Ok, I wasn't being entirely literal. The point is AirBnB was just about the only way to find safe, convenient, relatively affordable housing for a few weeks. And it's probably going to get worse now given that this legislation applies to services like Craigslist as well.

And I think the point that people are trying to make is that your convenience may be coming at the expense of others.

I think that's a false assumption. Is AirBnB really the bottleneck for NYC rents?

AirBNB units make up 1/5 of 1% of the NYC's rental units. A bottleneck? no, but sizable and impactful, especially when you consider that these tend to be clustered around where they're convenient.

> where they're convenient

Convenient is not the right description -- high demand is. Who's to say an AirBnB is a worse use of space for, say, a unit in SoHo than a year-round resident?

AirBnB has real issues -- zoning, hotel tax, safety, etc -- but politicians like to use rent cost/resident displacement because it's an easy rallying call.

and the question is how?

I feel like you proved his point for him. All of these are insanely uncomfortable and poor options.

>a number of people I know started off renting a bed, not even a bedroom

Was it worth it?

Eh, I don't know that most of the people I knew who sublet half a bedroom would ask themselves that question.

Subletting half a bedroom from a total stranger can be inconvenient and occasionally weird but if you're fresh out of college it's not really that different from the dorm room experience for most people. And it usually costs less than half what an apartment does a month, and is usually month to month or so.