| > shutting down any new housing construction for decades. That's a problem. No one is saying it isn't. The role of Airbnb cannot be ignored; it is negatively affecting housing availability as landlords can make much more profits on short-term rentals than long-term ones. On the building side, we've made it much more difficult to build low/mid rise apartments buildings. General accessibility requirements alone make it impractical to build anything less than 5 floors with a large land footprint (~20 units per floor). You pretty much need an elevator and other accessibility systems, which makes construction and maintenance of low to mid rises prohibitive. Older constructions are filled with grandfathered clauses allowing them to skip over accessibility requirements. This is why you only see requests to build ~20+ floor buildings, which people disagree to be added in their neighbourhood. ex: https://www.ontario.ca/page/accessibility-ontarios-building-... > Barrier-free floor access is also required for residential and office buildings over: > 3 storeys high > 600 square metres in building area |
It can be ignored if it's insignificant - I haven't seen any evidence to show that banning short-term rentals significantly improves housing prices.