1. "HOAs exist for a reason." They exist under the pretense that they maintain or increase property values. There is no evidence that this is the case. I have spent well over 100 hours researching this, and was unable to find conclusive data to prove this (and used said data to help communities dissolve their HOAs).
2. Short term rental restrictions fall under city/local (and sometimes state) government ordinances, which are enacted to allow for reasonable housing costs for local citizens.
I'd highly recommend Portland's local government get in touch with the NY Attorney General's office to get their recommendations on how to persuade AirBNB to maintain compliance with their local laws.
And New York has experience in exactly how to do this, hence my recommendation! Don't walk the trail of broken glass someone else already has.
People are upset that other people are better off than they are, and using the extra financial leverage to treat an apartment as a temporary vacation home. Jealousy, plain and simple.
Not even slightly. People are upset because homes surrounding theirs are being rented out to short term tenants that do not care about the long or even medium term future of the home and it's surroundings.
If you lived in an apartment building filled with tourists drunkenly stumbling around the stairwells, breaking fixtures and otherwise ruining the shared facilities, you might appreciate the concept.
I am in their position. And I am anything but sympathetic for that very reason.
Of course I'm not ok with people destroying things. But I don't think that having a law making subleasing illegal prevents that. You're acting as if the ability to do what I want with my property makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen.
No, I'm acting as if the ability for an unlimited and unknown number of complete strangers to enter my apartment building makes it a foregone conclusion that evil things will happen, which is pretty much true. Even if the vast majority of AirBnB customers behave, the odds are that there will always be an outlier that will ruin it.
None of this is perfect of course. And rules can get pretty silly especially when you start talking about homeowners associations and historical districts and the like. But in the aggregate, these laws serve a useful purpose.
I'm not sure I'd want to live next to an apartment that constantly has new guests, any of which could do who knows what to the building.