Instead of having a law against short term renting it should just be one against renting for more than a total number of days in a year, say 90. That allows people who are out of town to rent but it not be a permanent hotel.
For what they are trying to accomplish (whether you agree with it or not), the law they enacted will probably work decently well.
If you don't own the place, and the owner is okay with you subletting, again what's the problem?
This is one of the few things I don't ever get. Regulation on things that are not an issue in the first place.
Anyhow, zoning exists for a reason. Hotels are a business. You can't run any business out of your home. If you do allow any home to become a hotel, you're opening a huge can of worms...
Yeah, to keep out black people, poor people and other undesirables who cannot afford single family detached homes:
http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/02/zonings-racist-roots-s...
Also, to ensure that you must have a car to do anything at all. God forbid anyone build something like a corner store within walking distance.
Other reasons here: http://www.nimbyngo.com/
It also means, I am restricted in what I do with my own property in such, that I cannot build a factory inside my home/on my ground for the same reasons.
Imho this is quite a reasonable policy.
Some other zoning laws in German communities might restrict me from planting some trees while forcing me to plant a hedge from a small list of pre defined plant varieties - just to make sure the neighborhood looks homogenous.
These laws do not make the slightest sense imho. Esp. as the allowed plant varieties oftentimes are not local but some stuff that is easy in handling and not that great for nature (no possibilities for birds to nest and such stuff).
In Italy, where I lived, there were certainly residential areas, but they were very close to businesses - from our house we could walk 5/10 minutes and be at a coffee shop, supermarket, our kids schools, a tram stop, a bakery, and a few other things.
In the US, you have massive residential-only neighborhoods like this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@44.1036878,-121.3081349,1586a,2...
It's a car or nothing.
Philosophically, you can say they just designed it wrong, but I think you can also make an argument that sometimes it's best to evolve complex things, via markets, rather than attempt a big up front design and then rigidly enforce that.
Hell, even in suburbia where I (begrudgingly) live right now, there's a grocery store, convenience store, 5 restaurants and 2 bars within a 10 minute walk (and at least 3 liquor stores).
This happens on many scales. We don't want poor strangers living in our bedroom, on our lawn, in our suburb or in our country. So we have trespass laws, zoning and immigration restrictions to protect us from them.
Maybe in US it was done to keep black people out. But I seriously doubt it, not everything has to have a racial undertone to it.
What would happen to all those people if they were forced to close their home businesses and rent an office somewhere else? What would happen to traffic?
This problem would be unlikely to occur from the owner of the house taking these actions, given the liability and inability to flee as easily.
zoning laws
Of course what you do inside your house is your own thing, but when it comes to extra traffic/noise/trash, having the house be a bunch of short term people makes it much harder for social pressure to work.
That's the core point. There's no meaning to property ownership without a society that agrees on such idea and enforces it. It's not, and it never was, "I can do whatever because it's mine".
I don't know where this idea of absolute ownership right comes from. You don't have and never had that right, unless you can enforce it with deadly force on everyone who disagrees. There's no heavenly light that proclaims a person can have absolute ownership over stuff and others need to respect that.
Rights only exist in so much as they are recognized and enforced. Society is in a big part a mutual agreement to recognize a set of rights and laws, and a guarantee that others will enforce them if any member of society decides to forget about the rules. It outsources a lot of things you'd otherwise have to kill (or rather, get killed) over.
If you (partially) own the (community), why does your neighbor have to have (more of) a say in how the community is managed?
It's your (community), you paid to live there, it's yours. If they don't like what you are doing, then they should move.
See, we expand this beyond the individual to a neighborhood wherein rules and boundaries can be set because this collective group that exists beyond the individual can be affected.
People should be held responsible for their actions, right? And you don't trust the individual doing the action's opinion on who they think is actually being affected, right?
This follows the same logic as having boisterous parties with loud music all night or shooting a pornographic movie on my front porch. Although, to be fair, in support of your argument, this was also the same logic which used to forbid black people from moving next door.
That is why your neighbour has a say: Because what you do on your property affects those around you.
Yes, I chose an extreme example, on purpose to illustrate the point: there is some level above which almost all of us will agree that what you do on your property is a public concern.
It is then down to a matter of degrees: At which point does what your neighbour do cause sufficient nuisance to give you a say in whether or not they should be allowed to continue doing it.
The notion that those who don't like what you do on your property should move is just incredibly selfish - it implies that you put your rights above theirs, because without regulation what you do on your property can very well make it economically infeasible for your neighbours to choose to move even if they wanted to.
This is the crux of the question. I think it's very arguable that we've swung too far away from letting people do what they want with their property in the US, though.
Why should I have to move if you decide to no longer use your bathroom, and instead build a make-shift outhouse on your property line by my home's entrance?
Or you decide to rent to 4 families in a 1 bedroom/1 bathroom apartment?
Also, watch what happens to "your" property when you stop paying property taxes for a number of years.
There is also the concept of the "commons", which we share.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons
If you were advocating for separate planets, then yes, I would agree.
The "frequent business traveler" type is probably more likely to let out their space when gone than the "going on vacation for one week" type too.
When I got married my (large, greek) family visited for 2 weeks. I lived in an apartment at the time, and it was wonderful that could all rent a large house to stay in. Even today that would be useful for when groups visit over the holidays & what not, but it's imply not an option.
One concern residents have is they don't want to suddenly find there's a "party house" in the neighborhood. In their defense, this was happening. (Google [House of Rock LLC] if you're curious.) However banning AirBnB isn't the right way to address that, nor does it really solve that problem.
Unfortunately, I don't ever see the law changing. There's two unlikely segments coming together to support the law:
1) The hotels. An "normal" hotel here charges ~$400/night. High end easily goes for over $600/night. And don't even ask about rates in peak season.
2) The anti-development crowd. There's a very vocal segment that wants no new development & low, affordable rents. (If you're thinking "uh, supply & demand", that gets dismissed in discussions as a Republican trick.) They also tend to not like people new to the city. They saw AirBnB taking the limited rental stock off the market (which was happening). OP's proposal would address that, but at this point, you're not going to change this group's mindset.