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City must ensure Vancouver has long-term rentals

When Pierre Elliot Trudeau famously declared back in 1967 that “the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation,” he was not referring to activities promoted by Airbnb.
laneway
Let's say you built a laneway house to accommodate visiting family or friends. The City of Vancouver proposed regulations say that you should not be allowed to rent it out short-term the rest of the time.

When Pierre Elliot Trudeau famously declared back in 1967 that “the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation,” he was not referring to activities promoted by Airbnb. The then-federal minister of justice was introducing legislation that would decriminalize homosexual acts.

As prime minister in 1982, Trudeau brought the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom into law. And while it guaranteed among other things the right to “life liberty and the security of person,” it did not guarantee the right to unfettered use of property. Much of that right has been ceded to local governments, including the right to zone, tax, regulate and license activities.

But you couldn’t have guessed it from the hysterical response by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) to the City of Vancouver’s proposal to bring Airbnb and its clients into line on the matter of short-term rentals. The object of that exercise, along with the proposed tax on empty homes, simply put, is to encourage desperately needed long-term rentals in a city where the vacancy rate is 0.6 per cent.

In an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, the CTF’s Jordan Bateman declares: “Vancouver City Hall continued its march into the bedrooms of the city Wednesday when it announced an onerous regulation and tax regime to snuff out Airbnb and other short-term room/house rental companies.”

Bateman adds that the city’s proposed actions will “significantly erode the freedom of its residents to use their personal property the way they see fit.”

Bateman is either being willfully ignorant or deliberately mischievous in his rant. As a staff report to council pointed out, virtually all short-term rentals listed by Airbnb, and more than a dozen other on-line platforms, are breaking existing zoning laws that currently require them to be licensed.

In other words, in recent history at least, residents have never been able to legally “use their personal property the way they see fit.”  Imagine the chaos that would ensue if we could.

Based on my reading of the staff proposal and sitting through the presentation to council last week, it was clear that Airbnb would hardly be snuffed out.

But on the question of the city’s priorities of providing accommodations for tourists and providing long-term accommodations for city residents, the city clearly favours people needing a secure long-term place to live. And, actually, so do the vast majority of Vancouverites surveyed staff who composed the report.

If the staff proposal is finally accepted in the new year after further consultation, folks who choose to rent out a room in their principal dwelling on a short-term basis (fewer than 30 days), as Airbnb suggests in its advertising campaign to help “everyday families struggling to make ends meet,” will still be able to do that if they are licensed. And, by the way, after surveying cities around the globe, staff prudently recommended no cap on the number of nights rooms can be rented out short-term. Caps, they concluded, are simply unenforceable.

What cannot be rented out on the short-term are basement suites, laneway houses or any other whole house that is not the owner’s principle residence.

If basement suites or laneway houses are rented out long term, and if those tenants chose to be away from a short while, they can rent out their dwellings for a short term if the landlord agrees and they have a license.

And that gets us to the incentive the city will put on owners of empty houses by taxing them to encourage them to rent out the space, again, on a long-term basis.

The notion of an empty home tax was first raised by COPE mayoral candidate Meena Wong in the run-up to the 2014 election.

Vision initially criticized the idea as unworkable, then finally came around. Minds do change. They asked, and the provincial government amended the Vancouver Charter to allow the city to impose that tax.

The city is now inviting the public to provide feedback on that issue.

And it is clear that while the state may have no place in the bedrooms of the nation, when it comes to the desperate need for long-term rentals in Vancouver, the city certainly does. It serves the public interest.

@allengarr