb and similar online platforms, threatening hefty fines in a controversial move meant to keep housing affordable for locals. The German capital fears that the growing trend of people letting out apartments
A majority of Americans would prefer to stay at Donald Trump’s house, rather than any other presidential candidate remaining in the 2016 race.
With the explosive growth of the “sharing economy,” entrepreneurial start-ups are mining businesses opportunities within the expanding “ethospheres” created Airbnb and Uber.
Although President Obama on arrival in communist Cuba said he was “confident” the U.S. embargo would end and the two nations would normalize trade, the only immediate opportunity seems to be Airbnb, which is already offering thousands of rentals.
The city of Santa Monica, California, which was nicknamed “The People’s Republic of Santa Monica” as far back as the early 1980s, has launched an attack on Airbnb and VRBO, using the Santa Monica City Council’s ban on short-term rentals issued in May 2015.
A British Airbnb host refused to rent an apartment to an Israeli traveller on the basis that Israelis don’t respect “basic human rights.” Tel Aviv photographer Ben Kelmer reserved a £60-a-night apartment for a week in March through the online company,
Beyoncé really is like everybody else. She stayed at an Airbnb when she performed at the Super Bowl. A $10,000-per-night Airbnb.
Local favorite Metallica was overlooked for the halftime show at Sunday’s historic Super Bowl 50, with the hosting committee choosing England’s Coldplay to perform in their place. However, Metallica exacted their revenge.
An Oakland couple who thought they were renting their home out to an older man from Chicago on New Years Eve were duped and wound up with a trashed residence complete with beer cans, cigarette and marijuana buds, broken glass and even blood stains on a wall.
With the rise of Uber, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit, there’s a sinking suspicion that the traditional 9-5 job is being replaced by flexible, independent contract work. But, despite the existence of multiple billion-dollar Silicon Valley startups hiring an army of independent contract workers, economists have had difficulty finding any evidence that Americans were more likely to be self-employed.
Lack of work-life balance may be a feature—not a bug—at the world’s top companies. Glassdoor just released its annual list of “Best Places to Work,” based on its database of employee reviews.
A Burlingame couple is renting out their children’s one-bedroom, one-bathroom treehouse for $275 a night on Airbnb.
Airbnb scored a major victory on Wednesday by beating Proposition F, which sought to limit short-term rentals in San Francisco. But the $25.5 billion lodging startup acknowledges that the political battle is nowhere near over.
Early election results show that San Franciscans voted overwhelmingly to reject a law limiting Airbnb in the city.
Protestors stormed the headquarters of multibillion dollar lodging startup Airbnb on Monday in San Francisco, one day before Bay Area residents cast their votes either in favor of or against Proposition F–the “Airbnb initiative,” a measure that seeks to regulate short-terms rentals in the city.
It’s Election Day, and Californians are deciding on a host of local offices and ballot measures. In San Francisco, voters will decide the fate of Airbnb and “sanctuary city” Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.
Airbnb has made headlines for reportedly spending a whopping $8,000,000 to defeat a San Francisco proposition to restrict short-term rentals. That translates into roughly $40 per voter of advertising from Airbnb alone, not including supporting tech lobbies.
Luxury hotels in Paris have taken a beating this year, with the Charlie Hebdo attacks scaring off visitors and websites like Airbnb stealing away clients, but analysts say the lure of the “palaces” has not yet faded. “The shock of
The $8 million political war chest raised by Airbnb and others to defeat San Francisco’s Proposition F, which would be an existential threat to private short-term “vacation rentals,” appears to be succeeding, with a double-digit lead in the polls.
The multibillion dollar lodging startup Airbnb has apologized for a series of forthright ads they placed on bus shelters throughout the Bay Area that tell municipal agencies in San Francisco what they can do with the millions in city hotel taxes their company is paying.
With San Francisco’s local election day approaching, Airbnb and friends have raised more than $8 million to fight tougher restrictions on short-term “vacation rentals.”
While it may lack the size and luxuries of Aaron Spelling’s famed 56,000 sq. ft. mansion, actress Emily Blunt’s former residence is now up for rent on the lodging website Airbnb, and it is giving renters a chance to see how well America has treated the British-born leading lady.
Hipsters who cannot afford high San Francisco rent have a new option: $1,800 per month for a spot on a bunk bed with a stranger in a home with 30 other people in what is being called “co-creative” housing.
Airbnb, the international ‘sharing economy’ holiday-rental website, has had to to review its security measures after an American teen staying in Spain said he was assaulted by his transsexual host. The Local reports 19 year old Massachusetts resident Jacob Lopez
Hillary Clinton just laid out her economic agenda, and ambiguous statements about companies like Uber and Airbnb leave the entire sharing economy industry in limbo. Clinton said she “vows to crack down on employers who misclassify workers as independent contractors.” She also noted that the “so-called gig economy offers exciting opportunities but raises hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future.”
In a speech laying out her economic policy, Hillary Clinton is set to attack companies like Uber and Airbnb in the “sharing economy” or “contractor economy,” arguing that such companies undercut wages. Her proposed alternative is to use government regulations to guide economic activity. Previews of her speech have set off alarm bells in Silicon Valley, and are sure to surprise millennial consumers, whose loyalty to the Democratic Party has has largely been blind, and who presumed that the party of government shared their love for technology.
Residents of Los Angeles County’s affluent Hollywood Hills are furious after witnessing renters of a $40-per-night Airbnb campsite listing, located on an empty dirt lot among million-dollar homes, engage in public displays of sex. Many local families have small children.
“Live under the stars in the great outdoors of Silicon Valley for a mere $900 a month.” A Mountain View, California man is renting out a tent in his backyard.
“Millennials” are suddenly realizing that government is something other than “the name we give to the things we choose to do together,” as former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank said. On the contrary, government is often the name we give to what one group of people does to another group by force of law.
Only three countries in the world have no listings in the extensive AirBnB online inventory: North Korea, Syria and Iran. But if State Senator Mike McGuire (D-Healdsberg) gets his way, maybe you can add a state, California, to the list.
In response to San Francisco’s new vacation-rental law to allow unlimited short-term rentals when a host is present, a powerful group of unions, landlords, housing activists and traditional hotels are preparing a November ballot initiative to severely constrict Airbnb and other “sharing economy” companies’ ability to help individuals secure short–term rentals from part or all of their homes or apartments.
For California cities and counties, Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) for short-term hotel rentals rose from $1.38 billion in 2010 to $1.67 billion in 2012. Collection of the 13 percent average tax on short-term occupancies would have been much higher, except that Airbnb online rentals has never collected a dime. Now, State Senator Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) os pushing Senate Bill 593 legislation to require “online vacation rental sites” to collect TOT and report big data–such as number of guests or length of stay– to cities and counties. And Airbnb and hosts are warning about consumer privacy.
Ashton Kutcher took on the character of Steve Jobs for a Hollywood movie, but he also channeled Steve Jobs’s life and has made about $100 million in early-stage technology investments through his venture capital fund, called A-Grade Investments.
