I wonder what would happen if housing were not an investment but construction would be legalized that turned housing into a commodity. Right now many attractive cities are often captured by home owners who collude against against new housing because that pushes prices down.
I hope the company that comes after Airbnb disrupts the construction industry, allowing cheap but high quality housing for everyone, and not just anywhere but in places of demand.
That said, that kind of balancing takes time in practice, so if you did find a way to deliver a lot of housing at a much lower cost you could exploit the delay and build a lot of housing quickly, which would increase supply, which would lower what buyers are willing to pay. Basically you’d have to flood the market with so much cheap housing that buyers willingness to pay goes down.
I think a better approach to fighting high housing prices is to make more different cities and towns appealing places to live. There already is a ton of housing in this country but it’s in places where not many people want to live.
Of course it's not AirBnB's fault that there's no regulatory oversight on the hoarding of basic life necessities, and the original pitch ("couchsurfing but for money") clearly did not have that intent, but at this stage they're going to push back pretty hard against any restrictions on that kind of behaviour.