Love them or hate them, vacation rentals are plentiful in Squamish.
As many as 300 Squamish units are rented out to tourists and other visitors, according to District of Squamish estimates.
Squamish’s Carol Grolman recently converted the bed-and-breakfast she ran for a decade, Meadowbrook, to full vacation rentals and has begun to advertise on Airbnb.
“I read about a month ago that Airbnb has become the largest vacation rental company, and does not own one property,” Grolman said.
“I find that very interesting. Also, it’s not just a site for young people anymore. People of all ages use it.”
Squamish council is currently mulling what to do about the increasing number of short-term rentals, which may remove units from the much-needed longer-term rental pool.
Grolman said while she understands there is a housing crunch in the district, the suites she rents out on Airbnb wouldn’t be rented to long-term tenants anyway.
“I can see the issues here for people needing places to live, but I made a decision long ago to not take in long-term rentals because if you get a tenant that doesn’t fit, it is virtually impossible to ask them to leave,” she said.
Addressing the short-term rental issue is one of the 10 recommendations in the district’s Housing Task Force final report. The report recommends the district “develop policy and resource adequate enforcement of the growing proliferation of short-term/vacation rentals to reduce the amount of rental units that are lost...”
Coun. Doug Race said Squamish’s zoning bylaw already regulates vacation rentals in that the zoning says short-term rentals are not permitted.
“So really it is just a question of do we want to start enforcing it or somehow try to… regulate it anyway,” he said, during a discussion of vacation rentals at a community development standing committee on Nov. 1.
The impact of vacation rentals on neighbourhoods is often brushed over, Race said.
“For some neighbourhoods this is a significant impact on condo developments. It’s a significant impact on single-family neighbourhoods where now you have parking problems on the streets and people coming and going. It is not what people bought their houses for,” he said, adding it bothers him that the district isn’t enforcing its bylaws.
“When people make these investments they rely on the zoning.”
Mayor Patricia Heintzman pondered the value of fighting something that is already set up.
“More and more and more things are going to have a shared economy and are going to be drivers… Is there a point in actually trying to shut down the industry or is it better to try and manage it and get appropriate business licences and taxes off of them? Perhaps that goes into an affordable housing fund and maybe there are other strategies,” she said.
A recent study by a University of Victoria professor, paid for by Airbnb, found that 270,000 guests spent $180 million between Sept. 1, 2015 and Aug. 31, 2016.
The study also found the average host makes about $6,500 a year renting out their units with Airbnb. Of a survey of 261 guests for the study, only three per cent said they would not have come to Vancouver without a vacation rental to stay at. A further four per cent said they would have stayed with family or friends without Airbnb.
And 30 per cent of respondents said they would not have stayed as long as they did without Airbnb.
UVic professor Brock Smith, author of the study, said the vacation rental issue isn’t about Airbnb. Instead, it is a result of the Internet. “If Airbnb did not exist, buyers and sellers would find other means to find each other. Airbnb just makes it more convenient,” Brock told The Squamish Chief.
But he agrees requiring hosts to have a licence makes sense.
“I would make that licence a certain fee per day rather than per year. That way someone who wants to rent their house out for two weeks while they are on vacation can do so without having to choose between being ‘legal’ or paying an annual license for a one time activity,” he said.
Tourism Squamish would like to see regulation and taxation on short-term rentals “to not only compel property owners to legally offer rooms for rent, but to level the playing field for traditional accommodation providers who pay significant provincial and business taxes,” said Lesley Weeks, executive director of Tourism Squamish, adding the provincial government can play a role in solving the problem province wide.
“The Province can play a role by eliminating the exemption on PST and the Municipal & Regional District Tax that owners of properties with less than four rooms receive under current regulation. Tourism Squamish is actively working with the Tourism Industry Association of BC, which is addressing this issue with the Province and advocating on behalf of the tourism industry in B.C.”
Squamish is, of course, not the first tourist-favoured community to deal with this issue.
This past summer, across the U.S. and Canada there were more than 2,700 cities that had 50 active vacation rental listings or more, according to a City of Vancouver commissioned report.
Boulder Colorado is an example of a city that was concerned about its rental housing pool being negatively impacted by a plethora of vacation rentals.
Therefore, as of this year, Boulder has put into place regulations for short-term – meaning 30 days or less – rentals.
Boulder homeowners can apply for a licence to rent their property, but to qualify the property must be the owner’s main residence and follow safety protocols, such as having smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and a local contact must be provided who lives within an hour of the property. An application fee of about $145 is charged every four years.
Vancouver and Toronto city councils are currently considering similar rules.
Heintzman said district staff will be engaging with local stakeholders to see if there’s a way to bring the existing vacation rentals out of the closet.
