 Please join me in welcoming Board of Supervisors president David Chu Good morning everyone I Am so delighted to be able to welcome you on behalf of the city and County of San Francisco And I hope over the last 24 hours you have been eating at our restaurants Drinking at our bars playing at our nightclubs and sharing your money with San Francisco. I Also want to welcome you to San Francisco because we are the capital of many things We are the capital of marriage equality of universal health insurance of being on the cutting edge of the environment And I believe we are becoming the capital of the sharing economy And let me tell you three reasons why I think San Francisco is becoming the capital of the sharing economy The first is we are a city that has an ethos when it comes to sharing We're the city of the summer of love. We have 10,000 residents that attend burning men. Maybe including someone on this stage We are a community that wants to foster trust Among strangers to build what I think of as one of the most amazing cities in the entire world But we were also city that's expensive. The rent is too damn high We have skyrocketing mortgages credit card debt student loans And we need and we understand that keeping up with the Joneses may not be the way to go In fact sharing with the Joneses. I think is the better path And we are also city that stands for the environment I've passed a half a dozen first in the country pieces of environmental legislation and we know that Rather than buying that good that car you use once a week the clothes you wear once the book You haven't finished reading. It's better to share The third reason though that I think San Francisco We're becoming a capital of the sharing economy is We are a city of innovation and we've been a city of innovation ever since the Gold Rush Since the first comm era since the current tech boom that we're in now in 1999 I helped to start an online communications company And in fact if I hadn't been for the last six years running the San Francisco Board of Supervisors I might be sitting where you are right now Because I have a couple of personal Details about my life that I usually don't share but I feel very comfortable in front of this crowd Let me share with you two things first of all. I'm one of your elected officials who doesn't own a car and This is how I get around this is my keep fob to city car share I'm also and this is probably a slightly more embarrassing detail I'm a tenant and my wife and I believe I'm the only elected official who still has a roommate beyond my wife We share a living room. We share a refrigerator. We share a big TV because this is the San Francisco way This is why it has been important for me as an elected official to really think about the sharing economy And how it fits into our city a couple years ago I have been a champion of car sharing in fact We passed legislation to require new housing developments to have car sharing spaces and I also pioneered for those of you who've seen the hundreds of Zip car and city car share spots around the city We've put those on the streets because we believe and know that for every car that is shared We're taking seven off our streets Last month I became the first legislator in the country to propose carving out legal spaces for shareable housing Those who use Airbnb home away VRBO and I want to just talk for two minutes about our experiences and rolling out this legislation When shareable housing started a few years ago No one noticed that someone was renting out a couch here was lending out a room there Even though it was violating city laws around planning and zoning taxes pesky taxes rent control landlord tenant rules Today we have over a hundred thousand instances of shareable housing in San Francisco And this has created a little bit of a challenge in the midst of our affordability housing crisis shareable housing has both helped as well as exacerbated our crisis on the one hand We've had some bad actors who have cleared out entire buildings of San Francisco residents I'm not just talking about owners who have evicted dozens of tenants But tenants who have multiple leases living in one place Renting out for as bed and breakfasts on Airbnb On the other hand we have so many San Franciscans that are struggling to get by who need a little bit of extra income The working family that's going away to visit grandma during the holidays the students away for the summer Workers traveling for their jobs seniors with the spare room So I proposed what I thought of as a reasonable balance to address the affordability crisis To require that only permanent residents who live in their homes for at least nine months of the year engage in this activity To have a level playing field where folks have to pay their taxes and liability insurance to have accountability with registration a Complaint system etc. I Thought this was a reasonable solution, but two weeks later. There was a major press conference to attack it In part. This is politics. I'm in the midst of a race for the same for the state assembly this year My opponent is has supporters who have been protesting the Twitter headquarters throwing rock set Google commuter shuttles vomiting on Yahoo buses referring to tech workers as nominal San Franciscans At this press conference a few weeks ago His political allies proposed a ballot measure for November to effectively shut down shareable housing in San Francisco They are calling for war on you even though they don't realize that what you are doing Is helping to make sure that we're addressing our income inequality. We're empowering everyday people by building community and using technology Let me close with three quick suggestions for you to think about one All of you need to get involved in the political debate You're busy trying to change the world But status quo interests are actively working to ship you to Menlo Park Oakland and San Jose Secondly for those of you who are starting the next shareable economy great company think early about how your paradigm meshes with Existing rules and laws we have to make sure that everyone is playing on a level playing field that we're addressing issues of legality and taxation We're reconciling what you're doing with the needs of our cities and our country and then thirdly Go change the world. We like to say in San Francisco as goes San Francisco. So goes California as goes California So goes the rest of the world. You're changing the world. You're here in San Francisco. Go out and change it. Thank you very much