Correspondence from P. Whyte re: Rental Market and Cost of Living (Airbnb)
Resident frustration regarding housing affordability and a call to regulate Airbnb short-term rentals.
Airbnb
From: Paul Whyte Sent: April-11-18 6:39 PM To: Mayor And Council Email Subject: Airbnb
Dear Mayor and Councillors,
As a resident of the CRD I am writing you to express my frustration and anger with the rental market and cost of living. As a 34 year old single male, I can not realistically afford property in this region even though last year I made 6 figures and believe you all need to do something to address the outrageous issue of affordable rentals and illegal short term rentals on Airbnb.
I hope that some of you have been watching the news and have heard that Vancouver just came to an agreement with Airbnb that will require hosts to include a business license listing on their website. Vancouver says that there are 6600 short term listings in Vancouver and 88% of those are listed on Airbnb. As part of the agreement, Airbnb will provide the city with a list of all the business licenses and associated addresses that are listed on the company’s website on a quarterly basis. Airbnb hosts will be required to give the platform permission to share that information with the city before they can list a rental. Not only this but homeowners that want to rent out a basement suite, laneway house or secondary home that is not their primary residence, or those listing more than one rental, will not be able to obtain a license and will be subject to fines of $1000 per day. These changes are going into effect April 19th.
I implore you to do this exact same agreement for View Royal as soon as possible. Just a quick look on Airbnb’s website will show you with a vast amount of results for View Royal and this is something you can do to address this issue in a very quick timeframe. There really is no reason not to.
Regards,
Paul Whyte