Nanaimo to increase fines for short-term rentals

The website AirDNA shows nearly 980 active listings for short-term rentals on Airbnb and VRBO in Nanaimo. Of those, just 291 have a business licence according to a report from the City of Nanamio.

Nanaimo city council voted to direct city staff to look at increasing fines for violating the city’s short term rental bylaw from $250 to $500 at its meeting on March 18.

According to a staff report, only 30 per cent of short term rentals in Nanaimo have complied with a municipal bylaw that requires short-term rental owners to have a business licence.

As of March 1, a city staff report found that the city had issued 291 business licences for short-term rentals. 60 per cent of which were in primary residences, 35 per cent in secondary suites and five per cent in detached suites.

According to the report, there are at least 980 active listings on AirBnB and VRBO and the number of short-term rental listings in the city increased by almost 25 per cent between 2022 and 2023.

Currently, the maximum fine for violating Nanaimo’s short term rental bylaw is set at $250 per infraction, per day, while other jurisdictions had maximum fines set at $500 a day.

There have been 62 complaints about short term rentals in Nanaimo since the bylaw was adopted in 2022.

Sixty seven per cent of complaints were for rentals being unlicensed, two per cent for having too many rooms or guests and less than one per cent were for parking or noise.

Two tickets under the bylaw have been issued, both to the same owner, one for operating without a business licence and one for renting too many guestrooms.

Kasia Biegun, a planner at the City of Nanaimo, told council that once owners were told they were not compliant with the bylaw, they corrected the situation.

“Ticketing was not necessary for most and actually that's the case for a lot of municipalities that we spoke to,” she said. “Once they're aware of the regulations they do come into compliance.”

Councillor Sheryl Armstrong asked if the city has any way of measuring how many short-term rentals returned to the long-term rental market after the bylaw was introduced

“Is there anything we can do to monitor to see how many of these short term rentals end up back in the full time rental pool?” she asked. “Because I've been following this in the States, and it's nowhere near the numbers that were anticipated.”

Biegun said that the city would have to request that information, but isn’t sure how the province is going to track it.

The province is also bringing in regulations for short-term rentals starting on May 1. Biegun gave an overview of the province’s goals.

“Overall, the purpose of it is to turn more short term rentals into long term housing for people,” she said, adding that the three key areas for the province are strengthening tools for local governments to enforce rules around short term rentals, returning units to the long-term rental market and establishing provincial oversight of short-term rentals.

The province increased fines for violations of the short term rental law from $1,000 to $3,000. However, that is for the municipal ticketing system that the City of Nanaimo does not use, instead relying on the Bylaw Enforcement Act that sets the maximum fine at $500.

According to Biegun, the province will be setting up an enforcement division for short term rentals this spring, but the details of how that will work has not been shared with the city.

“It is not clear at this time, because the enforcement division has not been formed yet exactly what that relationship will be, what resources will be available when those questions are posed to provincial staff,” she said. “They're not aware of exactly how that will function. But they have made it clear that it is our responsibility to regulate our regulations, and to do that would still require additional staffing and resources.”

Council members voted unanimously to direct staff to bring back bylaw amendments to increase the short-term rental bylaw fines with Mayor Leonard Krog and councillor Janice Perino recusing themselves due to a conflict of interest and councillors Paul Manly and Ian Thorpe both absent from the meeting.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.