[wyager]

> this reduces housing availability for "the lower classes".

Only in the areas that are popular tourist destinations. I guess that's something that NIMBYs seem to care about that I don't identify with at all. Why does it matter if poor people can afford to live in the hottest tourist areas? As we can very clearly tell from the price signals, being there doesn't benefit them nearly as much as it benefits the tourists.

As you say, the same thing applies to the long-term housing market. The price signals are telling us that there's a large social benefit to having higher-productivity workers living in urban zones, and there's an opportunity cost associated with displacing (counterfactual) high-productivity workers with low-productivity workers.