The housing problem is mostly acute in large coastal cities i.e. LA, SF, NY.

It is pretty clear that rent control also is a really bad policy and actually leads to higher average rents in the long term for everyone on net, so we should never enact rent control and instead tackle the underlying problem of housing supply. Driving housing supply investment will do more to increase affordability than rent control could (especially when coupled with vouchers).

I would say Airbnb and other similar companies have no role to play in thinking about affordable housing. It is not their job to consider it but instead regulation and zoning should address the issue.

If there were less zoning restrictions and housing could be built, the incentives to rent vs. airbnb out would converge because supply constraints would not be creating this mismatched.

It all traces back to really bad zoning policies messing everything up. Getting rid of those would fix so many things.