The natives are restless.
A rally outside town hall, complete with signs and slurs. Steamy letters to Mr. Editor. An act of civil disobedience at the honking big new Old Town hotel site. And now they’re organizing. A swelling taxpayers movement met again yesterday (Jan. 15). Pitchforks and torches next?
Too much development, folks cry. Too many houses turned into motels. And what happened to the hospital? The public school? The high school up the road? And the kids? Why did families vanish from the core?
“How has the bicycle rentals, ice cream shops, shoulder-to-shoulder Queen Street foot traffic added to our NOTL residents’ quality of life?” asks irascible Sam Young.
“The answer is obvious. We are on an irreversible slippery slope. One of your articles should broach the question: Why are so many long-term and recent-year residents selling and getting out of Dodge?”
Are we being hollowed out by a pro-business council? Is that why — despite wails and moaning — the Parliament Oak hotel will rise amidst a residential ‘hood? Is bowing to tourism why people are encouraged to buy houses, flip them into motels, shrinking the supply of homes and creating businesses that don’t pay business taxes?
This Airbnb thing’s a trigger. As reported here, there are a thousand “NOTL” listings on that one platform alone. The official word is about 5 per cent of our housing stock has been turned over to visitors.
But Norm Arsenault is challenging that. The Old Town, he insists, is becoming a residential disaster. All rich people (ugh) and folks from Toledo (gulp).
“Walk down King Street,” says the ex-councillor. “There are 19 short-term rentals. Nineteen! In one kilometre. The heritage district alone is almost half short-term rentals. It’s going in a wrong direction.”
Arsenault’s been part of a committee trying to stem the tide. But of 31 recommendations, town staff tossed 18. Licensing and fines were improved, but the most important thing was ignored.
“Our main theme was hosted or unhosted rentals. There is no political appetite for it. But that’s how it should be — to have rentals run by permanent residents who also live there. That would eliminate a huge number of the short-term rentals we now have. But council is not going to do it.”
No? Other places are. In fact, most of them. Like, just down the QEW.
Burlington’s new Airbnb rules are simple. If you don’t live in a house, you can’t host short-term paying guests. And nobody can rent for more than half the year, in total.Â
Toronto’s doing similar. And Vancouver. Plus most places in Canada where short-term rentals are driving out long-term renters, gutting streets of permanent faces and goosing prices.
Burlington is applying for federal funding to finance enforcement of the bylaw — money apparently available to us, as well. If we comply.
Will NOTL staff come to that conclusion? Or is the current review a sham? Another sop to the pro-tourism cartel? Or a gift to serial real estate owners like Tara Abrams, who wrote to rip me a new one last week?
“While I live in Toronto, I am the owner of a licenced short-term rental in NOTL,” she states in a letter. “My biggest concern about Mr. Turner’s article is that it creates unnecessary panic through the spreading of misinformation.”
She says Airbnb misleads by stating our town has a thousand listings when some are for bordering areas. And she’s right. But the fact remains if Tara lived in NOTL and had a short-term rental house in Toronto, well, she wouldn’t. That would be illegal, since unhosted short-term rentals are just sucking away housing.Â
The Big Smoke banned them. Maybe the little puff should do the same.
Garth Turner is a NOTL resident, journalist, author, wealth manager and former federal MP and minister. garth@garth.ca