The newest enemy to be identified in The War On Real Estate is the proliferation of short-term rental (STR) suites in Metro Vancouver, the consensus being that their popularity has contributed to (a) the rental housing shortage, (b) rising real estate prices, and (c) more overwrought media stories about rental housing shortages and rising real estate prices. I know at least one of the above is right.
Since the City of Vancouver proper contains over 75 per cent of the almost 4,800 STRs in the Metro area, its city council has been under the most pressure to do something about them. This, it has promised to do. I have no idea what that something would be, or if even doing that something is feasible, given the enforcement difficulties presented by the exponential growth of STRs. It should tell you something that stories about such rental services, of which Airbnb is but one of several in Metro, often use the phrase “technically illegal” to describe them, as if illegality could be measured in degrees, as if STRs were guilty of the same level of venality of, say, urinating in public. Be discreet enough and the law will look the other way.
But if the majority of STRs in Vancouver are illegal, then why, one asks, doesn’t the city prosecute them? Because, the answer out of City Hall is that the prosecution of them presents the same problem as that of illegal suites (which, I am certain, outnumber STRs in Metro by many, many thousands). Despite what the public may think, the city does not have at the ready platoons of bylaw officers, who, at any rate, are otherwise preoccupied. They don’t go looking for STRs. So enforcement — as it is in the case of illegal suites — is complaint-initiated. Even when a complaint is received, investigations can take time. Evidence has to be assembled. “It becomes,” said Coun. Geoff Meggs, who is the city’s point man on the issue, “a very complex business.”
Read more @ http://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/pete-mcmartin-burned-by-the-sharing-economy
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