‘Fairbnb’ addresses Vancouver’s proposed short-term rental bylaw
Posted September 11, 2017 11:18 pm.
Last Updated September 12, 2017 7:19 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A coalition made up of renters, property owners and even people from the hotel industry is hoping its new report will push Vancouver to adopt new enforcement regulations when it comes to short-term rentals.
Members of Fairbnb say they support recent recommendations made by city staff around platforms like Airbnb, but believe more needs to be done.
“We believe the platforms themselves, like Airbnb, also need to be held accountable for what they publish,” explains Octavian Cadabeschi with UNITE HERE! Local 40, a member of the coalition.
“Basically, we just don’t think that regulation that doesn’t include that… is going to be effective in terms of achieving the ends that the city is looking to achieve,” he says. “[That’s] increasing access to housing for people who are most vulnerable.”
Cadabeschi points to studies, like one released in August by McGill University, which indicate links between these services and a lack of housing options for renters.
“This report specifically deals with platform accountability,” he says. “But there have been many reports that have come out that link short-term rentals with a decrease in housing availability.”
Related Article: McGill study finds small group of owners account for majority of Airbnb revenues
According to the UNITE HERE! Local 40 researcher, there has been a lot of progress in cities like Toronto, where the Fairbnb has also been quite active.
“Toronto’s position, weakness is around the issue of secondary suites, which Vancouver’s city staff have done a really great job of trying to protect,” he explains. “But otherwise, Toronto’s proposed regulations are actually quite good, and they do include platform accountability.”
He references another model Vancouver could look to as an example: the home of Airbnb, San Francisco.
“Basically the concern is that even the best set of regulations need to have some kind of teeth, some kind of enforcement mechanism to be effective. The issue is that we just don’t believe the City of Vancouver, with the three staff people they’ve got, are going to be able to effectively catch and dissuade potential hosts from listing their properties, even if they haven’t been properly licensed and regulated.”
Cadabeschi says the coalition does support home sharing or if someone wants to rent out their entire home while on vacation, but is not supportive of those who do this purely for profit.
“The concern is when there are people that are turning this into a business and are taking entire units that they don’t actually live in and taking those off of the housing market and instead using those as basically ‘ghost hotels’… they take away housing from ordinary people.”
He adds they’re not typically regulated and are also not zoned.
The Fairbnb coalition of local groups will release their report –drafted with Canada’s national coalition– tomorrow in front of city hall.
