> The only solution to the underlying problem is to allow construction to meet the underlying demand.

While I do think that allowing more construction would be great, there's probably other things that could help alleviate the problem.

1. Limit the number of units that can be rented by a single landlord in an area 2. Limit the proportion of units in an area which can be rented (maybe creates a sort of taxi-shield problem which might be it's own weird thing, but that's a problem for multi-property landowners, not single family homeowners). 3. (as OP suggests) limit the number of nights/year which can be rented to some number which would be very reasonable for a resident-owner who's out of town sometimes but very unreasonable for owner-investors. 4. Maybe some kind of hybrid approach - you can rent out space in your primary residence all you want, but your nth residence is only rentable 1/f(n)% of the time (for some reasonable f(n))

All of the above are presumably best implemented by governments rather than a well-meaning airbnb (who, even if they existed could presumably be overpowered by a less-well-meaning competitor)

It'd probably work better to tax rentals (with higher taxes on short term) than to try to keep track of whether a wholly owned LLC counts as a separate landlord or not, or which owner in an area gets to rent and which one gets to eat their losses (or how to split the rent nights up).

Those taxes get paid by the renters, but they also reduce the profitability of the rentals (at least if they are competing with options that don't have those taxes).

Where I live an AirBNB was being used as a brothel. Neighbors really didn’t care for that and they appealed to the local Planning department who gave the property owner a Morton’s Fork: cease operations of the AirBNB or rezone your residential property to match the use (subject to public comment and a hostile board). That ended the matter. It’s a good action model for our modern legal framework, where property rights basically don’t exist and the law is whatever an administrator says it is.

Another option may be abolition of all commercial use of or non-private ownership of residential property in toto. Renting is illegal. Using it for your business is illegal. Apartments are illegal. Speculative ownership of housing is illegal. Housing prices implode, but you don’t have AirBNB tycoons.

I’m not serious, but “stop being greedy AirBNB or, boy, you’ll be sorry” isn’t much of a serious argument.

I had a similar sentiment reading the article. It seems the author’s primary beef is investors buying up houses and renting them for Airbnb’s taking up available housing stock. Isn’t then the more straightforward solution for the problem just instead to lobby governments to tax the hell out of any house not occupied by its owner in some way? Doing so didn’t completely solve Vancouver’s issue, but it definitely seemed to help.

Vancouver taxes owners that have unoccupied units, and foreign buyers, the owner doesn't need to live in the place. I fully agree with the article. Having seennthe inside of buildings that allow AirBnBs, and the tire tracks leading up to the door with a keypad. I spoke to one person who was able to identify the Airbnb units based on the noise levels on adjacent floors. It's fine to incentivise owner's renting their place long term, or an extra room, but not buying up places to rent on AirBnB. Real bed and breakfasts don't even do that.

Yeah not sure why it's an issue to these people that Airbnb is useful

Because they actually want to live in their city, and not have all available housing rented out to tourists?

Tourists only come when there's Airbnb available ? Wow

Short term housing is more ethical for temporary renters, because long term housing forms the foundation of a community by allowing more people to have access to stable shelters, neighbors, and everything else the author alluded to.

The problem with AirBnB is that they're taking up the long term housing and giving it all to temporary renters. And this is a huge issue as it forces a lot of the long term renters, the people who need to live in a city, out.

Yes that's pretty much what I was trying to say there.

You (probably purposefully) make no distinction between the long term / residential rental market and the short-term / holiday let one. That is what Airbnb trades on (and the point of the article): they muscle in on the role traditionally filled by hotels and guesthouses except that they do not face the same regulations and costs. You have to apply and be regulated (you know, to stop guests being burned to death in unsafe properties) to be an actual B & B; to open a house as a... B&B on Airbnb you simply have to list the property. And you can do the same thing over and over again.

Anyway now the people that actually live in these locations can no longer afford to rent, let alone buy (again, the point of the article). If you don't see the problems with that (starting with airy concepts of 'community' and ending with your anger that there are no longer any nurses or teachers in your town) then you are even more of a wilfully ignorant passive-aggressive libertarian dork than the hacker news average (a bar which is set extremely high).

I think your message would have been equally effective without the unwarranted insults at the end.

If that is a problem in your community then have you considered running for office? Ralph Nader's Raiders is a historical example of what could happen if people stood for candidacy, regardless of the party in power. AOC showed that it can be done if one is willing to try.