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.
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.