I'm saying that these externalities seem like they can be dealt with directly, by rules requiring doors to be closed, rules about the treatment of common areas, noise limits, etc. without any reference to the duration of residents' stays.

Those rules already exist. In a medium-sized apartment building with common areas, leases assuredly spell these things out. The problem is that rules in leases aren't effectively binding on short-term tenants, because it takes longer to enforce the rules than those short-term tenants will be staying anyways.

Also, you can reasonably assume that boilerplate leases for apartment buildings forbid directly these kinds of short-term rentals. Most boilerplate leases require individual approval by the landlord for any sublessors.

> The problem is that rules in leases aren't effectively binding on short-term tenants, because it takes longer to enforce the rules than those short-term tenants will be staying anyways.

Why aren't they binding on the property owner, thus disincentivizing owners from renting out the property?

The process we use to accomplish that is called "zoning law".

You're just dropping back to the top of the conversation, before I brought up the issue of regulating specific symptoms rather than one potential cause (short-term rental).

There is no realistic way of policing short term tenants. Sure, you can leave them a bad air bnb review. But then they will leave you a bad air bnb review for retalation, so you don't want to do that.

How do you punish someone who breaks the rules for a one night stay?

People with long term leases can be threatened with eviction for breaking the rules, which usually carries with it pretty big expenditures of time and money for moving, finding another apartment, etc. People who show up with all of their possessions in a suit case and stay for 1-2 nights don't have much to worry about.

> How do you punish someone who breaks the rules for a one night stay?

If you are talking about AirBnB tenants breaking rules set by the AirBnB host -- which is implicit in the rejected option of bad AirBnB reviews -- you file legal action for breach of contract.

If you are talking about other neighbors or the property owner who didn't consent to the AirBnB host, then, either they file nuisance complaints against the host and/or property owner or, if they are the property owner and the host is their tenant, they evict the host for violating their lease.

I'm not suggesting you personally punish short term tenants. You would punish the property owner.

Who punishes the property owner? Where do the fines go? Do I get some of it, since I had to deal with people puking 2 liters of half digested wine and hot dogs onto my door?

I don't understand. I'm not arguing for some new group that implements and enforces these rules. I'm just suggesting that rules based on specific community problems (like noise) make more sense than on the much broader potential problem of short-term occupants.

The fines can go the same place they currently go. I don't know where that is, or if neighbors receive any of it, but that is a separate issue that also applies to long-term occupants puking on your door.

Long-term issues are nominally solved by mainly eviction and/or lawsuit. But they are in practice solved by neighbors working out polite understandings because they don't want to deal with angry neighbors and/or eviction/lawsuit.

Short term occupants don't have the same incentive to be neighborly because they'll be gone soon. And the threat of eviction is basically useless against somebody who's planning to leave anyhow.

The related theoretical construct is Prisoner's Dilemma as compared with Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Or in IPD-land, it's where ω is low (short-term rentals) versus high (long-term rentals):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation#Fo...

Short term tenants need not be treated any differently than the property owner, the property owner's family, or the property owner's friends. If the property owner causes problems him- or herself, or gives anyone permission to use the property who then causes problems, then that should be cause for eviction, lawsuits, fines, or whatever penalties are already in place.

The incentives of short term tenants are irrelevant, because all penalties would be applied to the property owner. The working out of polite understanding still works fine. If short term rentals are causing problem, neighbors should urge the property owner to either stop doing it, or figure out a way to get better tenants.

Speaking from experience, the working out of a polite understanding does not work fine. All humans have practice at being human around other humans, and given a multi-year situation, they will have time and incentive to sort it out.

But not all humans have practice giving detailed instructions to temporary renters on how exactly to behave so as to be indistinguishable from the actual resident. The property owner's absence breaks the key feedback loop driving the polite understanding. And further, as I already explained, the temporary residents have much less incentive to follow whatever micromanagement has been ordered. I understand that you think it's the same in theory, but people are living not in your head but in actual apartments.

Of course, we are treating short-term rentals just like we are treating other home-based businesses: we are regulating them. Zoning laws are the general-case solution to this, and some cities are applying them here.

And if the person renting out the illegal air bnb unit is the property owner who usually attempts to enforce the local rules?

And why should the government get involved? Find an apartment complex where the owner agrees to not do short-term leases, and expect to pay a slightly higher rent for the stipulation.

> It's not complicated.

Everything is complicated when the government gets involved and starts inventing regulations.

"Zoning" is not a new regulation that cities just invented.

The government is our proxy for things like this. That's why we have one.