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).