As always with government it’s all about the revenue. People doing that aren’t paying the hotel room tax, and since it’s so wide open they never will. Of course the way around this law is you go ahead and “rent” for the month anyway, but with the knowledge the person will only be there for 2 nights. Handshake deals are hard to bust.
For some reason, the idiot politicians do not realize there will be a good chunk of tourists who will now no longer vacation NYC so the state and city will lose out on all the sales tax revenue that would of been spent.