Kelowna backs off short-term rentals ban
City decides to allow rental of secondary suites, carriage homes to tourists after ban criticized at public hearing
Hundreds of secondary suites and carriage homes in Kelowna could legally be offered as short-term rentals in the near future.
City council has backed away from a staff idea to completely ban such rentals, typically offered through online services such as Airbnb and VRBO.
After a lengthy public hearing Tuesday at City Hall, council voted in favour of allowing short-term rentals as a permitted use in secondary suites and carriage homes.
Municipal staff will write the necessary regulation and bring it back to a future council meeting.
Mayor Colin Basran says council will take another look at allowing secondary suites and carriage houses for short-term rentals after residents raised a number of points during the public hearing, “including the ease of enforcing bylaws since they already live on site, so there will be fewer issues and need for enforcement.”
“We also heard that due to concerns with recent changes to the Residential Tenancy Act by the provincial government, some homeowners have chosen to leave suites and carriage houses vacant,” he said in an email Wednesday. “This is contrary to council’s aim of trying to create more long-term housing.”
Laura Bentley, a city planner, said in a separate email that staff estimate Kelowna currently has around 2,250 legal secondary suites and carriages houses.
Most of those who addressed council during a sixhour public hearing Tuesday night raised concerns with at least some part of the city’s proposed new regulations for short-term rentals.
Criticism of the suggested ban on short-term rental of secondary suites and carriage homes was frequently offered. Some people told council they’d rather rent to vacationers than residents of Kelowna, given what they said were the numerous problems in dealing with longterm tenants.
“It feels like you’re forcing us as landowners to do only long-term rentals, but the NDP has stripped our ability to deal with bad tenants,” one man told council.
Others said they depended on the revenue they earn renting premises to tourists.
“The influx of money ( from short-term rentals) helps me to pay my home insurance and my property taxes each spring,” a woman told council.
Councillors heard from people who said short-term rentals were an increasingly popular form of accommodation for travellers, offering an alternative to costlier hotel stays, that helped to draw more visitors to Kelowna and widened tourism’s overall economic impact.
“These places are creating an experience for people,” a man said. “We’re basically just cutting that out and saying, ‘No more of that in Kelowna.’ It’s absolutely crazy, just nuts.”
Others said they rented secondary suites or carriage homes to college and university students from September through April, and couldn’t see why they should be prohibited from offering those premises on a short-term basis in the summer months rather than see the units sit empty.
But Stan Martindale, general manager of the Ramada Hotel, said secondary suites and carriage homes were never intended to be used as short-term rental units.
“The whole reason they exist is because they were supposed to be (long-term) rental units,” Martindale said.
Other parts of the city’s regulatory approach on short-term rentals were left intact by council.
These include preventing shortterm rentals of a person’s primary residence in most areas of Kelowna for longer than four months, and allowing unfettered short-term rentals of entire properties in only a few select neighbourhoods, such as townhouses and condos along Sunset Drive and neighbourhoods around Kelowna General Hospital.