A release Sunday from the City of Vancouver included early findings from a review of short-term accommodation rental services.
As part of the city’s ongoing effort to regulate short-term home rentals, Vancouver has contracted a third-party consulting firm to examine 10 platforms providing the service in Vancouver, including Airbnb, VRBO, OwnersDirect, and Flipkey. The research is intended, the city’s statement said, “to determine how short-term rentals are affecting the availability of rental housing for families and workers in Vancouver.”
5,000
Geoff Meggs
Vancouver has more than 5,000 properties available for short-term rentals, according to Sunday’s statement, a total called “worrisome” by the councillor spearheading the city’s efforts to tighten rules for services like Airbnb.
“I think it’s worrisome,” said Vancouver Coun. Geoff Meggs of the tally of 5,000 short-term accommodations, one of the figures included in a Sunday release from the City of Vancouver. “But I’m not surprised by it.”
The city is going to “enormous effort” to increase the stock of rental housing, “so that people can live and work in the city of Vancouver,” Meggs said. “And to see (rental properties) soaked up by tourism is not acceptable.”
The top concern around short-term home rentals, Meggs said, is determining if their rise is having any “negative impact on the rental stock,” adding: “We feel the numbers are high enough to indicate there is, and that’s probably driving down vacancy rates and driving up rents.
“When we have the crisis that we have in housing, we can’t afford to walk past this,” Meggs said.
0.6
The Inside Airbnb website showing Vancouver is shown in this screengrab taken Friday, April 1, 2016.
The situation is made more acute, Meggs said, by Vancouver’s rental vacancy rate of 0.6 per cent.
That’s one of the lowest among Canadian cities, compared with 4.8 per cent in Calgary, 4.2 per cent in Montreal and 3.5 per cent across Canada, according to data from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
85
2341 York Ave in Vancouver, July 01, 2016, where 17 short-term Airbnb rentals are available in contradiction of city bylaws.
Airbnb appears to dominate Vancouver’s short-term rental market, with 85 per cent of listings, according to the city’s statement, and the city neighbourhoods with the highest concentration of short-term rentals were downtown (31 per cent), Mount Pleasant/Renfrew (15 per cent) and Kitsilano/Point Grey (14 per cent). Three quarters of short-term rentals were found to be entire homes, condos or apartments.
The city is seeking public input, with a survey launching Wednesday. Meggs said he hopes city staff could present recommendations on the issue by September, and then, after a period of public consultation, council could take action by the end of the year.
