Why should government make it harder to go on vacation?
Single family housing should not be seen as an investment vehicle apart from the equity one builds in their own home.
There are zoning laws in place for a reason and when you bypass those laws to turn residential areas into businesses, it does not end in a positive experience for either side.
People should do what they want in their own home
Equally there's some place for buy-to-rent investing to exist. There is, and will always be, a segment of the population who cannot, or doesn't want to, buy and this segment rely on rental for housing. If there was no invest-to-rent then that segment would be homeless.
The problem happens when there's an imbalance. When there's too much Airbnb (like Barcelona), locals get squeezed out of their own city. Some supply is good, too much is bad.
The solution to this is regulation. By regulating supply (prioritize in-home, limited permits for others etc) one can balance the three markets such that ultimately everyone wins.
I work remotely in tech, but I want to continue living here year-round, contributing to the community.
Short term rentals are simply too lucrative compared to owning and long term renting. Much of this is the government's fault -- the tax system has a lot of loopholes, like mortgage interest deductions, depreciation, business cost deductions, and untaxed fees that make short term renting even mire lucrative. I hope the government steps in soon to remedy this, but considering their response to the housing crises in the past I am not hopeful.
Housing and rentals are different because unlike most goods, there really isn't a good alternative to not purchasing the good, and because the supply side of the market is necessarily slow, and constrained by geography.
In other words housing in your local area is an entirely different good than housing 100 miles away, and we should recognize that ensuring the opportunity for shelter to all people is a moral necessity higher than ensuring that pleasure travelers can stay in any given place.
We place a mountain of restrictions on real estate in most of the western world. Requiring that housing be used as housing is a pretty reasonable take.
If you think that people should be able to use their property for anything they want, fine, but don't get upset when someone wants to open a 24 hour go kart track nextdoor.