Christopher Mozina, laid off from his job as managing director at a bank in Syracuse, wanted to try to raise some money to help pay the $27,000 annual tax bill on his DeWitt home that he bought a couple years ago.

He thought, why not rent his $650,000 home through an online home-sharing Website like Airbnb?

He believed people would pay to stay in his 6,078-square-foot-home, which is tucked away in a nice residential neighborhood not far from SU basketball coach Jim Boeheim's home. Mozina bought new bedroom sets, sheets and installed a hot tub to make the five-bed, 5.5 bath home even more attractive to renters.

He started to advertise the 6912 Shalimar Way home in May for $400 a night on online services such as Airbnb, a service that connects customers with people who have rooms, apartments or homes available for short-term rentals.

It worked. So far he's rented his home to 26 families and groups, on average for about four to five days, through the end of the year. He has another 12 groups booked for the next two years.

Not so fast, says the town of DeWitt. Mozina's been ordered to appear in court next week. The town says renting the home on a nightly basis is illegal because the neighborhood is zoned for single-family homes.

Communities across the nation are trying to figure out how online sharing services like Airbnb should be regulated. The question comes down to this: Can a person rent their apartment or home for a night or more?

In New York City, a New York State Attorney General study released last week found 72 percent of the private short-term rentals through Airbnb violate state and local laws.

The report, one of the first to take a comprehensive look at Airbnb activities in New York City, also found that commercial groups are using the service to operate multimillion-dollar lodging businesses.

The state and New York City officials announced that they have formed a joint enforcement initiative to investigate and shut down illegal hotels in New York City.

"We must ensure that, as online marketplaces revolutionize the way we live, laws designed to promote safety and quality-of-life are not forsaken under the pretext of innovation," Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said.

New online sharing businesses are clashing with existing laws and regulations in many communities:

Taxi drivers in Washington, D.C. have protested a proposal that would make ride-sharing services like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar legal this month. The protests closed roads and slowed traffic in the nation's capital.

The ride-sharing services are under attack in many other communities, including London, Paris, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Taxi drivers charge that ride-sharing drivers are unregulated and unsafe. Ride-sharing proponents say they provide safer, more convenient rides at cheaper prices.

A sharing service that lets people hire others for odd jobs, TaskRabbit, has stirred debate because it doesn't have to follow minimum wage laws. The people doing the work are considered independent contractors who don't have to be paid minimum wage.

Much of the conflict over the sharing services has centered on home sharing.

San Francisco -- the city where Airbnb started in 2008 -- is considering a new regulation, dubbed the Airbnb law, to toughen up regulation of short-term rentals of less than 30 days.

What's legal and what's illegal remains unclear and unanswered, but clearly more and more communities are trying to clarify the laws on home sharing.

"Some towns are regulating short-term rentals because of serious concerns around housing affordability, and others are more concerned with effects on neighborhood quality," said Yassi Eskandari-Qajar, a program director with Sustainable Economies Law Center in Oakland, California. It focuses on legal education and advocacy for grassroots communities, such as working toward housing sustainability.

"What's clear is that every town has a unique set of needs and priorities to uphold, and the differences in their approaches to short-term rental regulation is a reflection of those values," she said.

For Mozina, 53, the owner of the home in DeWitt, the question is really quite simple.

"Anybody in the town of Dewitt can rent their home," he said. "There's no disputing that. The real question is can you rent on a short-term basis."

Mozina said he consulted early on with the town's zoning director, Samuel Gordon, and enforcement officer, Andrew Wordon, about renting his home through Airbnb. He says he received the green light to rent out his property.

Gordon said he told Mozina it would be legal to rent his home, but he did not give him permission to rent the home for short-time periods, such as a day or a couple days.

Mozina said he spent $24,000 on sheets, furniture and other improvements to make the home more appealing.

He received great responses when he advertised his home. By July, Mozina rented his home to about 10 groups -- and people kept booking.

He's hosted a family in town for their son's college graduation; a group of siblings came in for a reunion when a brother passed away; one group reserved the house in October to prepare for a wedding.

He hasn't had a bad experience, Mozina said.

"These are just real people, real families," he said. "They've been incredibly respectful of the property."

Some neighbors don't agree that everything has gone so smoothly. Neighbors said they have filed complaints with the town and police about noise, smoke, lights and large groups of strangers coming through Mozina's property.

Doris King, a neighbor, said the rentals have been a disturbance to their residential neighborhood.

"There's an amazing amount of lighting over there," King said. "I can't sleep in my bedroom. I had so much cigarette smoke ... These neighbors are absolutely appalled."

On Aug. 24, 11 households signed and sent a petition to the town demanding that Mozina cease his rental operations.

On Sept. 10, Mozina received a notice of violation letter saying that he lives in a residential zone that only allows for single-family dwellings. Mozina's attorneys responded the next day saying that he welcomes an "amicable" discussion with the town.

The town on Oct. 17 sent him a ticket, ordering him to appear in court on Oct. 29.

Mozina hopes he can resolve the issues with the town so he can keep renting his home. He said he sees benefits to allowing short-term rentals and plans to honor the bookings going out to 2016.

For now, as the holidays near, Mozina plans to send out holiday cards to all his guests to invite them to come back and stay at his home again.