Desirable places like NYC have always been competitive markets to rent in, and we know that there’s a long term trend of migration toward population centers which is slowly making things worse.
But there’s another factor that seems like it isn’t getting it’s fair share of blame - the accelerant that is social media. There’s been a huge rise in micro-influencers showing us what the good life looks like in desirable places, whether we are talking about a neighborhood of NYC or a western mountain town. A decade or two ago, these desirable places were on the radar of a small number of people (relative to today) as viable places to build a life in, now the pool is much larger.
Airbnb deserves some criticism, but it certainly seems like short term rentals are getting more than their fair share of blame because they are a convenient boogeyman to point at. The end result is that we see regulations like this one that are more punitive than effective.