Short Term Rental Regulations in Ottawa

So the city of Ottawa hosted the final short term rental (STR) consultation last night. The venue was just about full. Airbnb Canada and media attended.

Over the past several months, the media, Fairbnb, ACORN, and some city councilors have screamed that Airbnb was taking affordable housing off of the rental market, and the way to stop this is to regulate STR. Keep in mind that only 1.2% of Ottawa's rentals have been converted from LTR to STR. So, I asked the city staff what % of the 1.2% converted to STR is considered as affordable housing? The staff didn't know the answer. How can they not know the answer to this question when the anti-Airbnb crowd (including city councilors) used poverty and affordable housing to press STR regulations forward? This peeves me off.

One person asked if the city or the consultants know the value of the individual properties that have been converted from LTR to STR. Are they worth $1,000,000, $700,000, $500,000, $200,000?? The city staff said they don't have the answer to the speaker's question. So, how can the city and consultants claim that affordable housing is being taken from the rental market when they don't know the value of the properties that have been converted to STR??

I also commented on the fact that the consultant's recommendations didn't include one for the city to lobby the province to update the RTA (make it balanced) and fix the LTB. In fact, the consultant report barely mentions the RTA/LTB as reasons why investors switch from LTR to STR even though it was mentioned many times during the earlier consults. The RTA and the LTB are MAIN reasons why people switch to STR. Fix the RTA/LTB and more investors will remain in the LTR business which means more rentals on the market.

The city staff report should be published by November 4th. It's pretty clear that there are bad STR hosts out there and they need to be dealt with but not by hurting the great majority of good STR hosts at the same time.

The way people live and rent is changing and technology is playing a large part in it. The city is missing an opportunity to embrace technology and use it to its advantage.