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Airbnb unveiled long-anticipated plans to go public Monday, defying concerns that the coronavirus pandemic had permanently hurt its business of short-term rentals and revealing the underlying strength of the San Francisco company’s business.

The stock offering, which could take place as soon as December, will likely make Airbnb’s founders and investors billions and turn many employees into millionaires. While taxes on their windfall and spending by the newly wealthy will bolster state and local coffers at a time when such revenue is badly needed, it is unlikely to cause more than a blip in the already hot local real estate market, observers said.

CEO Brian Chesky had said Airbnb intended to go public in 2020, but the filing was delayed by the pandemic. The company raised $2 billion from investors in April and laid off 1,900 employees in May. Travel rebounded, as did Airbnb’s bookings, with many customers opting for closer-in destinations reachable by car rather than flying to far-off destinations and staying at hotels or resorts.

It was not clear from the filing how many shares Airbnb would offer or the price, but analysts in recent months have estimated that the company may seek a value between $30 billion and $38 billion.

The pandemic hit the company’s revenues hard as travel ground to a halt this year. The worsening spread of the coronavirus was an ongoing risk, the company said in the filing, admitting it might not be able to turn a profit.

Airbnb’s revenue jumped 32% to $4.8 billion in 2019, but it reported a net loss of $674 million that year. The company also lost money in 2018 and 2017.

This year, Airbnb said, revenue fell 32% to $2.5 billion in the first nine months as travelers canceled their plans after the pandemic crippled travel and forced lockdowns around the world. But bookings rebounded in the three months that ended in September, falling by just about a fifth from the same period a year ago and exceeding the level they reached in 2018.

Airbnb said it currently has 7.4 million listings run by 4 million hosts worldwide. Eighty-six percent of its hosts are outside the U.S. and 55% are women, the company said.

The company said it had 54 million guests in 2019 and 5,465 employees as of September.

Chesky, along with his co-founders Joe Gebbia and Nate Blecharczyk, own almost half of the company’s Class B shares, which hold disproportionate voting power. Several provisions in the company’s governance structure allow the trio to wield significant control over the company even after the offering, and they will also hold a significant amount of the company’s outstanding shares.

The company’s thousands of current and former employees also stand to benefit as they exercise their options and sell restricted stock.

But the wealth generated from the offering will add little to the pressures lifting Bay Area home prices, which are already lofty because of low interest rates, limited supply and interest in bigger homes as remote work becomes the norm in many industries.

Airbnb’s initial public offering “might add a little extra pressure to some Bay Area (real estate) markets, but probably nothing measurable as far as price increases,” said Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst for the Compass real estate brokerage firm.

Another wild card in terms of the offering’s effect on home prices is the pandemic. Airbnb has encouraged employees to make use of the company’s product and work from anywhere during the pandemic, with the bulk of workers not required to show up at the office.

With employees fanned out across the U.S., Carlisle said the effect on Bay Area real estate could be more diluted than if all employees were living within an easy commute of the company’s Brannan Street headquarters in San Francisco.

Also, it’s not clear that the IPO will prompt employees who don’t already own homes to trade up.

“My guess is also that many Airbnb employees already own homes at this point,” Carlisle added.

Large IPOs can have an impact on real estate, particularly near a company’s headquarters.

One study looked at more than 700 IPOs by California companies between 1993 and 2017, looking at home price indexes in a range of locations near a company’s headquarters before and after an offering.

After a filing, the average home prices within a 10-mile radius of headquarters jumped by 1% more than prices on the whole in the same county, the study found.

That increased by an average of less than a percentage point once the company began selling shares, although there was no additional bump to prices after the lock-up period expired and employees could sell off shares.

“We really see a bigger impact when there’s a surprise” offering, said Barney Hartman-Glaser, an assistant finance professor at UCLA who co-authored the study.

Glaser said because the Airbnb offering has been anticipated for so long, its potential impact on real estate may have already rolled through the market.

There were reports last year the company was considering selling shares directly to the market instead of going through an initial public offering. That would have allowed employees to sell shares without a waiting period, as soon as the spring of 2020.

Hartman-Glaser noted that real estate prices may have notched up in anticipation of an event that never materialized.

“Demand is therefore a little bit less than people were counting on,” he said.

The filing comes toward the end of a turbulent year for the company.

In a note to employees announcing the May layoffs, Chesky said the company’s 2020 revenues would likely be half of what the company earned last year.

“In response, we raised $2 billion in capital and dramatically cut costs that touched nearly every corner of Airbnb,” he said, but that was not enough to avoid the cuts.

Those emergency measures may have brought the company back from the brink, but the virus is spreading at an alarming rate and could affect the future health of the company, as the company acknowledged in its filing.

On Monday Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the vast majority of California counties must revert to the strictest purple tier, a level where the virus is considered widespread. Many businesses must close or limit their operations and partial reopening of offices will be halted. In San Francisco, nonessential offices that reopened must close again.

Even with two promising vaccines headed for approval, employees at Airbnb are likely to work from home for the foreseeable future, affecting where they might choose to put down roots and buy homes.

“I don’t see it really having an effect on housing prices in San Francisco proper,” Hartman-Glaser said, noting regions like Lake Tahoe where some tech workers have relocated may see a price bump.

“Given that those employees are distributed all over the state, if not farther, it’s going to be harder to detect,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Chase DiFeliciantonio is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: chase.difeliciantonio@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChaseDiFelice

Donald Trump is not going away.

He will leave the White House when the U-Haul pulls up on Jan. 20, but he won’t be leaving the national stage.

I’m not sure he will ever concede, if for no other reason than to ensure that we all pay rapt attention to his every word and tweet until Joe Biden takes the oath of office.

Trump got more than 72 million votes. For all the talk about Democrats’ grassroots energy, it was the Trumpites who were out parading and knocking on doors leading up to the election. Most of the down-ballot Republicans who stuck with Trump — which is to say, practically all of them — survived.

They’re not going to abandon Trump just because he’s out of office. And if GOP officeholders try to play ball with Democrats, the former president will have a receptive audience for his outraged tweets.

Who knows, he might even try to hold rallies. If he does, there will be plenty of people who will go see him, if only because they find him highly entertaining.

The mere threat of his retribution will have Republican officeholders shaking in their boots. Because Trump does not operate in the pursuit of dignity. He operates in the pursuit of fear.

And in the world of politics, fear wins.

Picking a senator: Knowing Gov. Gavin Newsom, his first inclination will be to name a Black woman to replace Kamala Harris in the Senate when she becomes vice president. The two leading candidates would be Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee and Los Angeles Rep. Karen Bass, either of whom would be great.

But he could also go another route and name Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis. That would put him in good standing with the Greek American community here and elsewhere, which isn’t a bad place to be if he wants to fund a national campaign down the line.

He would also get to name Kounalakis’ replacement as lieutenant governor. The same two-for-one deal applies if he selects one of the state’s two leading Latino officeholders, Secretary of State Alex Padilla or Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

Or he could appoint someone who won’t run for a full term in 2022 — thus giving everyone who wants the job an even shot.

Lucky meal: Tosca Cafe on Columbus in North Beach has closed and reopened three or four times since Jeannette Etheredge relinquished her ownership. Each time it starts to reopen, something happens.

The latest reopening was Wednesday. I had one of the best family-style meals I’ve had in a long time, even at $75 per person.

But now Tosca has to join the rest of the city’s struggling restaurants and shut down indoor dining.

It’s as if a voodoo lady from Louisiana has put a curse on the place.

Virtual charity: The holidays are upon us, and one of my favorite charities is modifying its end-of-the-year fundraising drive.

The virtual Salvation Army luncheon is Wednesday, and the online connection is www.holidayluncheonsf.org. The group made a promotional video that goes online the same day in which I make an appearance as an honorary major, epaulets and all.

And by the way, virus be damned: The Christmas tree is going up in Union Square.

Sleep tight: I was at the House of Prime Rib, having a “last supper” before indoor dining ends, when I got to talking with two real estate agents about condos in the city.

One guy said: “I know this three-bedroom place that’s a real bargain.”

“Really? Three bedrooms? How big is the master bedroom?” I asked.

There was a pause.

“Mayor Brown — man, are you lame.”

“What do you mean, I’m lame?”

“You don’t call them ‘master’ bedrooms anymore. In this day and age, it’s the principal bedroom.”

Want to sound off? Email wbrown@sfchronicle.com

In the wake of the Nov. 3 election, the county-by-county voting maps for California’s ballot initiatives speak volumes about how the state’s politics have evolved over the past half-century.

In particular, Los Angeles has aligned more frequently with the liberal Bay Area than with the rest of Southern California — and sometimes the two have diverged from the rest of the state.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, the Bay Area and Los Angeles have grown much more Democratic since 1980, while the interior of the state still votes much like it did in the late 1960s.

“Both of those centers have been moving Democratic over the past 30 or 40 years,” said Eric McGhee, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “They moved Democratic faster than the rest of the state, and the rest of the state is starting to play catch-up.”

He said both counties tend to be more open to taxation, and the Bay Area — San Francisco especially — leans even more liberal on economic and social issues. If the two regions agree on an issue, San Francisco typically pushes further for the progressive stance.

“They tend to be the two most Democratic regions of the state,” said McGhee. “The Bay Area tends to be more liberal than Los Angeles. Los Angeles is not as far left as the Bay Area. There are more little pockets of social conservatism in L.A., and a little more conservatism in general.”

As of Friday, some vote counts from the November 2020 election were still trickling in, but the statewide ballot contests have been decided — with several showing how closely Los Angeles aligns with the Bay Area.

Proposition 15

The measure, which would have raised property taxes on commercial property, was defeated 52% against and 48% in favor. If it had passed, it would have been one of California’s biggest tax increases in state history, generating $6.5 billion to $11.5 billion annually for local governments and schools.

Los Angeles County, which voted 53% in favor, would have seen big tax gains, while San Francisco backed it with 71% of the “yes” vote. As with other tax measures, liberals generally favored it and conservatives tended to oppose it. Unions and Democrats including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Kamala Harris supported it, while businesses and real estate groups opposed it.

Proposition 16

The ballot measure that would have lifted the ban on affirmative action lost statewide with 57% against and 43% in favor. If passed, it would have reinstated the ability to consider race and sex in government hiring and contracting and in public university admissions in California.

Only five Bay Area counties and Los Angeles County voted yes. Los Angeles County’s support was narrow at 51%, while San Francisco’s was higher at 64%.

Proposition 17

Proposition 17 was approved 59% to 41%, granting voting rights to more than 50,000 former state prisoners. California joins 19 other states and the District of Columbia in allowing parolees to vote.

The measure received wide support up and down the coast and the Inland Empire, with only Del Norte County in the far north and Orange County in the south opposed in those areas. Los Angeles County showed strong support with 66% in favor and 35% opposed, and San Francisco voted 78% in favor, 22% against.

Proposition 20

This measure, which would have expanded the list of crimes that could be considered violent felonies and made some prisoners ineligible for parole hearings, was widely rejected, 62% against to 38% in favor. Sponsored by police groups, some county prosecutors and business owners, the only areas that voted in favor were conservative pockets in the Central Valley and northeast corner of the state. Los Angeles County voted 66% “no,” while San Francisco’s rejection was event stronger at 72%.

While there is much agreement among Los Angeles and San Francisco, they parted ways on several measures.

Proposition 25

Proposition 25, which would have abolished cash bail and given judges authority to decide if a defendant should be freed before trial, fell 56% against to 44% in favor. Only the Bay Area, a few adjacent counties and Alpine County on the Nevada border voted in favor of the measure.

Legislation to make California the first state to eliminate cash bail was approved by state lawmakers and signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018. But bail bond companies paid $3 million to collect signatures for a referendum that put the measure on hold until voters could weigh in. Supporters argued cash bail promotes public safety, while opponents said it disproportionately affects poor people.

While more favorable toward many social issues, 55% of Los Angeles County voters rejected the proposition. San Francisco voted 56% in favor and 44% against.

Proposition 22

Companies paid a record-breaking $205 million to promote Proposition 22, which would keep gig workers as independent contractors. The move worked, with 59% voting “yes” to 41% voting “no” statewide. The measure exempts app-based transportation and delivery companies from treating some workers as employees for purposes of benefits.

Only the coastal part of the Bay Area, northern counties and one Sierra outlier rejected it, with 59% of San Francisco voters against Prop. 22. In Los Angeles, the favorable vote was 55%. Gig-work companies bombarded voters with television ads, text messages and mailers, and some even ran ads within their apps. Uber and Lyft even threatened to leave California if the measure failed. Labor groups raised $20 million to oppose the proposition, reaching out to millions of union members across the state.

Proposition 21

The second measure in three years that aimed to roll back state limits on rent control, Proposition 21 was defeated 60% against and 40% in favor. San Francisco was one of only two counties in the state to support the measure, with 52% voting yes. (In neighboring Alameda County, the measure was squeaking by on Friday with just over 50% of the vote.)

The result was unsurprising, as San Francisco continues to be the most expensive rental market in the country despite plummeting rents, and is the county with the highest percentage of renter-occupied housing in the state.

Kellie Hwang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KellieHwang

When San Francisco CrossFit co-founders Kelly and Juliet Starrett reopened their gym outdoors this summer, they had to adapt the handshakes that usually start each class for the pandemic. Handshakes were verboten, of course, but members of the city’s first CrossFit gym — one of the first two dozen or so worldwide — would tap elbows or wave before the workout began, a small gesture that spoke to a larger culture of inclusion and community.

Before people began squatting or sprinting, the ritual was a way of forcing them to see each other. “People are looking for reasons to belong to each other, but they need a catalyst for that,” Kelly Starrett said. “Our gym gave us that opportunity to do that.”

But the challenges of operating in 2020 — the reopening fits and starts, the strict limits on capacity, the dramatic drop in revenue as people left the gym or left town — proved too much for the couple and their business. On Sunday, Nov. 15, the gym will hold its final WOD, or workout of the day, then close permanently.

Before CrossFit was a household name and the CrossFit Games aired on CBS, Kelly and Juliet Starrett started doing deadlifts, burpees and thrusters in their Richmond District backyard. Both are former competitive whitewater paddlers (Juliet was a two-time world champion), and Kelly, a physical therapist, was interested in re-creating the coaching and training environment he’d experienced as an athlete.

Soon a few neighbors and friends had joined in, and the 5:30 a.m. workouts were drawing some unwelcome attention. When a guy yelled at them from the window of an adjacent building to shut up, using an obscenity, they decided it was time to move.

Kelly Starrett was a manager at the Presidio Sports Basement, and in late 2005, the owners agreed to let him use their parking lot. For its first seven years, the pioneering San Francisco CrossFit gym was essentially a shipping container, some canopies and a portable toilet on the asphalt.

But to early adopters, it offered something new.

“If you wanted to exercise besides biking or doing an outdoor sport, it was 24 Hour Fitness, Club One, Equinox, the big-name gyms,” said Juliet Starrett. “But boutique fitness did not exist. Everybody takes for granted on every corner there’s a Barry’s Bootcamp and a SoulCycle … but it did not exist.”

Working out in the parking lot, she says, felt like being part of an emerging phenomenon. CrossFit offered a new way of looking at fitness focused on functional movement, group classes and high-intensity workouts, but it also felt like joining a cultural movement, one that said your gym is your community.

Diane Fu was a fitness professional who started taking classes in the parking lot, then was coaching within a year. “It felt like home,” she says. “I’ve been with the gym for 13 or 14 years now, and I’ve made my best friends. I’ve traveled with these people, I’ve been to their weddings.”

“Without really trying, we kind of created a megachurch in San Francisco CrossFit,” Juliet Starrett said. “A lot of people don’t go to church. People need an actual live place to go to make connections and meet their spouses and create a community. That’s what San Francisco CrossFit has been for them. The fitness side is a sideshow.”

But fitness was also a powerful draw. The gym has become a destination for professional athletes and serious amateurs, and a home for specialized coaching dedicated to endurance sports, Olympic lifting and adaptive fitness. On any given day, Kelly Starrett said, you might have an NFL player dropping in for physical therapy or former UFC fighter Georges St-Pierre training alongside a mom from San Francisco.

As the gym’s fame grew, so did the couple’s. Kelly Starrett became a star of the CrossFit coaching world and an evangelist for mobility, publishing the New York Times best-seller “Becoming a Supple Leopard” and appearing on “60 Minutes.” With Juliet, he created virtual coaching service the Ready State, working with branches of the military, professional sports franchises and Olympians.

“He’s more than a celebrity, he’s an icon,” says TJ Belger, owner of TJ’s Gyms in Marin County. When athletes today use lacrosse balls as a part of their daily recovery routine, that came from Kelly Starrett, he said.

Kelly Starrett encouraged the coaches who gravitated around him to go down the rabbit hole of their personal interests and build their own businesses. What Belger described as the Kelly Starrett “vortex” produced coaches like Adrian Bozman and Fu, who’ve reached their own fitness-celebrity status.

“We refer to our gym as a teaching hospital where people come and learn,” said Kelly Starrett, who taught coaching clinics and a free class for trainers.

Nate Helming joined San Francisco CrossFit reluctantly in 2010 as an injured triathlete, “intimidated by these very large people lifting weird-shaped weights outside.” But physical therapy wasn’t working, and someone suggested he seek out Kelly Starrett: “There’s this crazy tattooed guy who we think is a physical therapist who may be able to help you.

“It kind of changed everything for me.”

Helming went on to teach a class for endurance athletes at the gym and founded the Run Experience, an online training program for runners with half a million YouTube subscribers. He sees his success linked closely to the gym, calling it a “slingshot (for) my coaching career.”

Juliet Starrett said about 20 Bay Area gyms and coaching businesses trace their roots to San Francisco CrossFit. Fu created Fu Barbell, dedicated to making Olympic weightlifting more accessible. Before the pandemic, she taught all her classes out of the 5,500-square-foot space in the Presidio.

But 2020 has been cruel to small businesses and perhaps gyms especially. Before the pandemic, San Francisco CrossFit had 325 members and more private training clients. In the 90 days leading up to shelter-in-place on March 17, 700 visitors came through the doors.

“The success of our business was dependent on volume,” Juliet Starrett said.

The past eight months, the Starretts said, have been a roller coaster through constantly changing health orders. They’ve done Zoom classes and lent equipment for members to use at home. They’ve cut capacity and moved everyone outside — back to the asphalt.

Membership was down around 70%, and they’ve been losing money every day. Operating a brick-and-mortar gym in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country with some of the toughest coronavirus restrictions ceased to make sense.

“If the city of San Francisco said, ‘No matter what, by Jan. 1, barring a giant surge, you’re going to be open at 50%,’ we could have run some numbers, maybe done some advanced planning, maybe decided if we could make a go of it,” Juliet Starrett said.

But the uncertainty has been crushing.

“We certainly don’t blame San Francisco for the closing of our gym,” Kelly Starrett said, but he felt it didn’t have to come to this. “This is the cost of the choices that we made as a community and as a culture and as a society. … What Julie and I feel is, we’re beyond anger. We just feel lost.”

Without the coronavirus, Belger said San Francisco CrossFit would have gone on forever. “It would take a worldwide pandemic to take this thing down,” he says. “Imagine if Yankee Stadium just overnight ceased to exist. … It’s not the Florida Marlins; it’s not some expansion team.”

There’s a map of the world on the wall of San Francisco CrossFit, covered in pins where visitors have marked their hometowns across the globe. With the exception of a few blank spots on countries like North Korea, it’s packed, a visual representation of the community the Starretts have created over barbells and mats.

If the gym were closing outside of the pandemic, they would’ve thrown a big party with a taco truck and music. Probably 500 people would’ve come to break bread and reminisce, Kelly Starrett mused.

“It would be a lot easier if we could process,” he said, “if we had some closure.”

Sarah Feldberg is a The San Francisco Chronicle’s Culture Desk editor. Email: sarah.feldberg@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sarahfeldberg