San Francisco, California Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in San Francisco, California and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that short-term renting is legal here, and it has been since February 2015. The awkward part is who's allowed to do it. San Francisco is a consolidated city and county, so a single set of rules covers every neighborhood from the Sunset to Bayview, and that set of rules only lets a permanent resident rent out the home they already live in.

So the plan most investors arrive with, buy a unit, furnish it, list the whole thing at nightly rates, isn't available at any price in San Francisco. Administrative Code Chapter 41A makes you occupy the unit at least 275 nights a calendar year, and that arithmetic is what leaves at most 90 nights when guests can have the place to themselves. Hosted nights, where you're home while they stay, aren't capped at all. The certificate that permits any of it costs $925, it's non-refundable, and it expires after two years.

So let's walk through what it actually takes to do this properly: who qualifies, what the city verifies, the documents that get applications bounced, the charges that land on a guest's bill, and who to call when something goes sideways. Every figure below comes from San Francisco's or California's own pages, read in July 2026, and where I couldn't confirm something officially I've said so. Before you spend the $925, run the property through BNBCalc first and see whether a spare room plus 90 unhosted nights clears your numbers.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations San Francisco, California?

That 275-night figure does more work than any other number in the ordinance, so start with where it sits. Chapter 41A isn't a short-term rental law by name at all. It's titled Residential Unit Conversion and Demolition, and its default position is that handing a residential unit over to what the code calls Tourist or Transient Use is unlawful. Short-term renting survives as an exception tucked into subsection 41A.5(g), which tells you how the city thinks about it. Hosting is a permission granted to a resident, not a use right attached to a building.

Tourist or Transient Use means any occupancy of under 30 days. It also covers any occupancy under 30 days of a unit owned or leased by a business entity, whether the entity holds it short or long term, so routing a listing through an LLC doesn't slip past the rule. That route walks you straight into it.

A Permanent Resident is someone who occupies a unit for at least 60 consecutive days intending to make it their primary residence, and the code is explicit that an owner or a lessee can qualify. Primary Residence then gets a documentary test rather than a test of intent. It's your usual place of return, proved by at least two of five things: motor vehicle registration, driver's license, voter registration, tax documents claiming the homeowner's exemption there, or a utility bill. You get one primary residence. That's the whole gate.

Clear it, and 41A.5(g) sets out what you've signed up for:

• 275 nights of occupancy in the calendar year you rent, or 75% of the days you've owned or rented the place if this is a first partial year.
• $500,000 of liability insurance in the aggregate, or every booking run through a platform whose coverage matches or beats that. The policy has to name the building's owners as additional insured and cover tenants in the building for bodily injury and property damage.
• Two years of records showing primary residency, nights occupied, nights rented and insurance compliance, produced to the Planning Department on request.
• Your registration number in every listing, on every platform.
• A printed sign inside your front door giving the location of all fire extinguishers in the unit and the building, plus gas shut-off valves, fire exits and pull fire alarms.
• A valid business registration certificate, which comes from a different department and has to exist before you apply.
• No open code enforcement of any kind: Building, Electrical, Plumbing, Mechanical, Fire, Health, Housing, Police or Planning. A violation that shows up later suspends your registration until you cure it.

Now the number everyone quotes. The 90-night cap on unhosted stays isn't written anywhere in Chapter 41A, and I went through the whole chapter looking for it. What the code sets is 275 nights of occupancy, and 365 minus 275 is 90, so the city publishes the remainder as a 90 un-hosted night limit because that's the most a compliant host can physically offer. Hosted nights carry no limit, since you're in the unit either way. Just make sure you count the two categories separately, because the city wants separate listings for hosted and unhosted offerings and the quarterly report asks about both.

Some homes are excluded no matter who lives in them. Below-market-rate and inclusionary units, income-restricted housing, public housing, single-room-occupancy hotel units, dormitories and accessory dwelling units can't be registered, and neither can anything in the Presidio, Fort Mason or on Treasure Island. One exclusion catches people who did nothing themselves: a unit that was the subject of an Ellis Act eviction after November 1, 2014 stays ineligible for five years from that eviction, whoever owns it now.

And 30 nights is a real cliff, not a rounding point. A stay of 30 consecutive days or more isn't Tourist or Transient Use at all, so Chapter 41A never reaches it and no certificate is needed.

One last thing about the framework, because it should change how you read older advice. It's stable. The last substantive amendment to 41A.5 was Ordinance 89-17, effective May 14, 2017, and the codified text still carries that date. Nine years without a rewrite is unusual for a big-city short-term rental law.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in San Francisco, California

Nine stable years also mean nobody's waiting on a loophole to open. Unfortunately for most people arriving at this page, the business you had in mind doesn't exist in San Francisco. The permanent resident has to be a natural person, so no LLC, trust or partnership can hold the registration. Only one permanent resident may be attached to a unit, and you may register only one unit. An owner who lives in Marin and rents a Mission flat whole is the precise thing Chapter 41A was written to stop.

Tenants can host, and plenty do, though the path is narrower than it looks from outside. Once your application is complete the Planning Department mails notice to the owner of record, so your landlord hears about it from the city rather than from you. Keep in mind that a lease clause banning subletting or transient use still binds you, since 41A.5(g)(5) says the exception confers no right to do anything a lease, homeowners association rule or CC&R forbids. And in a rent-controlled unit the ordinance caps the money: you may charge no more rent than you're paying your own landlord per month.

That kills the arbitrage outright.

Neighbors get an extra say in one zoning district. In an RH-1(D) district the department also notifies any homeowners association that asked to be told, plus every owner and occupant within 300 feet, then holds your application for 45 days and reads whatever comes back. Everywhere else in the city, only the owner of record gets notice.

What's left is a room-share with a 90-night whole-home allowance bolted onto it, so the thing to model is a spare bedroom for most of the year plus up to 90 nights when you're away and guests have the run of the place. Assuming the nightly numbers don't work out, and for a lot of San Francisco stock they won't, the usual pivot is the 30-plus-night furnished market, which sits outside Chapter 41A entirely.

Do check the other side of that trade before you commit, though. Once a tenancy begins in a building whose first certificate of occupancy predates June 13, 1979, San Francisco's rent ordinance is in play, and its eviction protections now reach newer buildings too. A 30-night booking and a tenancy are not the same animal, and the second one is far harder to end.

Since San Francisco is both a city and a county, the San Francisco County guide covers the same territory from the county angle. For a comparison against places where a whole unit can legally go up year-round, the San Mateo County guide covers the peninsula suburbs an hour down the 101, and the Sonoma County guide covers wine country, which is a different regulatory world an hour north.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in San Francisco, California

Comparisons aside, the San Francisco path itself is two permits from two departments, in a fixed order. Get them backwards and the second one bounces.

Start with the Business Registration Certificate from the Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector. Every person doing business in the city must register within 30 days of starting, and the fee scale runs from $55 up to $60,000, plus a $4 state fee, depending on gross receipts. Most hosts pay nothing. The Treasurer waives the registration fee where hosting is your only business activity, you have no payroll expense, and your rental income comes from a single residential structure of fewer than four units, a cooperative housing corporation, or one residential condominium. Meet all three and the fee is $0, although you still have to register.

With that certificate number in hand, the short-term rental application goes to the Office of Short-Term Rentals through the Planning Department's online portal. The fee is $925, it's non-refundable whether you're approved or refused, and what it buys is two years. Remember that 60 consecutive nights of living and sleeping in that unit have to be behind you before you apply, not ahead of you.

As of July 2026 that fee is $925, which startles anyone who read a 2024-era guide, so here's where the number comes from. The ordinance sets the fee at $50. It also lets the Controller adjust it every year with no vote from the Board of Supervisors, upward or downward, so the program recovers what it costs to run and no more, with each new rate operative on July 1. Application fees and enforcement penalties are what fund the office, which means the fee tracks the cost of policing a market where most of the work involves chasing people who never applied at all.

You can host while the application sits in the queue, which is more generous than it first sounds. The city allows it when you're already the permanent resident, you hold business registration, and no complaint or enforcement action is pending against the property. Refusal stops everything at once: cancel every reservation under 30 nights and pull the listings, even with an appeal filed. San Francisco publishes no processing time, and I couldn't find one on any official page. The only hard clock in the code is that 45-day hold in RH-1(D) districts.

Approval then starts a reporting rhythm that never stops. Quarterly periods open on January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1, and you get 30 days after each one to file the nights you rented through the portal, including a zero when nothing happened. Renewal comes every two years, and the office emails you within a month of expiry. A renewal application has to show 275 nights of occupancy in each of the two preceding calendar years, so those records aren't filing-cabinet theater. They're the renewal.

Then the arithmetic turns unfriendly. Chapter 41A doesn't set a flat fine at all; it sets a multiple of a standard hourly administrative rate of $121. Four times that rate, per unlawfully converted unit, per day, is the first violation, which is where the widely quoted $484 a day comes from. A second violation doubles the multiplier to eight, so $968 a day. Both run from the notice of violation until the activity stops, meaning the total depends on how long you argue.

Beyond that the escalation is layered. Multiple violations get the unit struck from the registry for a year and added to a published list of addresses that may not be offered, and listing it anyway adds civil penalties of up to $1,000 a day. The city can also go to court for civil penalties of up to $1,000 a day, or charge a misdemeanor carrying up to $1,000 and six months in county jail. Unpaid penalties become a lien on the property, and the money lands in the Housing Trust Fund for the Small Sites Program.

You do get a hearing. Request a Director's hearing within 30 days of the notice of violation, it happens within 45 days of the request, and a written decision follows within 30 days of the hearing. That decision is final, and you then have 20 days to seek judicial review.

Required Documents for San Francisco, California Short-Term Rentals

Since that $925 doesn't come back and the hearing route only opens after something has already gone wrong, it's worth getting the paperwork right the first time. The application itself is short. Assembling what sits behind it takes the time.

• Your Business Registration Certificate number, issued before you apply.
• Two proofs of primary residence, drawn from the five the ordinance names: motor vehicle registration, driver's license, voter registration, tax documents claiming the homeowner's exemption at that address, or a utility bill. Each one has to point at the unit you're registering.
• Proof of liability insurance of not less than $500,000 in the aggregate, or confirmation that your platform's coverage equals or exceeds it, naming the owners as additional insured and covering tenants in the building.
• Your lease, if you rent, and the expectation that the owner of record will be notified you applied.
• Every listing you hold, with its platform and identifier, since the registration number has to appear on all of them.
• Evidence of 60 consecutive nights already lived and slept in the unit.
• A clean enforcement record for the whole property, not only your unit, across all nine code categories.

The office can also ask for business records, booking calendars and host reservation schedules among them, plus relevant tenant leases and a site visit of the unit. So the two-year record-keeping duty is not busywork. It's the evidence you hand over when a neighbor complains, and on renewal it's the only thing proving you hit 275 nights in each of the two prior years.

San Francisco, California Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through all that and are able to start hosting, there's still tax to deal with, and it arrives from three separate offices on four different dates.

Charge	Rate or amount	Who collects it, and when
Transient occupancy tax	14% of rent	Treasurer and Tax Collector, filed annually by January 31
Tourism Improvement District assessment	2.25% in Zone 1, 2.00% in Zone 2	Treasurer and Tax Collector, filed annually by January 31
Business registration fee	$0 for a qualifying single-property host, otherwise $55 and up	Treasurer and Tax Collector, due March 2, 2026
Business personal property tax on furnishings	assessed on what you report	Assessor-Recorder, Form 571-STR by May 7

The transient occupancy tax is the heavy one, at 14% of rent on any stay under 30 days, under Article 7 of the Business and Tax Regulations Code. Stacked on it sits the Tourism Improvement District assessment, 2.25% in Zone 1 and 2.00% in Zone 2, which is a real charge rather than a rounding item on a nightly rate.

Who remits all that depends entirely on where the booking came from, and this is the part that catches Vrbo hosts out. San Francisco recognizes three Qualified Website Companies: Airbnb, Interval International and misterb&b. Book only through one of those and you file neither the occupancy tax nor the district assessment on those rents, because the platform has already handled both.

Vrbo isn't on the list. Neither is a reservation taken directly off your own site, so a single non-qualifying booking puts the whole annual return back on your desk, due January 31, and you file a zero return in a year when nothing was rented. Hosts don't need a Certificate of Authority, mind you. That requirement belongs to hotel operators.

The city's business taxes are gentler than the headline rates suggest. Proposition M, passed in November 2024, lifted the small business exemption from the gross receipts tax from $2.25 million to $5 million starting with the 2025 tax year filed in 2026, which puts every plausible single-room host comfortably under it. Be aware that the same reform moved the deadline. Business registration renewal and the annual business tax filing are now one unified form, due the last day of February, which the Treasurer gives as March 2 for 2026.

One tax gets forgotten every year, because it has nothing to do with income. Furniture, appliances, linens and the washer count as business personal property, so the Assessor-Recorder wants Form 571-STR by May 7 from hosts who received the notice in February. Federal and California income tax then sit above all of it, and apportioning expenses inside a home you also live in is fiddlier than a spreadsheet makes it look. If you're weighing what a 90-night San Francisco allowance might clear against a market where the whole unit can go up year-round, BNBCalc Markets shows that gap at the neighborhood level.

California Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Tax is also where the state finally shows up, though not in the way older guides claimed it would. California has no statewide short-term rental permit, and no statewide short-term rental tax. That second half matters, because a lot of 2024-era guidance said one was coming. Senate Bill 584 would have imposed a 15% state tax on short-term rental occupancy to fund workforce housing, and it got far enough along that hosts began budgeting for it. It died. The status page reads "Inactive Bill - Died", with a last action of November 30, 2024, "From Assembly without further action."

What did land is a data law, and it's recent enough that most hosts haven't run into it yet. Senate Bill 346, chaptered on October 13, 2025 as Chapter 751, added Government Code section 50990 and following, and took effect on January 1, 2026. It lets a city or county require a booking platform to hand over the physical address of every short-term rental down to the nine-digit ZIP code, plus the assessor parcel number, listing URL or accessory dwelling unit details on request, with reports at least quarterly. It also requires local license numbers and occupancy tax certifications inside the listings themselves.

The catch is section 50990(b), which says none of it applies unless the local agency adopts its own ordinance switching it on. I couldn't confirm that San Francisco has adopted one, so treat it as a tool the city now holds rather than a rule already binding you.

Two older state laws shape what any California city can charge you. Senate Bill 60 amended Government Code sections 25132 and 36900 back in 2021. Cities and counties may now fine short-term rental infractions that threaten health or safety well above the ordinary ceiling: up to $1,500 for a first offense, $3,000 for a second inside a year, and $5,000 for each one after that. Two conditions came attached, though. A jurisdiction has to run a hardship waiver process, and it can't apply those fines to a first-time failure to register. San Francisco's Chapter 41A penalties run on their own track off that $121 hourly rate, so SB 60 tends to matter more in the suburbs than it does in the city.

Assembly Bill 537 is the one that changes how you write a listing. Since July 1, 2024, Business and Professions Code section 17568.6 has required any advertised short-term lodging rate to include every mandatory fee, with taxes and government fees shown in the total before the guest reserves. Break it knowingly, or where you should have known, and the civil penalty runs up to $10,000 for each violation, enforceable by a city attorney, a district attorney, county counsel or the Attorney General. Cleaning fees that only surface at checkout are exactly what it targets.

Two more state rules govern the unit and how you pick guests. Health and Safety Code section 17926 requires a State Fire Marshal-listed carbon monoxide device in any dwelling unit with a fossil-fuel appliance, a fireplace or an attached garage, enforced as an infraction with a $200 ceiling and 30 days to correct. And Government Code section 12955 makes housing discrimination unlawful on grounds including race, religion, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, familial status, source of income, disability and military status, and it reaches perceived characteristics and association as well. A spare-room listing is covered the same as a lease.

Everything else is local, which is why California reads as a patchwork rather than a system. Our California statewide short-term rental guide maps the layers, and the Placer County guide covers the North Lake Tahoe side, where local politics has produced a completely different rulebook.

Does San Francisco, California Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

That patchwork is why enforcement quality swings so widely across the state, and San Francisco sits firmly at the strict end. Yes, it enforces, and the design is the reason rather than the headcount, because the city moved enforcement onto the platforms.

Under 41A.5(g)(4)(C), a hosting platform may provide booking services and collect a fee for a San Francisco unit only when it "exercises reasonable care to confirm" that the unit is lawfully registered at the time it's rented. On the fifth of every month each platform files a signed affidavit with the office confirming it did so, and it keeps three years of records per transaction: owner name, unit address, dates, registration number. Airbnb's own San Francisco page puts the consequence plainly. Decline to share your data with the city and the listing comes down.

The city sweeps on its own account too. Section 41A.7(b) requires the office to review platform listings at least monthly, email the platforms about every listing lacking a valid registration number, and copy the City Attorney on those notices. It can also issue administrative subpoenas within 30 days of spotting a potential violation.

Complaints arrive by form, by email, by post, or as an anonymous voicemail on 628.652.7599, and the department publishes complaint and violation information on its own website, so the enforcement record is public. A notice of violation goes out by certified mail and gets posted at the building. Where the director finds nothing, the complainant hears back within 60 days.

One enforcement route is unusual enough to plan around. Chapter 41A gives your neighbors standing to sue you. A permanent resident of your building, an associated homeowners association, or any resident or owner within 100 feet can start by filing a complaint. Where no hearing determination arrives within 135 days, that party then gives the department and the City Attorney 30 days' written notice, and once the city has passed on it, brings a civil action for injunctive and monetary relief. The prevailing party collects costs and reasonable attorneys' fees. Most cities make enforcement the city's problem.

San Francisco made it everyone's.

What I can't hand you is a scoreboard, and that's a genuine gap. San Francisco publishes no open dataset of short-term rental registrations, the registry is public only with resident names and street numbers redacted, and I couldn't reach a current report from the office to the Board of Supervisors. So watch out for any guide quoting you a precise count of registered hosts. The figures circulating trace back to secondary write-ups from 2019, and repeating one as though it were current would be worse than admitting the gap.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in San Francisco, California

Since nobody publishes a live count, the sequence below is where the money gets saved, because the early steps tell you whether the later ones are worth paying for at all.

1. Confirm the unit can be registered. Below-market-rate, inclusionary, income-restricted, public housing, single-room-occupancy, dormitory and accessory dwelling units are dead ends, as is anything in the Presidio, Fort Mason or on Treasure Island, and so is a unit Ellis Act evicted within the past five years.
2. Confirm you're the permanent resident. Sixty consecutive nights already slept there, one primary residence, at least two of the five documents pointing at that address, and a credible plan to reach 275 nights.
3. Read your lease, CC&Rs and house rules. A city certificate overrides none of them, and a rent-controlled tenancy caps your nightly take at the rent you already pay.
4. Clear open code enforcement on the entire property. An outstanding violation anywhere on the parcel keeps the unit off the registry.
5. Register the business with the Treasurer and Tax Collector, within 30 days of starting, and claim the host fee exemption if all three of its conditions fit you.
6. Sort the insurance. Either $500,000 in the aggregate naming the owners as additional insured, or written confirmation your platform's coverage equals or beats it.
7. Apply through the Planning Department portal and pay the $925. Expect notice to the owner of record, plus a 45-day hold and notice within 300 feet in an RH-1(D) district.
8. Put the registration number in every listing, and split hosted and unhosted stays into separate listings.
9. Post the safety sign inside the front door and start the two-year records on day one, nights occupied and nights rented both.
10. Diarize the renewal at two years, and hold the 275-night line in both preceding calendar years, since the renewal application asks for each of them.

Establish a System for Tax Collection

Diarizing that renewal only helps when the rest of the calendar sits alongside it, and this is where hosts lose money to penalties rather than to guests. The filing year has four fixed points, spread across three departments:

• 30 days after January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1: the quarterly report of nights rented, through the portal, zeroes included.
• January 31: the transient occupancy tax and Tourism Improvement District returns, unless every single booking came through a Qualified Website Company.
• March 2, 2026: the unified Annual Business Registration and Tax Form, which now carries the registration renewal along with it.
• May 7: Form 571-STR to the Assessor-Recorder, where February's notice reached you.

Build the tracking around the 90-night figure rather than around revenue, because that's the number your certificate lives on. Log every reservation as hosted or unhosted the day it ends, keep those nights in the same file as the receipts, and don't forget that your platform is keeping its own three-year record of the same bookings with your registration number attached to each. The two sets should match.

Going only through Airbnb lifts the occupancy tax and the district assessment off your desk, which is real relief and also a trap, because the exemption reaches only the rents that platform collected. Add one Vrbo booking or one direct reservation and the annual return comes back for the whole year. So decide the channel mix before January, not after.

Who to Contact in San Francisco, California about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Before January arrives, three offices are worth having in your phone, because they don't cover for each other and each one owns a different piece of this.

Registration, eligibility and complaints

The Office of Short-Term Rentals sits inside the Planning Department and runs the registry, the application, and Chapter 41A enforcement.

• Address: 49 South Van Ness Avenue, Suite 1400, San Francisco, CA 94103
• Phone: 628.652.7599, which doubles as the anonymous complaint voicemail
• Email: [email protected]
• Planning Department main line: 628.652.7600, Monday to Friday, 8:00am to 4:00pm, with the public counter on the 2nd floor of the same building
• Apply and file quarterly reports: the Planning Department's online portal

Taxes and business registration

The Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector administers the transient occupancy tax, the Tourism Improvement District assessment and business registration, including the host fee exemption.

• In person: City Hall, Room 140, Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with walk-in help until 4 p.m. and the cashier window open until 5 p.m.
• Phone: 311 from inside San Francisco, or (415) 701-2311 from outside the city
• Business tax email: [email protected]
• Mail business tax payments: San Francisco Tax Collector, P.O. Box 7425, San Francisco, CA 94120

Zoning, and the tax on your furnishings

Whether your address falls in an RH-1(D) district is a Planning question, and it's worth asking before you apply, since it decides whether your neighbors within 300 feet get notified and whether the file sits for 45 days. Form 571-STR and the personal property assessment belong to the Assessor-Recorder's business personal property division instead. Its short-term rental notice pages have been relocated and I couldn't load the replacement, so I'm not going to print a phone number I haven't verified. The two contacts above can route you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally run an Airbnb in San Francisco in 2026?

Only in a home you live in. San Francisco permits short-term rentals of under 30 nights where the host is a natural person and the permanent resident of that unit, occupying it at least 275 nights a calendar year. Two approvals are needed as well: a Business Registration Certificate, and a certificate from the Office of Short-Term Rentals. An investment property rented whole with no resident host is unlawful under Administrative Code Chapter 41A, and platforms may not take bookings for an unregistered unit.

How much does a San Francisco short-term rental certificate cost?

The application fee is $925, it's non-refundable whether the application succeeds or fails, and approval lasts two years before a renewal application is due. Chapter 41A sets the underlying fee at $50 and authorizes the Controller to adjust it annually so the program recovers its operating cost, with each new rate effective July 1. A separate Business Registration Certificate is also required, though its fee is $0 for a host with no payroll whose only rental income comes from one small residential property.

What is the 90-day limit on San Francisco short-term rentals?

It's the cap on unhosted nights, meaning stays where guests have the unit to themselves. Hosted stays, where the resident is present overnight, have no annual limit. The 90 figure follows from the ordinance requiring 275 nights of personal occupancy each calendar year, which leaves at most 90 nights available. Hosts must keep separate listings for hosted and unhosted offerings and report nights rented to the Office of Short-Term Rentals every quarter, including quarters with zero activity.

Do you have to pay hotel tax on a San Francisco Airbnb?

Yes. San Francisco charges a 14% transient occupancy tax on stays under 30 days under Article 7 of the Business and Tax Regulations Code, plus a Tourism Improvement District assessment of 2.25% in Zone 1 or 2.00% in Zone 2. Airbnb, Interval International and misterb&b are Qualified Website Companies that collect and remit both, so hosts booking exclusively through one of them file nothing. Any Vrbo or direct booking makes the host file an annual return by January 31.

What are the penalties for an unregistered short-term rental in San Francisco?

Administrative penalties run at four times a standard hourly rate of $121, so $484 per day per unit for a first violation, and eight times that rate, or $968 per day, for a second. Both accrue from the notice of violation until the activity stops. Repeat violations strike the unit from the registry for a year and add it to a published prohibited list. San Francisco can also pursue civil penalties up to $1,000 a day, or a misdemeanor carrying six months in county jail.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.