Earlier quoted context omitted.
does NYC benefit from tourists on a budget Any tourists will bring tax revenues into the city by eating at restaurants, visiting museums and events and generally purchasing goods and services. "not on a budget" can have more space, visit more often, and consequently spend more money. If any place in the world operated purely under this assumption, then you would never have urban centers like New York to begin with. C…
Museums and other public services are subsidized with taxes on on hotels. It could easily be a net loss for the city for people to use short term housing vs fewer people using hotels.
Clearly this practice and "couchsurfing" would have to be banned as well if it was purely to recoup these taxes.
If short term visitors outside of the scope of taxation (i.e. me) were putting a strain on the system because of insufficient collection of hotel taxes, then the city has a number of possible outlets. In Europe, for example, many EU citizens of certain age classes pay far less than non-EU tourists for museums - the same could be done with NY residents vs. non-resident.
This is really to say that if there was an issue, visitors should pay for their costs directly rather than obtusely. If in the process of using a short term rental they consume well above and beyond what the property owner would normally consumer on their own (power, water, gas, services), then the property owner should see a rise in costs and pass these costs back onto renters.