If you don't ban short-term rentals and just build housing, how does that fix the problem? People will buy it up and just put it on AirBnB.

Then you build even more. Banning short term rentals just makes hotels more insanely expensive than they already are (cheap hotels simply do not exist in Manhattan; there are none).

AirBnB satisfies one kind of demand: short term stays. Building more apartments and other housing satisfies another kind of demand. You keep building until you satisfy the demand of both

That only works if you assume that it is possible to build quickly enough to satisfy both demands. But if you can't, then you'll just satisfy one and not the other. NYC made this calculus and prefers people to have homes over short-term stays.

Supply and demand.

At one point there should be enough supply that AirBnB will bring too little profit for people to be bothered.

Things like AirBnB work precisely because the supply is constrained.

I agree we should build more housing.

But in the meantime it's not helping to have a bunch of the housing stock dedicated to tourists. Now maybe banning airbnb will put such a damper on tourism that it becomes a problem, but let's deal with that problem when it happens.

> But in the meantime it's not helping to have a bunch of the housing stock dedicated to tourists

Tourists bring in good tax dollars for the city since NYC has insane hotel taxes on top of the ridiculous cost of Hotels.

From a moral perspective, it really shouldn't be anyone's business how a property owner decides to use their property. If they want to rent it on month-to-month leases or 12 month leases, it's up to them. If there's not enough permanent or long-term housing, then you need to deregulate NYC's byzantine zoning regulations and make it a lot easier to build whatever, wherever.

Also you need to get rid of rent control; it is categorically proven to make things worse

Now that's a one way to kill the economy...

Where would the new housing go? They should focus on building fast train links into the city.

NYC is insanely dense already. “Just build more housing” isn’t really viable.

"just build more housing" is definitely viable here in NYC. NYC is not that dense in comparison to many other major metropolis in the world.

Really? Compared to what other metropolises?

NYC doesn't even make the list apparently:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popul...

Did you actually look at that list? Most have under 1,000,000 in population. Many even have less than 100,000. There are only a handful of cities on the list comparable to NYC. It’s also worth noting that Manhattan would be 9 on the list, if listed as an individual city. The current number 9 is Port au Prince. Is that the kind of metropolis you were comparing NYC to?

most of nyc outside Manhattan is 2 story townhouses