Along with international collaborators from McGill University, University of Toronto, and Leeds University, UQ Senior Lecturer Dr Thomas Sigler has been awarded a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The project is titled ” Cities, Short-term Rentals and the Sharing Economy: Housing Impacts, Social Dynamics, and Policy Options”, and will investigate the good, the bad and the ugly of short-term rentals in cities.

The team, who was awarded C$395,792 to commence the project in 2020, consists of planners and geographers with an interest in cities and housing dynamics. The lead investigator Dr David Wachsmuth has been an outspoken critic of Airbnb in particular, arguing that short-term rentals remove housing stock from the rental market and therefore exacerbate housing affordability issues.

Along with Dr Sigler’s research on Airbnb, a number of UQ staff and students currently investigate short-term housing, including Dr Elin Charles-Edwards, Dr Radoslaw Panczak, Prof Jonathan Corcoran, and PhD Candidate Sirat Mahmuda, whose thesis focuses on Airbnb diffusion in Australia and India.