Last week I had the extraordinary pleasure of MC-ing Politics in the Pub in the Kings Cross Hotel in Potts Point, Sydney.

There was a full house of 100 local residents there to talk about how affordable housing was being eroded by new developments and how people were being forced out of their homes so that developers could knock them down and build something bigger, newer and shinier.

None of these new developments, it seems, will compensate for the reduction in reasonably priced apartments – the people being moved out of the old buildings would never be able to afford homes in the new ones.

Most of the people there didn’t want any new developments if it meant a reduction in affordable homes (which it does). Someone sarcastically asked if there was a critical shortage of three-bedroom luxury apartments.

The principal speaker of the evening was Jess Miller, Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney City (they really need to get rid of the “lord” in that title) who fielded all sorts of tricky questions including what was the point of the city proposing changes when the state government won’t let then implement them?

Inevitably, Airbnb came up for discussion and we took a vote with an almost unanimous decision that something needs to be done to rein it in.

‘Just think what a difference it would make to renters in this area if even just 1000 rental properties suddenly came on to the market,’ Jess said. At present there are more than 11,000 short-term holiday listings in the city and that’s just Airbnb.

Jess said she didn’t have a problem with people letting their homes when they go away and spend six months in Europe. But it’s the people who own or sublet a dozen or more properties who are gutting the residential rental market for their own personal profit.

‘That isn’t sharing,’ she said. ‘It’s business.’

And therein lies the solution to how the government could turn thousands of homes back into residential accommodation without losing the votes of people who love Airbnb. Just pass a law that says yes, you can rent your home to tourists when you’re not in it, maybe even your investment property too.

But it can be no more than one or two owned or operated by the same person or business entity. That way we can all finance our holidays to Tuscany but the current triumph of greed over need would be brought to an abrupt end.

The problem with this brilliant idea is that it’s being proposed by the wrong people – the NSW state government can’t let the City of Sydney have any wins, ever. Well, not for as long as Clover Moore is in the Town Hall, anyway. Maybe we should have a Politics in the Pub about that too.

Actually, on that subject, this was the first time I had attended a Politics in the Pub, let alone MC’d one, and there was something pretty obvious that I hadn’t taken into consideration – it was a pub, a lot of the people were drinking and some were getting drunk.

I could feel things gradually getting livelier as the evening wore on but I had to smile when heard one patron tell another, authoritatively, that they could report a problem to the Strata Commissioner … David Chandler.

No disresepect to the current incumbent, but my unspoken response to the idea of the former Building Commissioner taking the reins at Fair Trading was, “if only”.

This comment is based on last week’s editorial in the Flat Chat newsletter.