| Quite, indeed in London the pressure group "action on empty homes" say it's 2.2% - and that includes second homes (people with a flat in London and a house elsewhere, airbnbs, etc) That's a tiny number. Even if that number was zero there would still be a massive shortage. Most claims of "homelessness" ignore overcrowding, they're looking at people living on the street, or at most sofa-surfing, they don't look at overcrowded houses, at 30 year old adults with above-average wages who have to share family homes with half a dozen strangers in HMOs. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6553693f7d629a133b6a4... I don't know about Dublin but I would be surprised if it's not a similar demographic. A lot of cities have a fair amount of airbnbs because they work better for modern travellers than hotels The biggest places outside the City of London (the square mile in the very middle, it's a special case due to its size) are holiday hotspots like Cornwall, South Devon, the Lake District, where holiday homes, either private or rented out ("airbnbs") make up nearly 10% of the stock. They also (like action-on-empty-homes) claim airbnbs as "empty", which is a political view. There are about 200k visitors in a given peak summer week to Cornwall [0] and 13k "second homes" [1]. Assuming they are all holiday lets, and lets go for a typical 4 person family, that's 50k visitors. Slash those numbers and that's a hell of a lot of tourists not spending money, and a hell of a lot of jobs not being funded. On the other hand cornwall could have its total housing stock increased by 5.6% and all the problems would apparently be solved - as there would then be the same number in primary residential use as exist right now. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-58099906 [1] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6553693f7d629a133b6a4... |