Turn Sydney Airbnbs into rentals for workers, says deputy lord mayor | AFR

City of Sydney Deputy Lord Mayor Jess Miller says the 1000 or more homes operating as full-time Airbnb properties in the municipality should be turned over to much-needed rentals for ordinary workers as a quick-fix solution to mitigate the housing crisis.

A crackdown on short-term rentals would be more effective and more immediate than the NSW government’s efforts to increase housing density or Labor’s federal budget tax changes designed to encourage investment in new housing, she said.

“Of course, we have to build more housing, but this is something that they can fix right now,” she said. “There are thousands of homes that are already built to rent, many of which are probably sitting empty for at least half the year.

“People should be living in them; they were homes that were built to be lived in.”

Miller said state and federal governments always defaulted to expensive and complicated measures to increase housing, but the benefits of those changes are only felt much further down the track.