Sydney deputy mayor warns of short-term rental loophole amid state pledge for thousands of new homes | ABC News

As Sydney grapples with rising homelessness and low vacancy, local councils hold little power to act against short-term accommodation operators some say are draining the city's long-term rental supply.

In Sydney, where the vacancy rate sits at 2.1 per cent, there were 10,531 active Airbnb listings in August, according to market analysis from AirRoi.

City of Sydney Deputy Lord Mayor Jess Miller has supported the push for a crackdown on Airbnbs, but said limited data available to councils made it difficult to identify which were homes being lived in or investment properties being used solely for short-term accommodation.

Cr Miller said with thousands of new dwellings flagged under the housing delivery authority, nothing was preventing investors from exploiting new residential developments "to in effect rezone them to commercial, by solely using them as accommodation properties".

"The mythology of the solution to the problem is more supply is completely eroded when you look at what the supply that we have is actually being used for," she said.