Airbnb Bans Don’t Make Housing More Affordable: Betsey Stevenson

When it comes to housing, almost all governments say they want to make it more affordable — and then they embrace policies that do the opposite. The latest illustration of this unfortunate trend, a ban on short-term rentals, came to Barcelona just last month, and similar policies are being tried in New York and elsewhere.

The theory is that services such as Airbnb in effect take units off the market, driving up rental costs for city residents. By effectively banning Airbnb, cities are betting that they can make more affordable housing more available.

That’s not what happened in New ...