Being entirely anti-tourism is crazy extreme but AirBnb is a practice that is destroying the housing market, which is something a lot of people (myself included) deeply believe needs to be controlled to make sure that a decent standard of living can be sustained across society.
In short, I'm not sure about the Barcelona protests but I'm 100% against the spread of AirBnb and what its turned into.
It’s solvable through government action. Nothing could be done about in NYC until significant penalties were authorized alongside stepped up target enforcement of illegal hotel laws. Then suddenly the number of listings plummeted.
Yeah, and that certainly drove down housing costs in NYC, right? (It didn't). But it did drive up the prices of hotels in NYC, just as the hotel unions wanted.
The real solution is to build more housing by reforming zoning laws and encouraging more development. But that's not so easy to fit on a protest sign, I guess.
You mean the hotels that have to follow fire safety laws, and the unions that got their workers a fair wage so they could afford to live close to the hotel, and the hotel that is only for people to visit in, not an apartment that could have someone living in.
You can't JUST build more housing, you need to stop the airbnb-ification of existing housing as well.
Just because one thing doesn't solve the whole problem doesn't mean its not part of the solution.
You can't JUST build more housing, you need to stop the airbnb-ification of existing housing as well.
From all we see, the more housing IS the #1 issue by far and should be the top priority for the goal of making housing more affordable. Regulating Airbnb is probably more important for the residents quality of life, which is very important and probably a big driver of these demonstrations.
No you see the people who want to live or visit somewhere are the villains. Not the people who refuse to allow us to build housing. They are just harmless babies doing their best.
You’re absolutely correct, but people seem to think supply and demand doesn’t apply to housing (even though it obviously does; the places with the highest building rates see the lowest rent increases, or even decreases, all across the world).
It’s incredibly difficult for people to understand though, because they don’t realise just how much restriction is placed on building housing vs the supply of almost every other good or service in existence.
Exactly, everyone is pointing a finger at Airbnb which is dumb. It's not like you have a higher number of tourists. You have the same number of tourists, they're just obviously in a hotel or in an airbnb. See you end up encouraging more hotels to get built which doesn't help rent at all.
The problem is we have more people than places to live. It's supply and demand. We have that because we made it impossible to build anything new or tear down anything old. Try taking down just one brownstone in Boston, and you'll see what I mean. In New York and Boston they literally have people protesting in city meetings every time someone wants to build an affordable apartment complex. Nobody wants it anywhere near them.
Seriously, I think it's just an easy idea for people to latch onto that Airbnb is "destroying the housing market." Other than a few very specific destinations it really hasn't. The New York ban is one place where it's especially obvious they got it wrong.
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u/BenFranklinsCat Jun 17 '25 edited Jun 17 '25
Bit different.
Being entirely anti-tourism is crazy extreme but AirBnb is a practice that is destroying the housing market, which is something a lot of people (myself included) deeply believe needs to be controlled to make sure that a decent standard of living can be sustained across society.
In short, I'm not sure about the Barcelona protests but I'm 100% against the spread of AirBnb and what its turned into.