So destroy demand for uses that are discretionary instead of non discretionary. Vacation travel accommodations aren’t a right, and tourists aren’t part of the local electorate.
Airbnb isn’t going to magically put more supply on the market, only cause existing supply to be used for short term rentals. The benefit of a ban need not be extraordinary to justify, only a net positive.
Why do you need to regulate it at all? If you allow land to be used for hotels or housing equally, and don't slap huge taxes on hotel rooms just to pay for sports stadiums, then the market will sort things out and it won't be cheaper to stay in an AirBnB instead of a hotel. It works fine here in Japan: AirBnB isn't a big thing here except maybe in rural places not well served by hotels.
Because it is the right of the local citizens and community to choose to do so if they deem the action to be appropriate. They do not need to justify the bans to anyone outside of their community or voting boundaries.
The evidence is robust that “the market will sort things out” is not accurate. Capital and regulatory evasion will always move faster.
My whole point is that short-term rental bans aren't going to fix the fundamental problem, which is the lack of housing supply. It's just a feel-good measure to make politicians look like they're doing something useful, and sticking it to the tourists makes angry locals feel better. The parent comment I initially replied to showed how the math doesn't work: adding housing for ~25k people in a city with 1.6M people isn't going to make some huge difference in housing costs.
If you want stable housing prices, the answer is very simple: copy Japan. Stop restricting the construction of new housing units, and fix the regulations so housing developers can build more units for people to live in. It's the same story in cities around the world, except in Japan, because all these other places want to restrict the supply of housing, usually using the argument about local voter's "rights" and their prerogative to make regulations restricting housing. This is exactly what the NIMBYs in the SanFran bay area have been doing, to "protect" their property values, and the result is astronomical housing costs.
But that is the problem with your point: it is unlikely that any locale will copy Japan, and increase housing supply in the manner you describe, hence why it isn’t a solution.
“You just have to do what no one else will do except this one example.”
Then those people and their cities are screwed. They can make lots of noise about banning Airbnb or foreign real estate investment or whatever, but none of that won't solve their problems. There are only two possible solutions:
1. Build lots and lots of new housing, and then supply will meet demand.
2. Find ways to make your city crappier and less appealing, and then demand will drop, making the existing supply sufficient.
And that's it. There are no other solutions that will work.
San Francisco, for example, seems to be opting for #2, though even that isn't working too well to drop prices. (And I say that as a homeowner here.)
SanFran is definitely choosing #2, but the problem for people wanting affordable housing is that there's a ton of inertia that affects real estate prices, so it could take decades to make housing more affordable, unless some kind of collapse event happens. The bay area is still a huge employer in the tech sector, and companies can't just pick up and move on a whim. There's been some action to move away from that area (and California in general) over the last decade but most of it hasn't gone very far for various reasons. So people are still earning huge salaries, and paying enormous sums for rent in the area while having to put up with feces on the sidewalks and boarded-up stores, and this could go on for a long time.
But there's probably a lot of other not-so-well-known mid-tier US cities where they don't have the huge inertia provided by the tech sector, and are going to turn into relative ghost towns much faster, as people look for more affordable places to live where there's also good jobs in their sector and a lifestyle or local culture they favor.
Then they can sit around and wonder why they're having so many housing problems, and all the social and economic problems that stem from that. The solution is simple, and from what I've read, some places have done some work towards loosening restrictions, with good results.
You're missing the point: shutting down short-term renting will not really move the needle. What's usually the case is that even if you put those 10k units (or whatever) back on the normal long-term rental (or buy-to-occupy) market, prices will stay roughly the same. You need to build 100k new homes (or more!) to actually reduce home prices. The demand will not even be remotely satisfied by banning STRs.
Existing homeowners don't want new housing built, because it'll reduce their home value. Homeowners tend to vote more than renters do, and tourists of course don't get a vote. Airbnb is a convenient bogeyman to distract people from the garbage zoning laws and barriers to development already in place.
I'm not missing the point. I'm asserting that if locals want to ban short term rentals, they can, and there is nothing anyone outside of the jurisdiction can do about it. Arguing over whether the bans move the needle is immaterial, although you are free to complain about it, as it is the only recourse available.
I'm not sure what the point of your argument is then. Locals can vote for all kinds of things, smart or dumb. They could vote on whether to ban the color purple on storefronts, for instance, though (IMO) it would be a stupid law to pass. This discussion is about AirBnB and housing prices, so just loudly proclaiming "locals can vote for policies they want!" isn't productive here at all. The entire point of this discussion is to argue the merits of these initiatives.
Airbnb isn’t going to magically put more supply on the market, only cause existing supply to be used for short term rentals. The benefit of a ban need not be extraordinary to justify, only a net positive.