THE ISSUE:
Short-term rentals
WE SAY:
A long-term headache for council
The international short-term rental phenomenon known as Airbnb has come a long way since the company’s San Francisco founders decided in 2007 to plop an air mattress in their living room and turn their apartment into a bed and breakfast, in order to beat the high cost of rent in that tech-heavy city.
After the original airbedandbreakfast.com website was launched, it grew to an international business, offering everything from more intimate shared spaces such as couches in apartments, to private rooms, apartments, entire homes and even industrial-style properties.
While not for everyone — there have been horror stories of dishonest advertising leading to poor-quality lodgings — the Airbnb brokering service has rocked the hospitality sector and also forced communities across the globe to reckon with these new short-term rentals.
Many cities have seen vacancy rates for apartments squeezed as landlords opt for the higher payback of short-term Airbnb rentals — and the ease of using the airbnb.ca website, and other similar platforms — over medium and long-term apartment and house rentals to people who actually live in the communities.
This can also force up rent prices and result in a new class of de facto hotels, slipping into a tourist market on the cheap and causing a headache for existing bed-and-breakfast businesses and hotels, who have played by the rules and obeyed all local regulations.
Yellowknife city council has been grappling with this issue for two years, during which time it has seen tourism numbers soar, at times seeing no vacancies of any type being available.
Currently, short-term rentals in Yellowknife are not regulated, but a couple of dozen or so bed-and-breakfasts are, under the city’s business licence bylaw.
In the past two years, council has hemmed and hawed over how to regulate the entire short-term rental industry — perhaps by easing rules for existing BnBs — in a way that wouldn’t hinder it.
Should owners of short-term rentals be required to live in the space? In an economy with a high cost of living such as Yellowknife, property owners can supplement their income and allow for better use of their major investment — their home. And as Yellowknife finds itself turning to tourism to bolster what is predicted to be a sagging economy due to a drop in resource extraction, the availability of short-term rentals — such as AirBnB, VRBO and others — keeps Yellowknife current with other destinations and is something many travellers expect to see.
Visitor and resident safety has been discussed by council, as was the practicality of being able to enforce licence compliance on more than a hundred new businesses.
City council is currently still mulling over draft regulations for short-term rentals.
Clearly the free-for-all that's going on now can't endure but council must realize if it makes the licensing process too onerous, it will only hurt the city's bottom line, as it would just be one more nail in the coffin for people wondering if they can continue to afford living here. It could also hurt our growing tourism sector, with all the revenue that brings — especially once the long-awaited tourism levy is brought in.
Yellowknifer would like to see one requirement being that Airbnb owners live in the home. That would help protect the existing BnB owners, such as Faith Embleton, who went through all the hoops trying to establish a legitimate business.
And all advertising or promotions done by any short-term rentals must include the city’s licence number, to prove the playing field has been levelled.
But this Airbnb issue has dragged on for far too long. It’s time for council to put it to rest.