AMM panel debates pros, cons of short-term rentals

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This article was published 30/11/2023 (712 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The proliferation of short-term rentals has been a double-edged sword, the reeve of the Municipality of Harrison Park said during a panel discussion at the Association of Manitoba Municipalities fall convention on Wednesday morning.

The panel was comprised of Reeve Ian Drul, Manitoba Hotel Association president Michael Juce and Airbnb policy director Alex Howell. It focused on what has and has not worked for the regulation of short-term rentals in Manitoba municipalities.

According to Drul, the number of short-term rental properties in Onanole exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s a file he has been working on for the past several years.

“We’re still having a lot of challenges and staff that are just focused basically on short-term rentals,” Drul said. “We have a licensing portfolio right now — the sooner that we can get to more municipalities doing that, because a lot of them are talking about it, we can get into stiffer fines and working on bylaw enforcement more.”

Last year, Harrison Park — which includes Onanole at the south end of Riding Mountain National Park —passed a resolution requiring short-term rental operators to obtain a conditional-use permit before they receive a licence to operate.

Residents had complained to the municipality about the conduct of guests at short-term rentals in the community.

Dealing with those complaints was the biggest challenge associated with short-term rentals, Drul said, with residents complaining about noise, traffic, parking issues, partying and even visiting dogs barking.

Trying to deal with these rental properties individually, he said, was a bureaucratic challenge that stalled progress at the municipal office.

While most operators have complied with the rules laid out, Drul said they are still chasing some rentals operating illegally and the municipality still gets phone calls every day complaining about them.

“To this day, we’re still spending a lot of money chasing the illegal ones that are operating,” Drul said. “There’s no way to recoup the funds based on the way the Bylaw Enforcement Act handles fines. We spend probably 30 hours on an infraction and we maybe get $1,000 when it’s costing us $10,000.”

On the other hand, the reeve said the rentals helped bring in tourists to partake in things like golfing, fishing and winter activities.

“We don’t have a lot of hotels, so short-term rentals fill that spot,” Drul said.

Drul called for a forum to be called over the winter bringing together stakeholders to figure out how to handle short-term rentals across the province, as well as how to implement accommodation taxes on them. He said other municipalities interested in getting a handle on short-term rental regulations have been reaching out to him for assistance.

One of the biggest pieces, Drul said, was getting zoning in place to help manage rentals. He said some developers have come to his municipality offering to build short-term housing units, but they wanted zoning in place first.

The hotel association’s Juce called Harrison Park a leader in regulating and registering short-term rentals in Manitoba, which is a good starting point for municipalities that want to get a handle on them.

Manitoba does not have a provincial accommodations tax, with individual municipalities instead implementing their own. Brandon, for instance, has a five per cent accommodations tax.

When Brandon City Council changed the tax from a $3-a-day charge to a percentage earlier this year, it did not apply it to short-term rentals, though some councillors spoke of the need to close that loophole in the future.

The Airbnb representative, Howell, said that contrary to some perceptions her company is not opposed to all regulations. Airbnb is in favour of smart regulations that allow people to share their homes.

That includes putting restrictions in place to discourage people renting properties for parties, like prohibiting parties under their rules and preventing people under 25 years old from renting properties within 100 kilometres of where they live.

She pitched Airbnb as an ally for municipalities looking to establish fair — and affordable — regulations for short-term rentals as well as accommodation taxes.

Airbnb, she said, is working with the Ontario government to implement a provincewide solution and the company is happy to help municipalities interested in regulating rentals connect with others who have already implemented solutions.

Drul noted that his municipality isn’t interested in establishing an accommodation tax for local hotels because they are struggling, but it would consider a tax on short-term rentals in Harrison Park.

As a method for dealing with nuisance rentals, Howell said one option is to consider setting up a point system. Operators would lose points for each infraction and if they lose too many they are ineligible to have their licences renewed the following year.

When it comes to the economic benefits of short-term rentals, Howell said Airbnb’s data indicates that the average guest at a property in Manitoba rented through the platform spends $100 a day on top of what they’re spending on accommodations.

She said 82 per cent of hosts in Manitoba only have a single property on Airbnb and a further 11 per cent have two.

“This idea that a huge amount of investors are coming in and buying 10, 15, 20, et cetera properties is not actually the case,” Howell said.

During a question-and-answer segment, a representative from the RM of Alexander said there have been some positive examples of short-term rentals but the municipality has had difficulty dealing with non-compliant operators.

According to him, the RM that lies adjacent to Brandon has a staffer who spends most of their time looking online for illicit rentals operating outside the guidelines. Some rentals have been shut down, he said, only to pop back up the next day.

He said enforcing the rules they’ve established has been very difficult and called for the Provincial Offences Act to be amended to give municipalities more effective tools.

While he said they’re interested in the tourism the rentals bring in, he’s not sure how much his municipality benefits when people come in for the weekend with food, alcohol and other items purchased ahead of time.

Last month, British Columbia introduced legislation to regulate short-term rentals in a bid to reduce their effect on the province’s housing supply. The rules will require operators to acquire business licences and register listings with municipalities over a certain size, with other measures put in place to dissuade people from renting out spaces in properties they don’t reside in.

Last week, the federal government announced it would be planning to deny income tax deductions to short-term rental operators who are not complying with municipal regulations.

For Airbnb’s part, Howell said Wednesday that a study commissioned by her company from the Conference Board of Canada showed that short-term rentals have no discernable impact on the number of available long-term rentals in the country.

Municipal delegates will vote on resolutions on the final day of the convention today, which will include one proposed by Harrison Park calling on the provincial government to regulate short-term rentals.

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