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Build more housing capacity. An increased supply of housing could support both long term housing and legal Airbnb rentals. Because of static supply, the two us

by p_roz 7y ago

Build more housing capacity. An increased supply of housing could support both long term housing and legal Airbnb rentals. Because of static supply, the two use cases are competing in a zero sum way, but that needn’t be the case.

vidarh 7y ago
In this case the issue was outright fraud: They got a council flat that is meant to provide subsidized housing for people who generally can not afford private housing, and profited from it against the terms of his rental agreement. But in the general case, I keep arguing the same. In the UK there's a very strong trend to focus on landlords and foreign buyers leaving housing empty, or cases like in this article, but when you dig into it, it makes up a tiny proportion of properties. The government has contributed to pushing the focus to these types of things, even though e.g. all empty properties in the UK being filled would maybe cover ~6 months of demand (and you can't fill all of them - most are empty for things like refurbishments or during a sale; very few are left intentionally empty for long periods of time). I doubt AirBnB demand would add up to more than a rounding error either. But it's a convenient excuse, and much cheaper than to drive higher growth in construction.
gnode 7y ago
The UK definitely needs more overall housing capacity, and there is plenty of land which is not built on. Although I don't think this is the issue here, where the area is already full of dense residential and commercial buildings. Subsidised housing in such areas is an effort to resist displacement and social change caused by gentrification. Permitting subletting of such housing turns the subsidy into no more than a monetary benefit, which fails to stop the unwanted demographic changes the government is aiming to prevent.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> Build more housing capacity. An increased supply of housing could support both long term housing and legal Airbnb rentals. I keep hearing "build more housing", but I'm having a hard time seeing how it can help on its own, if housing is primarily bought up by people playing investment schemes, and people who want to rent it out. It wouldn't have to just outpace population growth, it would have to outpace the ability to rent flats at a profit, in order to dry out the pool of investors and let regular people have a chance at buying a place to live.

by p_roz 7y ago

vidarh 7y ago

In this case the issue was outright fraud: They got a council flat that is meant to provide subsidized housing for people who generally can not afford private housing, and profited from it against the terms of his rental agreement. But in the general case, I keep arguing the same. In the UK there's a very strong trend to focus on landlords and foreign buyers leaving housing empty, or cases like in this article, but when you dig into it, it makes up a tiny proportion of properties. The government has contributed to pushing the focus to these types of things, even though e.g. all empty properties in the UK being filled would maybe cover ~6 months of demand (and you can't fill all of them - most are empty for things like refurbishments or during a sale; very few are left intentionally empty for long periods of time). I doubt AirBnB demand would add up to more than a rounding error either. But it's a convenient excuse, and much cheaper than to drive higher growth in construction.

gnode 7y ago

The UK definitely needs more overall housing capacity, and there is plenty of land which is not built on. Although I don't think this is the issue here, where the area is already full of dense residential and commercial buildings. Subsidised housing in such areas is an effort to resist displacement and social change caused by gentrification. Permitting subletting of such housing turns the subsidy into no more than a monetary benefit, which fails to stop the unwanted demographic changes the government is aiming to prevent.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> Build more housing capacity. An increased supply of housing could support both long term housing and legal Airbnb rentals. I keep hearing "build more housing", but I'm having a hard time seeing how it can help on its own, if housing is primarily bought up by people playing investment schemes, and people who want to rent it out. It wouldn't have to just outpace population growth, it would have to outpace the ability to rent flats at a profit, in order to dry out the pool of investors and let regular people have a chance at buying a place to live.