The answer is clearly yes. Being able to convert apartments to short term rentals for tourists while bypassing the whole legislation in place does reduce housin

The answer is clearly yes. Being able to convert apartments to short term rentals for tourists while bypassing the whole legislation in place does reduce housing availability. For example, you are supposed to build an apartment equivalent to the one you are converting to a tourism rental in a lot of cities in France. Airbnb does not enforce that and was a way for dodgy companies to bypass the law. This won't force affordable housing issues which are a much bigger problem, but airbnb did create a gray market area and it does make sense to regulate it.