[fennecfoxen]

I am routinely amazed by the the hoops people are willing jump through to avoid the simple answer of "building more apartments."

High end estimates of AirBnB apartments are about 4% of units in the most popular neighborhoods -- Times Square, the East Village, Williamsburg. Drift out to Park Slope and you can see 2%, maybe.

House hoarding? Very few people pay a mortgage for empty space when they can get a tenant to pay the mortgage instead. The real house hoarding is the high end luxury market with $20 million penthouses, where renters were never in the picture.

We don't need to free up 4-5% more units in the most popular neighborhoods. It'll help a little, yes? It's just that it's such pathetically small thinking.

Why don't we have a plan to build 50% more units citywide, and make housing actually affordable? Hell, it's New York. Build us 100% more apartments. Put real price reductions on the table. Do what it takes to chop rental prices in half.