This happened even in areas where holiday home ownership and rental was common as a business.
The failure of government to grapple with the negative effects of Airbnb is a separate thing. Airbnb are, in fact, in control of their own morality.
Thanks for the unnecessary correction, when it's pretty clear that my comment you are replying to includes the words "even in areas where holiday home ownership and rental was common as a business".
I don't know why it did not happen before.
All I know is that the situation in coastal resort towns in Cornwall, Devon, and elsewhere in the UK changed utterly when Airbnb became a thing.
I could guess that barrier to entry was always an issue before then; the relative complexity and process involved in listing a property with e.g. Hoseasons, who were the dominant player in the 80s and 90s, and who inspected properties and had greater requirements.
But either way, Airbnb did unambiguously change things. Ask people who lived in Cornish towns whether they're even able to rent a room or a flat.
Nimbys are basically hukou advocates in disguise. After all, it's the only solution if you don't primarily place the blame on lack of construction.
There are literal physical limits on this in many coastal villages and towns -- for example pick almost anywhere on the south west coast of the UK. Not only is the area on which houses can be built restrictive due to geography (and often geology), the transport infrastructure does not scale. New property building both has not caught up with, and probably cannot catch up with, short term demand.
As it happens, a collapse seems likely, because local sentiment is turning against them so fast and because of general economic weakness; the number of "thriving holiday let" properties that are on the market now suggests that Airbnb's own accelerating rental costs problem is going to cause a bit of a bust.
But that bust will not benefit most of the people in the areas affected where the price of a small house is twenty to thirty times the average salary of would-be-first-time-buyers. Those people are leaving, so there will instead be a ghost town. And the sheer number of residents who are temporary has destroyed the potential for long-term stable infrastructure businesses for residents.
> Nimbys are basically hukou advocates in disguise.
It's nothing to do with nimbyism, is it? Nimbys are property owners. The problem only affects people who do not have back yards. They can no longer afford the houses at the prices at which they will be built and the rates at which they can be.
Where do you think the AirBNBs came from? Some people decided to move out, and the people that moved in decided that others would get better use experiencing the property part-time as reflected in market prices. Would you ban them from making this choice? Would you screen every buyer not based on their own assessed price but on ever so shifting "intent"? Would you make the intent they declare at the start binding?
EDIT: I'll bet you $100 to your charity of choice that physical constraints aren't binding in the case you're thinking of (this could be shown by, despite a lax / encouraging planning environment, no one building anything).