Just as the city hits the beginning of a brutal budget season, one of the major corporate players who played a big role in the deficit has buckled: Airbnb abruptly dropped its $120 million suit against the city.
Activists, particularly in labor, have been pushing for more than a year to demand that the rogue company, which has cost tens of thousands of tenants their homes, quit holding up the city for big money in a time of crisis.
A labor-led coalition called for a boycott of Airbnb.
The company’s lawsuit alleged that the city put Airbnb in the wrong category for business taxes. It’s entirely possible that the giant corporation, which got its start from creating illegal hotel rooms in San Francisco, just decided that its legal case was a loser, and gave up.
But high-priced corporate lawyers don’t tend to file cases that they know are bogus, and the City Attorney’s Office didn’t file a motion to dismiss on the grounds that there is no case here.
I have no inside information, but it seems likely this is more about politics than law: Airbnb, already under attack because its co-founder, Joe Gebbia, has been working with Trump, would rather not be the Number One Bad Guy in the upcoming budget fight.
As long as the suit was pending, the city had to put $120 million—enough money to fund all of the cuts to nonprofits and service providers that the mayor is proposing—aside in a contingency account.
The message: Airbnb is forcing cuts to public health, education, violence prevention, LGBTQI services, and so much more.
Airbnb’s revenue in 2025 was $12.2 billion, with profits of $2.1 billion. Backing off the lawsuit was a minor cost of doing business.
The decision is also a sign that progressive organizations can successfully fight back against big corporate tax cuts. That’s a bit of good news as the mayor’s terrible budget moves forward.
Now that money is available.
