[bobbyT314]

The number of immigrants admitted to Canada per year is very stable and only slowing rising. On average it has been between 200-300 thousand per year for at least the past 20 years. This is not the driving force of lack of housing, and is a driving force of a stronger economy with the introduction of skilled labour.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/443063/number-of-immigra...

[Veen]

I can't see how immigration can be considered to have no impact on available housing. People have to live somewhere and if there were fewer immigrants, there would be more housing stock for non-immigrants — unless you believe that immigration causes houses.

It's perfectly possible for immigration to be a net positive for the economy and for it to have negative affects on the availability of housing.

[bobbyT314]

Of course it has an impact. But it is likely not a dominant one or we'd have experienced the housing crises we're seeing now, long ago.

[Veen]

There are approximately 14,072,080 occupied private dwellings in Canada. The rental of 31,000 of them on AirBNB is unlikely to be a significant factor in the housing shortage.

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98...

As the article states, 31,000 is 1.5 percent of rental accommodation. If we assume that half of the 300,000 immigrants rent, and that they tend to rent in couples, that's 75,000 rental properties consumed by immigration each year -- or about 3.5 percent. That's an additional 3.5 percent of rental housing stock each year, a much faster increase than the number of AirBNB rentals.

Regardless of whether you think immigration or AirBNB are major causes of a housing shortage, it's disingenuous to argue that immigration has less of an impact than AirBNB.

EDIT: It's also worth noting that construction is expected to slow over the next five years, whereas immigration is expected to grow.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/immigration-canada-2018-1.4...

https://www.on-sitemag.com/construction/end-of-an-era-20-yea...

[ng12]

Ok, so admit 31,000 fewer immigrants and the AirBnB problem would go away, right?

Rallying against AirBnB is so silly -- no matter how you slice it it's always a minor factor in self-inflicted "housing crisis" scenarios.

[Tiktaalik]

Airbnb distorts the value of the land, which has broader implications than just the literal 31k units that these researchers identified.

[ng12]

By how much? More importantly, how much compared to the distortion caused by Canada's zoning/housing policies?