Short term rentals are a business, by definition.

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.

Your definition is wrong.

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.