I spoke to the owners of the last 3 Airbnbs I stayed in. All of them were converted from long-term rentals. The landlords in all 3 cite much higher profits from Airbnb as the reason for conversion.
That's fine, but isn't evidence that short-term rentals dominate the rental housing market. They don't. Short-term rentals make up less than 1% of the housing stock.
Obviously, the housing that short-term rentals use has to come from the housing stock somehow, so it's not interesting to point out that Airbnb's cannibalize the long-term rental market.
(Over the medium-long term this is a problem that'll be solved by a combination of more construction, which is desperately needed anyways, and ordinances regulating Airbnbs, like NYC just passed.)
