Short-term rentals in Manitoba municipalities’ spotlight

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This article was published 30/11/2023 (675 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government may consider regulating short-term rentals as some municipalities struggle to enforce local bylaws at vacation properties.

On Thursday, Premier Wab Kinew said he’s open to a provincial regulatory framework for short-term rentals offered through platforms such as Airbnb.

“It makes sense for us to have an open mind about this sort of regulation of short-term rentals as part of a comprehensive housing approach to boost housing supply and to ensure that we’re investing in meeting the needs of people right across the province,” Kinew told reporters following a ministerial forum hosted by the Association of Manitoba Municipalities in Brandon.

At the association’s fall convention, some municipal leaders described the proliferation of short-term rentals in their communities as a double-edged sword.

“We’re still having a lot of challenges and staff that are just focused basically on short-term rentals,” Municipality of Harrison Park Reeve Ian Drul said during a panel discussion on rental regulations.

“We have a licensing portfolio right now — the sooner that we can get to more municipalities doing that… we can get into stiffer fines and working on bylaw enforcement more.”

Last year, Harrison Park (located at the south end of Riding Mountain National Park) passed a resolution requiring short-term rental operators to obtain a conditional-use permit before they receive a licence to operate.

Trying to deal with these rental properties individually, Drul said, was a bureaucratic challenge that stalled progress at the municipal office in Onanole.

While most operators have complied with the rules as laid out, Drul said Harrison Park is still chasing some rentals operating illegally and the municipality handled phone call complaints every day.

“To this day, we’re still spending a lot of money chasing the illegal ones that are operating,” Drul said. “There’s no way to recoup the funds based on the way the Bylaw Enforcement Act handles fines. We spend probably 30 hours on an infraction and we maybe get $1,000, when it’s costing us $10,000.”

Drul has called for stakeholder forum to figure out how to uniformly handle short-term rentals across the province, as well as how to implement accommodation taxes on them.

Municipal delegates were set to vote Thursday on a resolution, proposed by Harrison Park, calling on the provincial government to regulate short-term rentals.

Last month, British Columbia introduced legislation to regulate short-term rentals in a bid to reduce their effect on the province’s housing supply.

The rules will require operators to acquire business licences and register listings with municipalities over a certain size, with other measures put in place to dissuade people from renting out spaces in properties they don’t reside in.

Last week, the federal government announced it would be planning to deny income tax deductions to short-term rental operators who are not complying with municipal regulations.

— with files from Danielle Da Silva