It's the proposed law being met with "the wrath of San Francisco's hippie, anarchist and technological culture," according to one opponent: Proposition F.
The ballot measure, which includes a 75-night limit on the number of nights a home can be rented out as a hotel on services such as Airbnb, is up for a vote in the city known these days for technology and of course, soaring rents.
The intention of the proposal is to prevent landlords from booting long-term tenants in favor of creating a full-time Airbnb hotel. Proponents say sharing services exacerbate a housing shortage that has the average rent in the metro area up to $3,348, compared to the $1,386 national average, as calculated by Zillow.
But critics say the "sledgehammer" proposition might be unnecessary and overly broad, since revamped enforcement of abusive rentals were adopted in the past year, Scott Wiener of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, told CNBC.
"There is a lot of very, very real and understandable anxiety around our housing affordability situation, and I think part of that is driving Prop. F," Wiener said. "But short-term rentals are not even close to the primary cause of our housing crisis. It's because we don't have enough housing. We haven't built enough housing, we don't have enough affordable housing, and we should be focused on those real solutions."
He said that a big influx of population is the real culprit of the housing crisis, and that Prop. F "throws the baby out with the bathwater" while outlawing a practice that is already illegal.
"We all want to get rid of the short-term rentals where people remove an entire housing unit from the market," Wiener said. "That's in process. ... [Prop. F] will hurt a lot of San Francisco residents who live in their homes, who aren't being abusive, but who rely on short-term rental income from a spare bedroom to make ends meet in this expensive city. We have a lot of house-poor residents."
Silicon Valley investor Jason Calacanis sees the law as a target on innovative sharing-economy companies, he told CNBC. Calacanis said the high fines outlined in the measure will cause neighbors to turn against each other, calling the law "sneaky."
"What they're really trying to do is punish ... the innovation that an Airbnb brings to the table," Calacanis said.
Services such as AirBnB have been opposed by some in the hospitality industry. For instance, the Hotel Association of New York City released a report last week estimating that over 2,800 hotel-industry jobs were lost in the city in the past year because of demand that had shifted from hotels to Airbnb.
The Prop. F campaign raised about $300,000 from hotel unions and affordable housing advocates. But the multimillion-dollar campaign Airbnb orchestrated against Prop. F has outspent supporters by nearly 30 times, according to Reuters.
— Reuters contributed to this report.