> ALL housing increases supply/reduces market price.

I can tell you firsthand that that is absolutely not true. The massive rush to renovate or build new short-term rentals in the 2010s had a disastrous impact on rental prices around my city, especially coupled with historically low interest rates that made these enterprises far less risky. It’s also incredibly disruptive to neighborhoods/communities, not just because of bad guests but because it can rapidly drive up value, leading landlords to sell and/or rapidly drive up rent which means kick out lower income tenants whether it’s intentional or not. Most of the STR’s in particular were also not being done by locals. 70%+ were out of town developers. Currently almost 90% of STR’s here are whole home which means not local owner/operators living there. It’s just hotels by a different name taking up housing in residential neighborhoods.

When interest rates and home insurance went up a few years ago, coupled with stricter rules for getting an STR license, a lot of people sold their properties (usually rentals/STR’s), and the price to buy as well as rent noticeably came down pretty rapidly. It’s still too high, but the drop was noticeable and quick. The purpose for construction absolutely factors in to these discussions.

Taxing short-term rentals would handily address these issues while still allowing people to derive some income from their otherwise vacant pieds-a-terre and vacation homes.

But that’s the thing, that’s not what these properties are generally here. These are homes bought in cash by developers in neighborhoods occupied by residents. People lived in these homes prior and somebody else would have likely bought and lived in it if they left.

When my wife and I were buying our first house we had two houses taken out from under us because somebody came in with an all cash bid tens of thousands higher than ours. Both are still Airbnb’s.

> These are homes bought in cash by developers in neighborhoods occupied by residents.

This happens because hotel accommodation is generally overpriced. But if you tax the airbnb rentals, it deters profit-minded developers from engaging in this practice, while still allowing it as a last resort for homes that cannot be rented long-term and would otherwise sit empty.

Maybe in theory but that’s not what happened here at the end of the day. That’s the entire issue. This type of construction and renovation is bad for housing. My city’s story is very common - it was especially in the 2010’s.

House-Hotels managed by companies based in other states (sometimes even other countries!) don’t belong in residential neighborhoods. We have zoning for a reason.

> Maybe in theory but that’s not what happened here at the end of the day.

If you mean that levying targeted taxes/fees to mitigate the bad side-effects of STR's has not been tried, I agree of course. I'm not denying that the detrimental side-effects exist.

I think my larger point here is that we can’t say “all construction is good” if we have to have a ton of qualifiers that ignore when it isn’t and/or expect all sorts of parameters and rules that aren’t being implemented. Tons of bad building goes on all the time, and it is reasonable of people to oppose it. Belittling them and accusing them of not understanding basic economics is not fair at all. There are plenty of examples of construction that should be opposed.

STRs reduced the supply of housing. You’re making my point.

I think we might be talking at cross purposes