I used to be very active on a forum for urban planners. They made a very strong case that a few decades back and in living memory of some older members, small coastal towns in the US were affordable and pleasant and similar to other small towns. Then the practice of owning vacation homes drove up prices out of reach of locals and tourism brought other problems.
And this was before Airbnb was a thing and magnified such issues.
You need to build more housing and all that. But you also need to say "Housing is primarily for the people who actually live here and the wants and desires of wealthy tourists absolutely doesn't trump that." or basically the entire world lives in a shithole so a tiny fraction of the population can do whatever the fuck and indulge their every whim cuz money.
This is not a good thing. Not even for the rich people getting away with it while people say "Eat the rich." There is a long history of the lower classes violently and murderously removing the elites when they do that.
I'd like to not "live in interesting times" that include violent revolution. Covid19 is enough fun for me, thanks. I'm a boring fuddy duddy like that. Party pooper. Don't drink. Etc
Historically, we used hotels to visit places we spent limited time in.
(Or you can camp, visit friends, etc.)
Units converted to AirBnBs were not designed for short-term stays or taxed on that basis, and generally AirBnB only exists because it leveraged regulatory arbitrage quickly enough to grow to the point it could lobby for changes to the law. But after multiple studies in multiple cities confirmed that only a handful of investors benefited from loose unregulated short-term rentals, the pendulum began swinging back towards regulating them like the hotels they are.
There have been articles about this. It sticks in my mind because I used to be in insurance.
Residential buildings were not intended to be used this way and all the policy and infrastructure points to "No, really, you weren't supposed to use this as a commercial vehicle. That's not what all of society agreed to for this piece of real property."
For landlord insurance I'd pay about £300/year in Scotland, and €60/year in Finland. I'd be surprised if there were short-term policies, as distinct from long-term-tenant policies, that we significantly more expensive than that.
Housing is a basic human right. But this is denied to millions of Americans, simply because those that came before them, were able to secure affordable housing for themselves, while locking out others from attaining affordable housing.
How about close proximity to family and relatives?
Sure, you can move to middle-of-nowhere Texas, and buy land for cheap, but how are you going to pay for that cheaper mortgage, if there are no jobs around? Maybe you can get a telecommuting job?
However, at some point, their votes interfered with the human rights of others. At what point does the government and society step in, and say, enough is enough?
1) build a ton of housing to catch up with demand
2) shrink your local economy to decrease demand
If a lawmaker isn’t working on one of these two options, they do not actually support a platform of low housing prices.
Airbnb is only a small slice of housing demand. It’s an ugly slice, which makes the company a convenient punching bag for politicians who want to act like they are trying to make housing affordable. But the economy in high-demand cities will keep growing regardless of whether you kill Airbnb.