> At the cost of higher temporary housing costs for people that want to visit. Addressing supply by ripping supply from a different market is a bandaid.
That's not such a bad thing. The market has demonstrated that hotels and similar will be built until supply mostly meets the demand.
No one will build affordable housing when they can build expensive housing instead.
Affordable cars get built because the market for cars is saturated. Where the supply of some key component of cars a limiting factor on the production capability of car manufacturers, expensive cars would be the only ones produced.
> The market has demonstrated that hotels and similar will be built until supply mostly meets the demand.
Actually I think what we're seeing is precisely that this is not happening. If that were the case, hotel rooms in NYC would not cost 2-3x what they do in the suburbs. The price is high because short term rentals are scarce.
One could argue that "affordable" long-term housing is a market who's supply should take precedence on the temporary housing market. Since the two must, by nature, compete with each other for the same real estate.
This supply was explicitly built for longterm residents - it's written into the zoning laws. If you want to remove the concept of residential zoning, then start building that political platform. Will be interesting to see whether you choose to make residential housing conform to hotel firecodes, etc, in that platform!
I believe the parent poster was expressing a desire to fix the problem by enforcing //more supply// rather than by artificially limiting how existing supply can service different types of demand.
You are viewing this as a zero-sum game. I am viewing it as the city not encouraging economic development and designing a sustainable balance of work, living, and entertainment areas.
Because it is. There is precious little new space for residential buildings in New York. How does people renting out apartments on AirBnB create a "sustainable balance of work, living, and entertainment areas"?
The only solution that's not a band-aid is to kick out multiple property owners, retirees, and generally all non-productive people out of metropolitan areas to drive prices down, while at the same time removing rent controls. Oh and also to remove most of the bullshit NIMBY zoning laws.
But that's obviously not politically feasible now, is it?
> At the cost of higher temporary housing costs for people that want to visit.
You're implying this is a bad thing. A city's first responsibility is towards its residents, everyone else comes after their needs and wants are catered to.
1 minute (though in practical terms that may take a few days), from the moment you registered your address and are able to vote. Everyone else is an outsider.
What new thing could you not argue for by comparing it to higher crime rate? Why stop with crime? Your argument might be even more compelling if you used cholera as your baseline.
Agreed--government playing whack-a-mole again with regulation. Instead, perhaps the regulations governing construction of buildings, zoning, etc are a problem because they inhibit construction that could meet market demand.
A possible metric is limiting competition by keeping existing (likely paid for by hotels and others interested in high lodging/housing costs) barriers to competition in place.
Another possible metric is comparing the benefit to some versus the benefits to others.
The need for rent control at all, as well as the surely depressingly long lines for any waiting list / lottery for rent controlled units, points to a market that has already failed to serve the needs of the community.
Compounding that, the fact that AirBnB or any similar offering is able to so successfully compete with hotels in the area signals that one or more aspects of the hotels is dramatically out of alignment with what the competition that is being eliminated can offer. It /may/ be price, but factored in to that should be the security and piece of mind that a more established name brand and reputation has; possibly the hotels (like Taxis) are doing a poor job upholding a quality brand name, or those that do charge far more than they should if competition were actually a factor for them.
Still, it'd be nice of one of the many people who downvoted my comment in the past few minutes can explain why I wasn't "allowed" to ask that question.
At the cost of higher temporary housing costs for people that want to visit. Addressing supply by ripping supply from a different market is a bandaid.
This benefits hotels much more than low income people.