First we couldn't buy and we were forced to rent because wealthy folks would buy the real estate in bulk to rent it and/or use it as a speculative investment, driving prices up and making it unafordable. Now they don't even bother to rent it long-term to locals, they're better off putting it on AirBnB for tourists at a much higher rate. Try renting a flat long-term in Lisbon these days and tell me how it goes.
I obviously don't know your situation and maybe there was some overreach in your case but in some cities government meddling is absolutely necessary lest the place turns into a Disneyland resort for wealthy tourists.
Besides you make it sound like enabling more tourism is unambiguously a good thing. It's true that it has positive side-effects (mostly on the economy) but it also leads to degradation, overcrowding and, as we were discussing, an explosion of the cost of life for the locals. I often hear tourists complaining that they don't get an "authentic" experience abroad, how could they when the place they visit have been deserted by the locals?
This is just passing the buck. If AirBnB is driving up rents you have a supply problem, not an AirBnB problem.
As much as it pains me to use a reductionist metaphor, I'm going to. Suppose my community has a finite amount of resource X available to us that we need to live and and we only require 75% of that resource. A company comes along and offers individuals a whole pile a money to sell of their claims to the resource, so much so that the company now controls 90% of that resource. The company begins boxing up that resource and shipping it off to people who will pay more money for that resource. My community now has meet their need another way, and probably in a more expensive way.
Regardless of how the resource should have been managed, and what the authorities in my community should have done to ensure we had the necessary access to our resource I think I can still point a finger at the company say "If that company didn't exist they wouldn't control our resource."
Obviously the metaphor is riddled with unconsidered complexities but I use it as a way of raising the question of at least an ounce of culpability of the company.
> The company begins boxing up that resource and shipping it off to people who will pay more money for that resource.
Unless you live in Christiana this is probably already the case. AirBnBs tend to be in expensive neighborhoods.
Do you know the cost of destroying + rebuilding bigger buildings in a city center ? Much higher than closing a few semi legal "airbnb hotels". And that's if you can even build in the city at all.
Edit: downvoted for asking a question you disagree with? What is this reddit?
> There's a finite amount of tourism/visitors
Yes, but that could be much larger than the current level. A discussion in the context of Edinburgh: https://www.hotelmanagement.net/own/edinburgh-looks-to-limit...
If entire apartments are made into AirBnbs, there's less apartments in the market which turns the prices up, what's so hard to grasp ?
It's naive to only look at one factor and ignore the others, yet that's often how far this debate goes.
It seems very unlikely AirBnBs will "take less space" than a hotel. Hotels are quite space-efficient, given they're largely small, single rooms.
It might be finite but it's exploding. Even semi remote places get crowded these days.
Our Airbnb got shut down after a year by the local government. It wasn't a safety thing, it was a competition thing. Our Red Roof Inn charges 60 a night, but we charged 80 a night.
Our reviews could make me tear up. People saying they had the best stay of their life.
Asking them what they wanted for breakfast, hot tub temp, Nerf guns, and chatting. People loved it.
But we stopped. Government....