If “too many vacationers” and short term rentals have priced you out, you can’t afford it. Tough shit, welcome to life.
It’s insane to me that people feel entitled to own a home in whatever part of whatever city they desire, for whatever price they’ve decided is reasonable.
If you want cheaper housing build more houses.
The same logic applies to renting, though. Is it really entitlement to expect to be able to not have to spend 50% of your income on housing?
It’s definitely not a law of nature that housing has to be this expensive, it’s only a political failure that cities are becoming unlivable. You might call that entitlement but also keep in mind that those least able to pay rent are also least likely to be able to move once they’re priced out.
I agree though, it’s a tremendous political failure that we have so under-built housing. Most cities could be affordable to most people with adequate supply.
15000 years ago, some of my ancestors walked from Asia to North America without a dollar to their name.
So yeah, some tourist accommodation is fine, and the Airbnb model in concept is fine. I prefer staying in self-contained, self-catering places when I go away, and most places I go on holiday are small towns without hotels. Tourists bring money into the community, especially rural communities. We seldom see the owners at all (key is under the mat) and there've never been hidden charges. With good suppliers and good customers everyone is a winner.
But there's a balance. Investors buying up properties does reduce housing stock. Too much of that drives out locals. Bad travellers (hosting parties etc) make for bad neighbors. As always the unrestricted free market corrupts and destroys, but hey, free market right?
So yeah, it can't be just "tough, get out, you can't afford to live here." and it can't be "ban all short term rentals". But free market works best when paired with good governance, one that takes the whole big picture into account. (Ironically reducing supply also works to improve returns for those who have a permit to supply.)
The key is in the balance. When the free market and good governance are in balance then you get optimal results. When the pendulum swings either way too far then there are second-order negative outcomes.
Even if the money probably isn't that much, at least in bigger cities.
Or even if they just live on a normal income in a city acutely affected by it. That's what really turned my opinion on the matter, when I tried to move to Galway city in 2016 to find out that a lot of the housing was taken up for tourists. Now I'm in Dublin, and it's even worse, in the midst of the largest housing crisis the country has seen (and it's not due entirely to lack of building - during the pandemic the number of long-term lets doubled, mostly as AirBnB owners fled back into the market). It's absolutely awful what it has done to cities as whole, not even talking about actual neighbourhoods.
But I suspect most people here make a really good income, and can afford to live in other places that are generally insulated from this, and don't have to worry about competing with others in the lower-end rent market.
There's also a lot of weirdly libertarian "I should be able to do what I want with my property", ignoring all negative social externalities that we already regulate against. It's quite funny, from people who (I'd assume) would generally be more left-leaning/liberal.
> There seems to be certain lack of empathy. Or they feel superior in sense that we bring money, we should be served as some type of royalty for that.
God, I see this attitude way too much. Hotel owners also exhibit this in Dublin, as they demolish cultural and historical institutions to make way for more hotels to cater towards tourists. Tourists are not a viable way for a city to thrive long-term.