Another contributor is poor transportation infrastructure, which limits peoples' flexibility, creating more pressure on housing near train lines and stations, etc.
(I'm the grandparent.) Yes, this. I'm all for new construction to improve supply and a streamlined bureaucratic process so that it can happen more quickly.
Practically speaking though, you can look at any city that's had a problem with AirBnB (Berlin, San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, etc. — pretty much anywhere desirable to visit) and new stock isn't coming online anywhere close to quickly enough to counteract the market forces introduced by AirBnB. As it stands today, building is a very slow process, and it's likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future.
From that quote I would say vacation rentals are being scapegoated. Rents are rising with one of the strictest bans on holiday apartments.
Affordable housing was a problem before AirBnB was ever conceived.
But AirBnB is contributing something to those rising rents, and unlike the desirability of your city, it's something that you can control for.
I (along with probably most people that share a similar position) would argue that regulating AirBnB is good, but not adequate. Pretty much every large urban development in the world (SF, London, NY, Berlin, HK, etc.) is experiencing the same problem that because they're desirable they're also automatically unaffordable. We need to figure out how to put roofs over people's heads by building much more, and much more cheaply.
This claim seems to be the root of every anti-AirBnB argument: AirBnB rentals eat into the resident housing supply.
But this is simply solved by zoning and regulation. In any given city there is some number of residents and some number of visitors, and some number of permanent and temporary beds for them to sleep in. Yes, AirBnB shifts some of the housing stock from resident to visitor - but, if that's what economic forces are commanding then the zoning & regulation should adapt, not fight it. It's not a capacity issue, just one of allocation.
Not for those that suffer from it.
>There is some number of residents and visitors in any given city, and some number of permanent and temporary beds for them to sleep in. Yes, AirBnB shifts some of the housing stock from resident to visitor housing, but, that's really just a zoning and regulation problem, not a capacity issue.
Well, unless people en masse are willing to go out there and build new houses, and prefer to use them for resident renting instead of AirBnB, it is a capacity issue.
Capacity doesn't magically increase with demand in the real world. Especially if there's a big, more lucrative, sink for new capacity.
They ARE! But the government won't let them.
Zoning and NIMBY laws are what causes the housing crisis.
It would be fixed in 5 years if the government removed building height limits in only a few square mile areas in all the major high rent cities.
The problem of high rent prices is solved by allowing people to build a couple hundred thousand apartments in every major city.
Apartments are extremely lucrative, so any developer at all would be willing to build them.
> Berlin, like most German cities, is experiencing an acute shortage of affordable homes. Rents are rising at a rate of nearly 10 percent a year, even though the city has a rent cap and has introduced one of the strictest bans on holiday apartments - many other European cities also have some kind of regulation.
The problem with housing is that the supply is very fixed. A unit that's taken off the market to become a full time AirBnB is one that's not available as a rental for a resident of the city anymore.
There's an argument to be made for private property rights, but the further trouble with real estate is that it's often made as an investment, and like other capital, it tends to be reallocated disproportionately over time.
While it might seem obvious for someone to be able to rent out their vacation home part time, it's much less so that an owner of 15 units in downtown San Francisco should be able to hire a property manager and rent them all on AirBnB full time — given a sufficiently enticing city for business/tourism, eventually there won't be enough stock for the locals anymore (or more accurately, the upwards pressure on price will make it unaffordable for nearly everyone).