I agree that there's a huge grey area in terms of defining what crosses the line. I should be able to let my buddy stay at my place if I'm not here. I also don't have a problem if places that legitimately would have just been empty are rented to tourists (ie I'm traveling for 3 weeks and otherwise would just leave my place empty).

The thing that's not OK is when someone realizes they can rent out their place as a permanent hotel to tourists and get more income than renting it out to residents. So I think a first step is to stop the ability to convert a rental unit serving residents into a hotel for tourists. Then the more nuanced stuff beyond that will take a lot more debate.

So isn't David Chiu's proposal, which requires the resident to live there at least 75% of the time, enough?

Perhaps the solution is that the host must have the property as their primary residence. This implies they spend over half of the year at that property.

That's nice and simple. It also covers my case: after my mom died, I went and spent a summer back home. It was great to be able to rent my place out here to cover the cost of renting a place there.

And I think there's a good incentive there. I was very choosy about who I let stay, because I was letting them into my own home. I didn't want anybody stealing my books or breaking my things. For a unit set up as a virtual hotel room, I expect people would be less careful about guests.

This regulation is meant to stop people from buying cheap apartments and turning them into makeshift hotels.