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> It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out. We're not talking about someone running a business out of their home, where the zoning laws actually apply.

Short term rentals are a business, by definition.

Parent made it sound like the government has a moral right to zoning laws. I would argue that zoning laws are more often abused than used properly.

The government does have a moral right to zoning laws.

We, as citizens, have ascribed them that right. And it is what protects me from having my neighbours run a brothel or smelting plant in their house.

That's not a "right", that's a power struggle. What protects the brothel owner from being kicked out of town?

subletting is legal, by your definition it would be a business and should be illegal.

Your definition is wrong.

Subletting is not short term, and is rightly considered to be largely governed by the same laws as those that apply to rentals since the uses are so similar.

I honestly do not understand the willful ignorance in this thread. Short term rentals is commerce. Everyone knows it's commerce. When you say you think it isn't (or you don't understand how it could be) you sound like you're denying the earth goes around the sun. This isn't even a particularly nuanced area of permitted use laws (zoning) or the appropriate role of government. You are all basically advocating for elimination of all zoning and/or pretending it doesn't exist as a totally normal type of regulation in the US (and all over the world).

Selling off my collection of stamps from my home or allowing my child to sell lemonade is also commerce, yet I am allowed to do it.

This is where the original poster went off the rails. Just because there's an exchange of money does not mean these laws do, or should, apply.

And yes, authorities do shut down lemonade stands: https://www.google.com/search?q=authority+shut+down+lemonade...

I think it's silly, but there it is.

right, someone has done it somewhere. I knew that when I made the comment, it doesn't change the general applicability of the point.

They're legal because the government has not decided to make them illegal. If the government decides that your lemonade stand is a danger to public health, or that your stamp collection is a national patrimony and cannot leave the country, it will make new laws that enforce those decisions.

Or, they're illegal, but the law isn't enforced, so people feel they are legal.

Of course they shut down lemonade stands. Especially if you tried to run a daily lemonade stand out of your front yard, staffed by people who don't live there.

By that definition so are long-term rentals, or even home buying and selling. A Colorado court has ruled that there's no substantive difference between a renter who rents for one month or one week.

It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out.

That's not what relevant the laws say ("You can't rent your property, period!"). Just that you can't use a residential property as a de-facto hotel.

If you and your neighbors get together and decide the community cannot abide someone allowing another person to use their house for less than ... what 6 months?

30 days. The point is that short-term rentals have a very different character (in terms of impact on neighbors, and impact on property values) than long-term rentals.

This is just whiny bullcrap from someone who wants to be able to control their neighbors.

No, it's just life the big city. Though I agree that whether these issues should be of interest of the state (as opposed to municipalities) is very much open to question. Then again, the Empire State is known to be messed up (and to have lopsided control over) a great many things, in this regard.

It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out

Your right to do as you please with your property ends where my property, and interference with my enjoyment of it, begins.

Or do you also think that if you buy some property straddling a river, you can dump waste into it and say "my property, nobody can tell me what to do with it" while making everyone downriver pay for the cleanup of what you did? Because that's the ultimate moral grounding of laws restricting property -- you don't own an isolated island in the middle of nowhere, you own property that's adjacent to and can affect other pieces of property owned by other people who also have rights.

> Or do you also think that if you buy some property straddling a river, you can dump waste into it and say "my property, nobody can tell me what to do with it" while making everyone downriver pay for the cleanup of what you did?

You can't actually own the land around a river, but I get the point you're trying to make regardless.

The point is, if they're causing a ruckus, report them and have it shut down. If they're not, leave it alone. And having multiple different vehicles in the driveway isn't causing a ruckus.

This is basically FUD. What if they do something the neighbors don't like!?! Then deal with it at that time, stop being thought police.

> It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out.

I mean, a majority of our forebears thought it should. The original law was passed by a representative democracy. And so was this one. You're one of the (totally guessing) 48% of people that disagree. That's democracy. You have to live with getting out-voted.