[throwaway03857]

Airbnb, backed by VC money, were willing to enable the breaking of local laws on a mass scale. These laws, about the standards that bed and breakfasts and other short term lets must meet (things like meeting fire and health and safety regulations) and also limiting the number of short term lets in an area to retain actual, functional cities people can afford to live in rather than tourist traps were and are intentionally bypassed by the Airbnb founders and their funders as part of their business plan. Airbnbs, contrary to the "ooh its helping people meet their rent" narrative pushed by PG are often owned by rich multiple property owning rentiers who are profiting off rich tourists by driving out poorer people who would like to actually live in these areas. Airbnb is a blight in cities all over the world.

[darawk]

It sounds like what you actually mean is that there is not enough housing supply to meet the demand. Demand which has been augmented by AirBnB. This is a zoning and infrastructure problem, and it was not created by them, nor can it be fixed by them.

[throwaway03857]

No it was created by them because they ignore those zoning laws and are willing to go to court to fight attempts to enforce them against their clientele. Finding a creative way to help people break laws with little chance of their being any consequences for yourself because you are a) in another jurisdiction and b) backed by billionaires like PG who believe they have a divine right to "disrupt" societies against the wishes of the people who live in them in the name if profit, is not something to be applauded. There is nothing "natural" about the creation of demand by Airbnb and it has brought little but misery to the poorest members of society while enriching those at the top.

[TeMPOraL]

There's indeed not enough housing supply to meet the total demand. There are various reasons for that, but that's the ground state. What AirBnB does is add to this an incentive for existing supply to further shift from serving city residents to serving tourists. Since housing supply isn't limited by low demand but by external and difficult to change factors, what AirBnB does is just making a bad situation much worse for cities worldwide.

[piokoch]

Not really, land is fixed, you cannot create more land out of nothing. It is not yet another startup that can be created because VS has a lot of money because many government all over the World think that printing money (named nicely QE) is a good idea.