Legal problems have put companies like Airbnb and Lyft in the spotlight, revealing that our laws leave very little room for innovation. It’s not a matter of deciding whether it should be legal to use Airbnb and Lyft. It’s a matter of deciding how, where, when and how much. A more nuanced legal system could figure this out, by balancing concerns about housing affordability, health and safety, impact on neighborhoods, and the imperative to reduce consumption and carbon emissions....

By Lori Aratani

EXCERPT: “These platforms are enabling people to do business in ways they never could before,” said Janelle Orsi, executive director of the Oakland, Calif.-based Sustainable Economies Law Center. “These platforms offer ways to connect with each other really easily, which has a lot of benefits in creating income for people but is really shaking up the market.”

by Marisa Taylor @marisahtaylor

EXCERPT: Janelle Orsi, an attorney in Oakland, California and co-founder of the Sustainable Economies Law Center, specializes in helping clients navigate the laws of the sharing economy. She told Al Jazeera in an email that the Uber case is a tough call, because both the company and the drivers have strong arguments.

“One thing is certain: The more that Uber dictates how drivers work, what they charge, and so on, the more likely it is that a court would find that they are creating employment relationships with drivers,” she wrote.

A conversation with SELC's program directors Ricardo Nuñez and Yassi Eskandari-Qajar about the where the sharing economy is at and where SELC believes it should be going. One listener replied after the show, "Gettin to call in to the SELC folks. It does not get any better than that. Thank you." 

Yassi Eskandari-Qajar, Director of SELC's City Policies and Community Currencies programs, discusses the potential for the grassroots sharing economy to transform our communities and the way we work, live, consume, and exchange.

SELC IS AN OAKLAND NONPROFIT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

featured in the Bold Italic Magazine

I am constantly inspired by all the amazing organizations and community movements in Oakland. There are many wonderful nonprofits working hard to create opportunities, facilitate growth, and bring together different residents for a single cause.

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You can’t truly remedy today’s economic problems by using the same business structures that created the economic problems. Because of their current ownership structure, Airbnb, Lyft, Über, and TaskRabbit could be bought out by ever larger and more centralized companies that won’t necessarily care about the well-being of people using the services, or about the overall abundance of jobs in our economy...

There is only one way to ensure that a company will make decisions in the interests of the people it serves: Put those people in control of the company.