The B.C. government has announced new rules for short-term rentals that will complement already-existing regulations developed by Nelson City Council.
The new provincial legislation is intended to free up more vacancies for long-term housing. It will have have minimal effect on short-term rentals in Nelson because the city already regulates them. But it will have a significant effect on a category known as tourist accommodation, which the city does not regulate.
City planner Valerie Berthier presented the proposed legislation to council at its Nov. 7 meeting and discussed how it will intersect with the regulations Nelson instituted in 2016 and revised in 2018.
The proposed provincial legislation will apply to communities with populations greater than 10,000. But its main focus is a problem that occurs mostly in larger centres: investors purchasing multiple suites or entire buildings and running them year-round as short-term rental businesses.
The most prominent platform for short-term rentals is Airbnb, but there are others including Vrbo.
The new provincial rules as they will apply to Nelson can be broken down into two categories: short-term rentals and tourist accommodation.
Tourist Accommodation
Tourist accommodation is a category of short-term rental that is allowed in Nelson only in the downtown commercial district.
It includes hotels but also rental apartments, many of which are located above Baker Street businesses. A business licence is required, which is automatically renewed annually. The city’s current short-term rental rules, limits and quotas have never applied to this category of rental.
There are currently 36 such licenses in Nelson, 14 of which are hotels, motels, or hostels. The other 22 licenses are for 33 dwelling units.
The provincial legislation will do away with the tourist accommodation category. All of the existing rentals under this category in downtown Nelson, except hotels, motels, and hostels, will come under the province’s short-term rental jurisdiction, summarized below.
Berthier said there is still work to be done on how the transition of those units will take place over the next year.
Short-term rentals
Currently the city has 127 short-term rental licenses — two 31-day licenses, 24 four-month licenses, and 101 annual licenses.
Of those licenses, four are for laneway houses, 33 are for bedrooms, 39 are for houses or apartments, and 51 are for suites.
These stats only apply to short-term rentals within the city. The numbers of short-term rentals in Nelson are often over-estimated by the public because Airbnb on its website lists many Nelson rentals that are actually outside the city in such places as Blewett and the North Shore.
Nelson’s planners have often said they are confident in their numbers because they track down unlicensed short-term rentals using software from the company Host Compliance that searches the internet for short-term rental ads and checks this against the city’s list.
The city has been regulating Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms since 2016. Mayor Janice Morrison says the city was well ahead of most municipalities and the province itself.
“We were one of the first communities out of the gate,” she says. “I think our team in the planning department did a great job (of creating rules that) fit Nelson. There was a lot of (other municipalities) asking for our plan once we got it through council.”
The new provincial legislation on short-term rentals will:
• Require that the owner of the rental unit live in the building for at least half of each year, beginning on May 1, 2024. Nelson has been requiring this for seven years.
• Require that the owner of a short-term rental post its business license number on the listing. Nelson already requires this.
• Create a provincial registry of short-term rentals, beginning in late 2024, to be used for monitoring and enforcement. Nelson already has such a registry for the city that may be subsumed by the provincial registry.
• Create a provincial enforcement and compliance unit that will impose fines for breaking the licensing rules. Nelson already has fines in place but Berthier reported the city has never fined anyone. Rather, they have worked with the operator toward compliance. City manager Kevin Cormack said the city has shut down some operators without licenses.
• Define a short-term rental as accommodation rented for 90 days or less. Nelson’s current limit is 30 days or less, and this will be expanded to match the provincial limit.
• Require short-term rental platforms to share data with the province, including information about hosts.
Nelson already has a number of short-term rental requirements that go above and beyond the province’s plans: quotas for the number of short-term rentals in the city and the number allowed per block, as well as rules about inspections and parking.
Short-term rental licenses in Nelson must be renewed annually, at licence costs between $200 and $1,634 depending on the space offered, with cheaper alternatives for four-month licences and 31-day licences also available.
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