City wants more compliance with short-term rentals

Penticton isn’t seeing a lot of compliance with existing bylaws on short stay-vacation rentals.

Ken Kunka, the city’s building and permitting manager, said a review of short-stay vacation rentals showed 334 separate listings in Penticton. Only 130 have been licensed under a city program.

Related: New regulations for short-term rentals

However, Penticton city council voted Tuesday against measures staff recommended to help bring more compliance and to more effectively manage the units through the city’s short-term vacation rental program, and instead sent the report back to staff to come up with alternate recommendations.

In his report, Kunka is recommending the city contract Host Compliance, a company that specializes in tracking short-term rental listings. In addition to tracking the listings on Airbnb, VRBO and others, Host Compliance would participate in the enforcement process by immediately sending applications and information straight to the business operator as soon as a new listing appears.

Coun. Helana Konanz objected to a third-party sending notifications to Penticton residents, concerned the company would automatically send notices to owners who listed a dwelling for an occasional weekend — the current bylaw exempts those renting their property for less than 14 days a year.

She said using the service was fine for an initial count, but communication and ongoing monitoring should be done through the city. Coun. Campbell Watt said he didn’t think spending $25,000/year on the contract with Host Compliance would be worth it.

Kunka’s report also suggested that the bylaw could be changed to require the business owner to obtain neighbourhood consensus, as well as suggesting the possibility of a cap on licences or limiting them to certain areas of the community.

Kunka said those change could reduce the number of nuisances complaints along with ceasing the reduction in long-term rentals, two of the problems identified by staff and the community.

“If you are worried about losing housing, we need to continue working as a council to promote development … purpose-built rental housing,” said Konanz. “That’s really the only way you can do it, to have that housing available.”

Related: Penticton vacation rental licences quadruple since 2015

Konanz also rejected the idea of a cap, suggesting that it would raise the value of houses that obtained a licence and would be unfair to neighbouring owners who didn’t get in under the cap.

Coun. Konanz said she has delved into the short-term rental market, renting out a property she owned outside city limits.

“I had a legal short-term rental that was with the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen Area “D” up until September of last year. I had it for a few years and that house has been sold,” said Konanz.

Coun. Tarik Sayeed also tried listing a unit, though he said it was an experiment.

“I listed it about two years ago, just to see how many responses I get, but then I unlisted it. It was just to check how the market was, and it was amazing,” said Sayeed.

Though Kunka cited a reduction in long-term rental units due to the short-term rental market, several of the councillors denied there was a connection, as did Peter Weeber, the city’s chief administrative officer.

“People that use short-term vacation rentals are targeting a very specific market and they may not be interested in renting their properties out long-term. There is no guarantee those would be full rentals,” said Weeber.

Coun. Judy Sentes also said short- and long-term rentals are two separate issues, as did Coun. Max Picton.

“Short-term rentals are something that is good for our community in terms of bringing people in. I don’t think that because we support one, we are giving up the other,” said Picton. “Is it more of a benefit than having long-term rental housing? That’s endlessly debatable.”

Picton also noted said short-term rentals support Penticton’s tourism industry.

“In peak times, when all of our accommodations are full and we don’t have room for additional people, it does create an opportunity for more people to come in, which does benefit a lot of the businesses,” said Picton.

Other councillors, like Watt who said “the concept of vacation rentals is probably quite good for our community,” didn’t offer explanations for their stance that short-term rentals are beneficial to the community.

Related: Airbnb pledges to help B.C. cities regulate, tax vacation rentals