Hacker News Reader

Supply is very fixed? Most of the cities that you read about having a "rent crisis" also have a very aggressive contingent of anti-housing construction folks.

That, presumably, is one reason supply is restricted ("fixed"), along with other restrictive laws, like height or density limits, forced parking minimums, etc.

Another contributor is poor transportation infrastructure, which limits peoples' flexibility, creating more pressure on housing near train lines and stations, etc.

> That, presumably, is one reason supply is restricted ("fixed")

(I'm the grandparent.) Yes, this. I'm all for new construction to improve supply and a streamlined bureaucratic process so that it can happen more quickly.

Practically speaking though, you can look at any city that's had a problem with AirBnB (Berlin, San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, etc. — pretty much anywhere desirable to visit) and new stock isn't coming online anywhere close to quickly enough to counteract the market forces introduced by AirBnB. As it stands today, building is a very slow process, and it's likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future.

This is all fair and true, but then why isn't the answer "fix the outdated housing regulations that are driving rents sky high", which is likely to have a bigger impact than banning AirBnB.

And if you dig into the anti-housing discourse, you'll find there are also several good reasons for that.

Like what?

Insufficient infrastructure - water, electricity, transport, increase in (already problematic) traffic, preserving the character of the city / neighborhoods, kicking people out of their homes, gentrification, zoning plans.

Berlin rent prices are rising because they're cheaper than most other European big cities due to its unique recent history. Prices are catching up but I doubt Airbnb has a significant role.

> Berlin, like most German cities, is experiencing an acute shortage of affordable homes. Rents are rising at a rate of nearly 10 percent a year, even though the city has a rent cap and has introduced one of the strictest bans on holiday apartments - many other European cities also have some kind of regulation.

From that quote I would say vacation rentals are being scapegoated. Rents are rising with one of the strictest bans on holiday apartments.

Affordable housing was a problem before AirBnB was ever conceived.

Sure, AirBnB certainly isn't the only cause of rising rents in Berlin. The city's become an incredibly attractive place to be over the last decade, and that's almost certainly the foremost reason for rent increases.

But AirBnB is contributing something to those rising rents, and unlike the desirability of your city, it's something that you can control for.

I (along with probably most people that share a similar position) would argue that regulating AirBnB is good, but not adequate. Pretty much every large urban development in the world (SF, London, NY, Berlin, HK, etc.) is experiencing the same problem that because they're desirable they're also automatically unaffordable. We need to figure out how to put roofs over people's heads by building much more, and much more cheaply.

There are plenty of roofs for cheaper, just not in the same place everyone wants to be.

> The problem with housing is that the supply is very fixed.

This claim seems to be the root of every anti-AirBnB argument: AirBnB rentals eat into the resident housing supply.

But this is simply solved by zoning and regulation. In any given city there is some number of residents and some number of visitors, and some number of permanent and temporary beds for them to sleep in. Yes, AirBnB shifts some of the housing stock from resident to visitor - but, if that's what economic forces are commanding then the zoning & regulation should adapt, not fight it. It's not a capacity issue, just one of allocation.

>The problem with the anti-AirBnB argument is it always attacks from the angle of vacation rentals eating into the resident housing supply. That's nonsense.

Not for those that suffer from it.

>There is some number of residents and visitors in any given city, and some number of permanent and temporary beds for them to sleep in. Yes, AirBnB shifts some of the housing stock from resident to visitor housing, but, that's really just a zoning and regulation problem, not a capacity issue.

Well, unless people en masse are willing to go out there and build new houses, and prefer to use them for resident renting instead of AirBnB, it is a capacity issue.

Capacity doesn't magically increase with demand in the real world. Especially if there's a big, more lucrative, sink for new capacity.

"Well, unless people en masse are willing to go out there and build new houses"

They ARE! But the government won't let them.

Zoning and NIMBY laws are what causes the housing crisis.

It would be fixed in 5 years if the government removed building height limits in only a few square mile areas in all the major high rent cities.

The problem of high rent prices is solved by allowing people to build a couple hundred thousand apartments in every major city.

Apartments are extremely lucrative, so any developer at all would be willing to build them.