It isn't in Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

Which don't exactly have laissez-faire approaches to folks renting out their properties, but the larger issue is that Japanese cities are just generally better about building enough housing to meet demand compared with most American and Canadian cities.

Not really a fair comparison.

For example the whole of Japan had 28 million visitors in 2017[0].

I couldn't find more recent stats but Austin TX had 20 million visitors in 2011-2012.[1][2]

Tokyo metro has a population of 13million Austin tops out at 2 million.

Austin also has some of the highest airbnb usage, 400k+ guests in a year.[3]

I'm bring up Austin because I live there and definitely experience Airbnb affecting the prices.

Sure we all want more housing but the fact is that investors love to buy homes in cash to rent out for events driving the existing stock prices higher.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/23/japan-welcomed-20-percent-mo... [1]http://www.austinrelocationguide.com/2012/Tourism-in-Austin/ [2]https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2011/09/28/survey-re... [3]https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2018/01/30/airbnbs-m...

> For example the whole of Japan had 28 million visitors in 2017[0]. I couldn't find more recent stats but Austin TX had 20 million visitors in 2011-2012.[1][2]

These numbers are apples and oranges. For Japan, the number is for foreign tourists, while for Austin it is for all tourists. Tokyo and other Japanese cities also have domestic tourists, which aren't being counted in your 28 million number.

Are you really comparing the number of foreign tourists visiting Japan with the number of out-of-city tourists visiting Austin? Does anything strike you as off about the numbers you cited?

like some of the other commenters, I would say without data, it is hard to say how much Airbnb is a factor but I would hypothesize that it is a contributing factor to tight housing markets. I was wondering about this impact particularly when using Airbnb for longer stays (like 2weeks - 1 month or longer).

Nobody gets their shit together until there's an existential threat. That's just how local government works. The system is biased toward the status quo and inaction (by design, this is not a bad thing). You really need a super-majority of the population to want something before the politicians can actually do that thing. Expect them to keep squeezing until politicians start losing elections because of it.