I guess all hotels are also guilty of "displacing New Yorkers" by re-purposing perfectly good real-estate for the benefit of "tourists"?
FWIW
NYC has added 30,000 new hotel rooms since 2007. It would seem that AirBnB is adding nearly the same # of rooms.
Zillow lists 25,000 rental units in NYC. This is the same order as the # of rooms being rented on AirBnB.
Why can't we accept that AirBnB is contributing to increasing rental prices in NYC? What's the point of pointing to hotels every time someone mentions AirBnB?
I would expect that the founders of AirBnB genuinely care about communities where they operate, and would be motivated to advance the community's interest.
What leads you to you expect that?
Ultimately, if market forces make it more profitable for rooms to be used for short-term stays than as homes, it will be very hard to stop that from happening and not at all clear that we should stop it from happening. There are arguments the other way, but it is depressing to hear only the glib assumption that the free market must be stopped. For example, it's not ultra-obvious that policy should favor those who choose to live in Manhattan over those who choose to visit. Among other things, I think it's likely that the average income of the visitors is lower than that of whoever would be renting.
That's a good discussion to have I think. But we are talking about Airbnb here.
re: Ultimately, if market forces make it more profitable for rooms to be used for short-term stays than as homes, it will be very hard to stop that from happening and not at all clear that we should stop it from happening.
Yeah, you might be right. The cost of this is lack of affordable rent in cities like NYC. Some of us believe that we have a responsibility to ensure this. Now, the debate is about how big of a role Airbnb is playing in this.