City moves to address residential vacation rentals
The city will likely host more than one public meeting to receive feedback on how Niagara Falls can better control vacation rental properties.
The municipality will organize the open houses (dates, times and places have yet to be confirmed) prior to council considering an amendment to the city’s Official Plan and zoning bylaw to regulate such establishments.
“We’re going to have a bit of an outline at those public meetings as to what other municipalities are doing, and then we’re going to have feedback from all of the operators — from hoteliers, from members of the public,” said Chief Administrative Officer Ken Todd.
“After that we’re going to summarize all of that and bring that back for a report here to council. I’m guessing it will probably be some time in the fall by the time we get through this.”
Council has heard in recent months from residents who are concerned about rental homes in several neighbourhoods.
On some occasions, residents have complained about bylaw infractions including parking, noise control, public nuisance, along with lewd and bawdy behaviour.
With the advent of the sharing economy, there has been an increase in alternative forms of tourist accommodation such as vacation rentals and rooms in bed-and-breakfast type establishments, according to city staff.
The approach taken in the city’s planning documents and licensing regulations has created confusion because of conflicting terms, and has not been effective in regulating these uses, said staff, noting based on the number of unregulated accommodations in the city, the use will not disappear, so a new approach is necessary.
Vacation-rental units, formerly called cottage-rental or vacationrental dwellings, are buildings rented in their entirety to one group of travellers at a time for a period of less than 28 days.
Under recent Ontario divisional court judgements, a vacation-rental unit can be treated as a separate and unique land use and can be regulated by municipalities, said staff.
In the last 15 years, the city has approved site-specific zoning to add a vacation-rental unit as a sitespecific use to 16 properties in the city without controversy.
In 2011, however, two zoning bylaw amendment applications for vacaction rentals — one on Hickson Avenue and another on River Road, which was later withdrawn — were met with strong opposition in part due to operating prior to approvals.
Council approved the Hickson Avenue application, but it was appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board by a neighbour.
The OMB overturned council’s decision and criticized the city for its lack of specific policies to assess applications for vacationrental units, and the ineffectiveness of its noise bylaw and licensing bylaw.
For many years, the city has been accommodating bed-and-breakfast establishments, with up to four rooms for tourists, as-of-right in the River Road neighbourhood or through zoning bylaw amendment applications.
However, a large number of accommodations listed on certain websites are for rooms in owneroccupied dwellings and would generally be classified as a bed and breakfast, said staff.
To ensure such accommodations do not become a significant disruption to surrounding residents, staff said it is necessary to review and update the regulatory framework for bed and breakfasts.
Through public comments and an analysis of what other municipalities have done, staff said there are four directions how to regulate vacation-rental dwellings and bed and breakfasts.
They include: prohibiting vacation-rental units and bed and breakfasts; permiting them under the tourist commercial designation in the Official Plan and tourist commercial zone only; allowing them under the residential, commercial and rural designations throughout the city, but require a zoning bylaw amendment to permit them on a site-by-site basis, subject to criteria set out in the Official Plan (similar to the current city approach); or allowing them as-of-right in residential, commercial and rural designations in the Official Plan and certain residential, commercial and rural zones, but strictly regulate the size of such uses and establish a licensing and enforcement scheme to regulate them (similar to the current approach in Niagara-on-the-Lake).
Staff said these directions will be presented to the public and stakeholders at the upcoming open houses.