Yesterday, the day after Christmas, my family of five piled into two cars with our two dogs and headed to the North Carolina mountains for a quick weekend getaway. We'd booked a cabin through Airbnb—three bedrooms, four beds, two baths, pet-friendly. Just us at the top of a mountain just like we like it.

It’s exactly the kind of trip a hotel can't accommodate. Five people, two dogs, a kitchen to cook breakfast in our pajamas, and enough space for everybody. We've done this trip before, and we'll do it again.

The Western NC mountains is a place my family deeply loves, but as I sit here this morning drinking my iced coffee flanked by dogs in the mountain stillness, I found myself wondering: what has Airbnb actually done to this place?

The truth is a lot like the mountains themselves – up and down, sometimes foggy and depressingly gray, with patches of beautiful wildflowers poking through the otherwise rusted out tractors and detritus. The rise of short-term rentals has brought undeniable economic benefits to these mountain communities—but it's also created real problems that locals are grappling with every day.

The Economic Boom Nobody Saw Coming

Let's start with the good news, because there's plenty of it.

The numbers tell a remarkable story of growth. In 2022, over 13,000 hosts in rural North Carolina counties collectively earned more than $370 million—a staggering 350% increase compared to pre-pandemic 2019. The typical rural host pocketed around $14,000 annually, with many earning significantly more.

For some communities, short-term rentals haven't just supplemented the local economy—they've created one where none existed before.

Take Yancey County, a rural area with zero hotels listed on major booking sites. Thanks to Airbnb hosts, the county welcomed 9,300 guest arrivals in a single year, generating nearly $1 million in host income. Before the sharing economy, those visitors—and their dollars—would have simply gone elsewhere.

This resonated with me. My family's trip wouldn't have happened without Airbnb. As one Asheville vacation rental operator put it, “There are some groups, say 12 to 16 people coming here for a wedding or a mountain biking trip. Those folks aren't looking for eight hotel rooms side by side. There's a huge category of people that will just go to Nashville if they can't find an Airbnb here.”

That's us. A family of five with two dogs isn't booking a Holiday Inn.

The ripple effects extend far beyond the rental properties themselves. In Buncombe County alone, visitors brought $3 billion in spending in 2023, supporting roughly 29,000 tourism jobs with wages topping $1 billion—about 20% of the county's GDP. And here's the key detail: only about one-third of that spending goes to lodging. The rest flows to restaurants, breweries, local shops, tour operators, and attractions.

“Every dollar you take away from lodging takes two from the rest of the local economy,” notes one local short-term rental professional. “That's jobs, wages, housing, everything.”

A Lifeline for Everyday Homeowners

For many residents, the ability to rent out a room or a basement apartment has been transformative on a deeply personal level.

Consider Candice Boehm, a Buncombe County resident who worked as a nurse until a car accident injury forced her to quit. “To be able to stay in my current home, I started renting out rooms in my house,” she told a county planning board meeting. “I currently have 303 reviews. I am a Superhost. Most of my renters are people coming from all over the country.”

Stories like hers are common throughout the mountains. Retirees supplementing fixed incomes. Young families offsetting mortgage payments. Artists and craftspeople finding financial stability in a region where wages have historically lagged behind the cost of living.

The tax revenue has grown substantially. In 2022, Airbnb collected and remitted over $111 million in tourism taxes on behalf of North Carolina hosts—up from $24 million just four years earlier. Buncombe County alone collected $37.5 million in occupancy tax revenue during the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the third-highest total in the state. In Jackson County, vacation rentals now account for nearly 30% of all occupancy tax revenue, with Airbnb-specific collections growing over 3,000% between 2015 and 2020.

The Other Side of the Valley

Now for the not so good news.

Housing costs are through the roof, wages are paltry, and as The Asheville Blade wrote in 2022, the gap is so bad that a Stanford study rated Asheville as the least affordable city in the country. While short-term rentals aren't the only cause, critics argue they've poured gasoline on an already smoldering housing crisis.

The math is straightforward: when a property owner can earn three times as much from nightly tourist rentals as from a year-long lease to a local worker, the economic incentive is clear. As Asheville's city attorney acknowledged, “If you can make three times as much money renting your property for a short-term rental versus renting it to a resident, you're probably going to do the former.”

By 2022, Buncombe County had more than 5,200 short-term rentals—about 4.5% of the county's total housing stock. Meanwhile, long-term rents in the county have soared 65% as the vacation rental industry more than tripled over six years.

The human toll is visible at community meetings, where residents share increasingly desperate testimonies.

“My lease started in November and ends in March,” one man told the Buncombe County Planning Board. “The reason it ends in March is because it will become a short-term rental. I'm losing my housing because of a short-term rental. I'm your data, people.”

A 77-year resident voiced similar concerns, “When the market tightens, prices go up. Now houses that were affordable are no longer affordable. And when prices go up, property values go up, and that raises property taxes. Now the affordable homes people are already living in are not so affordable anymore.”

The Neighborhood Factor

Beyond housing costs, longtime residents describe a more subtle but equally profound change: the erosion of community itself.

In some Asheville neighborhoods, streets that once housed young families and longtime residents have transformed into what neighbors describe as fraternity house-like party scenes on weekends. Properties marketed as Bachelorette Oasis and Bachelor Sanctuary accommodate groups of 16 or more, bringing noise complaints and a transient feel to once-stable communities.

“We are against the increase because of the displacement of families and the loss of affordable housing that it causes,” testified one 20-year Buncombe County resident. “I have seen directly how this impacts our community.”

Woodfin's vice mayor put it bluntly, “Having some short-term rentals in Woodfin is fine, but to have more than 10% of all residences being weekend rentals for tourists is absurd for a small town populated by families and individuals who want a real community.”

The Broader Debate

Not everyone agrees that short-term rentals deserve the blame for the region's housing woes.

Nationally, at least, short-term housing rentals are not a leading driver of high housing costs or the undersupply of housing, argues Owen Minott, a senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “We can't lose sight of the source of the problem, which is really that we are just simply not building enough homes.”

Some local advocates echo this view, pointing to decades of restrictive zoning, wealthy transplants bidding up property values, and corporate investors as equally significant culprits. And they note that homestays—where owners rent out rooms while living on-site—keep properties in the housing stock while allowing residents to benefit from tourism.

“We know living here is hard and expensive for many, and homestays can be a way to get bills paid for some homeowners,” notes one housing reform activist.

Finding Balance

Local governments throughout the mountains are attempting to thread the needle between economic opportunity and community preservation.

Asheville implemented some of the region's strictest regulations in 2018, effectively banning new whole-house vacation rentals in most residential areas while still permitting homestays where owners live on-site. Violators face $500 daily fines.

Boone requires all short-term rental properties to obtain permits. Buncombe County has been considering restrictions that would limit new vacation rentals to certain districts and housing types.

But regulation remains contentious. Property rights advocates argue homeowners should be free to use their property as they see fit. Tourism industry supporters warn that overly restrictive rules could devastate a sector that employs tens of thousands. And state legislators have periodically floated bills that would strip local governments of their ability to regulate short-term rentals at all.

A Region at a Crossroads

And then there's Helene.

I'd be lying if I said Hurricane Helene wasn't on my mind during our trip. The September 2024 storm devastated Western North Carolina, dealing a catastrophic blow to the tourism economy just as the crucial fall foliage season was beginning. Driving through, you could still see the scars—debris along riverbanks, repair crews working, We're Open signs in windows that felt both hopeful and heartbreaking.

The Asheville area lost thousands of jobs—nearly 5% of the workforce—as lodging revenues plummeted 26% year-over-year and vacation rental revenue specifically dropped 32%.

The crisis threw the region's economic dependencies into sharp relief. Tourism officials project the recovery could take two to five years, with $2.1 billion in typical fourth-quarter visitor spending evaporating in 2024.

“We've heard people say they don't want to go and disturb the area, and there's some sympathy there,” acknowledged Wit Tuttell, Director of Visit NC. “But what the area really needs, what those businesses really need, are those visits. What we don't want is an economic disaster on the back of a natural disaster.”

Looking Forward

So where does that leave me—and anyone else who loves these mountains?

I don't have easy answers. I know that our family's Airbnb trips put money into the local economy. We eat at local spots in town. We grab coffee and ice cream on Main Street. We do escape rooms and ziplines and take home souvenirs every trip. That all matters.

But I also know that somewhere, there might be a family who grew up in these mountains who can't afford to live there anymore. There might be a nurse or a teacher or a restaurant worker commuting an hour because housing near work has been gobbled up by vacation rentals.

The debate over short-term rentals isn't going away. If anything, it's intensifying as towns grapple with competing visions for their future. On one side: the undeniable economic engine that tourism has become, the supplemental income that helps thousands of residents stay in their homes, and the tax revenue that funds local services. On the other: the displacement of longtime residents, the transformation of neighborhoods into tourist zones, and the growing sense that the mountains are becoming a playground for visitors rather than a home for communities.

Perhaps the most honest assessment came from Asheville's city attorney: the challenge equates to a balancing act between allowing locals to take part in the tourism economy while also maintaining sufficient housing stock and affordability levels as well as the character of our neighborhoods.

It's a balance that, so far, no one has quite figured out how to strike. But as these mountain communities rebuild from Helene and chart their economic futures, finding that equilibrium has never been more urgent.

As for my family, we'll be back. We love it there too much to stay away. But I'll be thinking a little differently about what our presence means—both the good and the bad—the next time I'm watching the sunset from a rented deck.