[trgn]

but tourist could use a hotel, no? landlords are using actual houses to service tourists, whereas a new hotel would do just fine as well and not take 100s of units out the rental market. If housing affordability is a function of supply/demand, then lowering demand - e.g. by not allowing tourists to stay in houses that could be rented out - should certainly help just as well as increasing supply.

[Kalium]

Depending on what you're doing, a hotel can be a poor fit for your needs. I've spent weeks in hotels at once, and for me it got absolutely miserable quickly. A studio apartment instead was much, much better.

[trgn]

fair enough. but that seems more like a furnished unit business type rental thing than for tourism. i don't think this is the bulk of airbnb usage (maybe it is). plus, hotels are starting to accommodate that more too, extended stay hotels, they have very commodious rooms.

[Kalium]

It's my experience that housing exists on a spectrum, rather than being strictly for business or tourism or long-term living. Any space that could rent furnished apartments by the week to business travelers could also be renting unfurnished by the year to residents. I've seen hotels turned into apartments and the reverse.

Housing, like money, is often fungible. It's not something we should expect to strictly classify away into wildly different categories in every case, even if this is pretty convenient from a governance perspective.

[trgn]

I am a 100% in agreement with that statement, and I speak from experience, seeing how I used and have rented out an apartment in the past.

But in actual reality, very specifically, airbnb has destroyed the character of entire neighborhoods, pushed up prices locally (if not regionally), all the while having completely acceptable alternatives for the majority of its use (ie. tourism).

So, yes, there is a spectrum in how housing is deployed, but there is also a very clear negative impact of airbnb, very specifically, in that frictionless, low risk model of renting out housing. I think that needs to be addressed, not from first principles wrt what is the nature of housing etc. etc., but very pragmatically, the gig-economy airbnb, how to channel that correctly.

[bredren]

It was better for the tourist.