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After hearing this opinion repeated with so much frequency, it would seem obvious to me that affordable housing must have been a non-issue before Airbnb existe
by missedthecue 7y ago
After hearing this opinion repeated with so much frequency, it would seem obvious to me that affordable housing must have been a non-issue before Airbnb existed 10 years ago. But of course, this isn't the case. As a matter of fact, cities that ban Airbnb don't seem to be doing better than those that have few or no regulations concerning the use of the platform. As far as I can detect, the ones that restrict its use seem to be doing worse than their counterparts, which would seem to imply that there exists no causal link between Airbnb and the lack of affordable housing.
The problem, like we all know but some refuse to admit, is that when supply is less than demand, prices increase. There is an extremely simple, remarkably achievable, but politically unpopular way to solve this. That solution of course, is to stop retarding new supply.
Until we come to terms with this, the problem will continue, and parties that are not responsible for it, (but are easy and politically tenable to hate) will continue to get the blame.
- qsymmachus 7y agoNo one is arguing that Airbnb is solely responsibly for rent increases. It's one of many contributing factors, including limited supply as you point out. Contrary to your intuition on this question, Airbnb almost certainly a contributing factor to rent increases. There are studies on this: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3006832 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3006832
- missedthecue 7y agoAccording to the paper, this is what the researchers found - "In a baseline OLS regression with no controls, we find that a 1% increase in Airbnb listings is associated with a 0.1% increase in rental rates and a 0.18% increase in house prices. Of course, these estimates should not be interpreted as causal and may instead be picking up spurious correlations" I wouldn't be quick to call that "almost certain".
- ng12 7y agoLimited supply is the disease, AirBnB is a symptom. AirBnB is popular in major cities exactly because real estate is so expensive.