Turning short-term rentals into homes for people is at the core of newly introduced legislation to regulate the rapidly expanding short-term rental market.

The short-term rental market in B.C. is dominated by a small segment of profit-driven operators. Research from McGill University shows the top 10% of hosts earn nearly half of all revenue. Nearly half of all operators have multiple listings. Approximately 30 municipalities, including Vancouver, Victoria and Kelowna, have introduced short-term rental bylaws and licence fees to regulate the short-term rental market. The proposed legislation builds on those bylaws and equips municipalities with more enforcement tools.

The legislation focuses on three key areas:

increasing fines and strengthening tools for local governments;
returning more short-term rentals to long-term homes; and
establishing provincial rules and enforcement.
Changes to how short-term rentals operate will come into effect through a phased-in approach and will include:

Increasing fines and better tools for local governments:
– increasing fines for operators breaking local rules to support local municipal bylaws, and requiring short-term rental platforms to share data to strengthen local enforcement;
– requiring online short-term rental platforms to share their data with the Province, so the Province can provide that information to local governments for enforcement and support of provincial and federal tax auditing;
– requiring short-term rental platforms to include businesses licence numbers on listings where they are used by a local government, and to remove listings without them quickly to ensure local rules are being followed; and
– giving regional districts the ability to issue business licences so they can more effectively regulate short-term rentals in rural areas.

Returning more short-term rentals into long-term homes for people:
– requiring short-term rentals in B.C. to be offered only in the principal residence* of a host in municipalities with a population of 10,000 people or more
(*principal residence plus one secondary suite or laneway home/garden suite on the property is allowed);
– forthcoming regulations will specify areas exempt from the principal residence requirement, including 14 resort regions, mountain resort areas, municipalities under 10,000 population (except those within 15 kilometres to larger municipalities), and regional district electoral areas; and
– removing legal non-conforming use protections for short-term rentals being taken advantage of by investors to support local governments’ efforts to set rules about where these units can operate in communities.

Establishing provincial rules and enforcement:
– establishing a provincial host and platform registry by late 2024 for stronger accountability; and
– launching a provincial short-term rental compliance and enforcement unit to make sure rules are being followed.
– Updating how short-term rentals are operated and enforced will contribute to thousands of homes being returned to the market over the next few years, while giving smaller communities and communities that are heavily reliant on short-term-rental-related tourism some flexibility. These areas will be able to choose to opt into the principal residence requirements depending on housing pressures in their communities.

To read more on the legislation aimed to rein in short-term rentals, please click on the link here.