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):
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.
