Ever heard something that just makes you scratch your head and go “What!?”
Last week in response to an excellent decision by town council to pause the approval of any more short-term rental licences in town, Coun. Tim Balasiuk declared essentially that because our housing stock here isn’t going to solve the housing crisis across the country, that we should sit back and let these should-be-illegal, unsupervised mini-hotels invade our residentially zoned homes, where real people could be living and raising a family.
This attitude requires a strong response from our community.
It’s the exact same thing as saying “why bother recycling, my individual effort isn’t going to solve the climate crisis and clean up our oceans.”
Every single home taken off the market for real people to live in contributes to the housing crisis both far and wide in Canada.
Locally, it means about 10 per cent of our housing stock is being used for a purpose that by all rights should be flat out illegal if you consider the point of residential zoning.
Our town has a housing crisis and we’re letting it get worse by the day. Just look to your right and see a letter from a concerned resident who also took issue with that statement. Or the column below this in which Garth Turner also calls out how dangerous it is to keep commercializing our homes.
It might be good for realtors and those rich enough to exploit a broken system.
But it isn’t good for average income families hoping to raise children here. We need to fix that. And we need to do it now.
Don’t expect to find any help on this issue from our realtor mayor. That wouldn’t be good for his business.
But what we can hope is that councillors like Balasiuk take a step back, examine this issue objectively and re-evaluate their positions if they support short-term rental culture.
Just look across the world at how cities are starting to wake up and realize these things are all around bad for business. Let’s start to return our housing supply to what it is supposed to be — homes for people to live in.
More homes means more kids can sign up for Paddle Niagara and support Balasiuk’s business, too.
editor@niagaranow.com
