REGULATING AIRBNB
Onus should not be on hosts
Soon, you may need to register for a licence if you want to rent out your Vancouver home to vacationers via Airbnb. But whose responsibility will it be to make sure you’re not renting out seven different unlicensed apartments for short-term rentals, removing them from the city’s housing stock in violation of the city’s new regulations?
With the city is in the midst of a housing crisis, advocates are applauding Vancouver’s move to regulate short-term rentals, but they say the proposed framework is doomed to fail if it doesn’t hold the rental platforms (the largest of which is Airbnb) accountable for hosts who break the rules.
A group called Fairbnb — a coalition of stakeholders including representatives from the hotel and rental housing industry, as well as tenants’ advocates — presented a report Tuesday outside Vancouver City Hall, saying the city’s new regulatory framework, set for a public hearing this fall, needs “teeth” to ensure compliance.
Vancouver’s proposed rules would allow people to rent out a primary residence to guests, but would forbid renting an empty unit that could otherwise be used as a primary home for a local resident. Hosts would register and pay a small licence fee.
But it’s not good enough, Fairbnb members said Tuesday, for the city to put the onus on “hosts” to make sure they’re registered and their suite is legal. The City of Vancouver’s own report, presented to council in July, says: “based on the experiences of other jurisdictions, staff have assumed 25 per cent of the 4,948 eligible short-term rental operators in Vancouver at any time will obtain a short-term rental business licence.”
But some believe even a 25 per cent compliance rate is overly optimistic. Other cities like Montreal and Portland saw compliance rates below 10 per cent when they tried similar regulatory regimes, said Liam McClure, appearing on behalf of the Vancouver Tenants Union at Tuesday’s Fairbnb presentation.
San Francisco enacted regulations in 2015 requiring hosts to register, similar to Vancouver’s proposed regulations. But in the first 15 months, the city reported a compliance rate around 15 per cent, while Airbnb listings continued to grow.
It may be instructive for Vancouver to look at the example of San Francisco, which is the hometown of Airbnb and, like Vancouver, facing an acute housing affordability crisis.
When most San Francisco Airbnb hosts failed to comply with the rules — potentially removing units from the city’s depleted housing stock — public officials enacted new, tougher rules holding Airbnb and other companies liable for steep fines and criminal penalties if hosts rent out unregistered properties. The companies fought back. Airbnb and HomeAway, the two biggest short-term rental companies in San Francisco (and in Vancouver) sued San Francisco last year, seeking an injunction to prevent enforcement of the short-term rental law.
But a federal judge rejected the companies’ arguments, and “upheld the city’s law, which is designed to protect the available housing supply by holding rental platform companies accountable for violating San Francisco’s short-term rental rules,” according to a release last year from San Francisco’s City Attorney’s office.
Then in May, Airbnb and HomeAway settled with San Francisco, agreeing to register all local hosts, with the companies on the hook if they help facilitate unlicensed bookings.
Kathryn Holm, Vancouver’s chief licence inspector, said the city’s regulatory framework isn’t yet finalized and, citing San Francisco’s example, she said Vancouver would also like to see Airbnb and other platforms take responsibility for the registration of hosts.
“The challenge for us is it’s difficult to hold a business legally accountable when they aren’t based in Vancouver. That’s a key difference between us and San Francisco,” she said. “We’re looking at what mechanisms we have available to us ... to hold the platforms accountable for their role in potentially supporting unlicensed businesses.”
A Toronto-based Airbnb spokeswoman, Lindsey Scully, said Tuesday the company “welcomes the City of Vancouver’s move toward regulating home sharing.”
Scully described Fairbnb as “a front group, funded by the big hotels,” adding “this report is just the latest example of their efforts to protect antiquated, entrenched interests, instead of working to support families who are making a little extra income to pay their bills.”
While it’s true Fairbnb has ties to the hotel industry, the broad coalition behind it includes housing activists and academics. It’s not clear how their proposal for platform accountability would hurt the families Scully describes “making a little extra income.” The aim seems to be accountability for multibilliondollar companies if they help an operator rent out multiple units illegally.
The settlement in Airbnb’s hometown was praised by the mayor and other public officials, but was only achieved, according to a city supervisor quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, after the company was dragged “kicking and screaming” to the negotiating table. With San Francisco’s pioneering example already established, hopefully the process of regulation will be less painful here, with less kicking and minimal screaming.