McGill study demonstrates that restricting short-term rentals improves housing affordability
“We found absolute, iron-clad evidence that short-term rental regulations put downward pressure on rent. Lots of things cause housing to be expensive, but this is low-hanging fruit to manage those costs,” said David Wachsmuth, lead researcher and Associate Professor in the School of Urban Planning.
https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/mcgill-study-demonstrates-restricting-short-term-rentals-improves-housing-affordability-373739Open linkView original on sopuli.xyz
4 replies
Using houses as houses and not hotels increases the number of houses and decreases demand?
Holy shit that's a useful study.
I get what you are saying, but I think it is a tad superficial of a read on it.
I don't think anyone involved in this study truly believed that they wouldn't find this data when they crunched the numbers, or believed that "just" finding evidence for their hunch would be a scientific and political waste of time.
What this does is provide evidence in no uncertain terms for this phenomena, of course that doesn't change how you or I see it, but it does meaningfullly change the power balance a tiny bit in rhetoric when studies like this come out.
Agreed. Just because "everyone knows it" is no reason not to follow up with scientific study. It is good to be able to back up assumptions with data, and occassionally they find some very interest data points, or even find that "everyone was wrong".
Plenty of moneyed interests claim the opposite.