It’s been a highly-contested topic all summer.
British Columbia’s new rules on short-term rentals went into place on May 1 and made the market for vacation accommodations look a little different as people tried to book holidays over the last few months.
The changes likely weren’t even noticed in some parts of the province, but they've been at the centre of many conversations in tourism hot spots like Kelowna.
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In July, Tourism Kelowna CEO Lisanne Ballantyne told KelownaNow that the new regulations were one of several reasons for a decline in tourism this summer.
More recently, MLA Renee Merrifield and Kelowna city councillor Loyal Wooldridge also criticized the short-term rental rules and said they were partially to blame for Kelowna’s dip in tourism this year.
The comments from Wooldridge were a little more notable given that he's the Kelowna Centre candidate for Premier David Eby’s NDP in next month’s election.
In an exclusive interview with KelownaNow on Friday, Eby said he’s happy to have a candidate like Wooldridge in Kelowna who is advocating for the community and bringing community concerns to the forefront.
He didn’t, however, bend when it came to his opinion on BC’s tight regulations on short-term rentals, saying the new rules were needed to increase the vacancy rates in places like Kelowna.
“It is working. It’s opening space,” he told KelownaNow video host Jim Csek. “I’ve met a lot of people who are staying and living long term at what used to be short-term rentals.”
The premier said the regulations aren’t an “anti-short-term rental thing” and his family utilizes those types of accommodations when on vacation, but the priority is opening up places for British Columbians to live.
“This isn’t a ban on Airbnb,” he added. “You can still rent out your basement suite, your laneway house or your primary residence when you’re away through short-term rental.”
Eby called the lack of rental vacancy in BC “a serious issue” and claimed that the impact of the short-term rental policy has already been significant.
In August, outgoing BC Hotel Association (BCHA) president and CEO Ingrid Jarrett wrote a LinkedIn post about her tenure, pointing to the short-term rental regulations as a “remarkable milestone” that strengthened the province’s hospitality industry.
In her words, the BCHA “spearheaded research and legislative changes for the province’s short-term rental policy.”
When Eby was asked by Csek about this post and the BCHA’s role in writing up the legislation, the premier was quick to shut it down.
“It’s just not true that the Hotel Association wrote this,” he said. “We’re in a housing crisis, the government wrote it.”
However, Eby also noted that “tourists should be staying” in hotels, and said the construction of new hotels in Vancouver and beyond will help bring down room prices.
And while the premier was steadfast in his support of his party’s short-term rental policy, he did say he’s open to discussions to address the concerns brought up by Wooldridge and others in Kelowna.
He pointed to a situation in Parksville, on Vancouver Island, where the Province came to an agreement with the local government to “recognize the unique nature of the area.”
“I don’t want anyone to get the impression that if we’re elected in the City of Kelowna that there would be a lifting of the Airbnb restrictions that we put in place. That’s simply not the case,” Eby said.
“But there are sometimes specific tourist areas that can get caught up in this and I’m happy to have those discussions. I’m glad for Loyal raising it.”
Premier David Eby covered several topics during his exclusive interview with KelownaNow and you can watch the whole thing through the video embed above or by clicking this link.
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