District of North Vancouver council will vote soon on a plan to legalize and regulate short-term rentals like Airbnb. Under the proposed rules, hosts may seek a licence for their own principal residence or one for a secondary suite like a coach house or basement apartment.
No doubt, this will leave some renters on the secondary market tossing and turning, knowing their landlords could be fetching much higher prices per night from vacationers with no oversight by the Residential Tenancy Act.
The City of North Vancouver and District of West Vancouver have opted for even more permissive rules, allowing two STR licences per property – one within a property owner’s principal residence and one for a secondary suite.
So long as we are in an affordable housing crisis, we would prefer that STRs be limited to an owner’s principal residence, rather than a suite that could be used for local housing. The name Airbnb, after all, denotes the company's original intent of offering an air mattress on the floor for folks needing a place to stay.
In the DNV alone, there are more than 900 illegal STR listings online, 88 per cent of them for entire homes. Clearly, there is too much money to be made by amateur hoteliers who eat into the housing supply while facing no regulation or enforcement. Something had to be done.
If our municipalities and the province are diligent about going after scofflaw hosts, this could turn into a good news story for renters who face desperate decisions in an impossible market.
Until we allow for and construct enough purpose-built rentals to meet the needs of our workforce, every secondary suite counts.
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