> Airbnb unfairly plays up this angle while ignoring the fact that many hosts are larger businesses that are taking up housing stock to run an unregulated hotel

> Airbnb unfairly plays up this angle while ignoring the fact that many hosts are larger businesses that are taking up housing stock to run an unregulated hotel. There are also plenty of people holding multiple leases (especially in NYC) to rent one place out on Airbnb where you can easily make more than the rent per month. Not just "many". In New York specifically, it's literally over 50% that are illegal, by virtue of being whole-apartment rentals. Whole-apartment rentals of less than 30 days are not legal. Ironically, many of the people that AirBNB used to use in their PR campaign as the faces of the "little guy" using AirBNB to "make their rent" were actually people who lived in rent-controlled apartments, which is (almost always) illegal in practice, even if the whole apartment is not being rented.