I'll be going in front of a venture capital roundtable tomorrow with my idea for Squatter.home, a web site where you can find unoccupied properties and occupy them for a VERY reasonable finder's fee.
Sounds like someone who's never called the police for something like this. More likely than not they'll tell you it's a civil matter and they can't do anything without a court order.
I think it was Britain that recently made headway on changing their housing laws to put a halt on Airbnb screwing up the economy on people who need homes. Canada are just catching up to it. in some places in Canada there are 7 empty houses to each homeless person. They are just changing the laws now. Even people who have jobs can’t afford a home. It’s so absolutely stupid airbnb went unchecked.
Same for Malaysia. Lot and lot of highrise are build for exactly this purpose. High cost, "luxury" looking design, and boasting a "mall" just below the highrise. The result is a tons of dead mall, empty apartments, empty house, and unaffordable housing.
The government then regulate it, where they allow these place to continue to run but only on "commercial building", which mean only on these highrise build for the purpose of short term renting. It still doesn't solve the fundamental issue but at least we have law to combat these.