Vancouver short-term rental data at stake in ongoing freedom of information dispute
VANCOUVER - Vancouver affordable housing advocate Rohana Rezel says he's keeping up a six-year freedom of information fight with the City of Vancouver and Airbnb over data on short-term rental operators despite it likely being out of date.
Rezel filed two requests with the city under the Freedom of Information and the Protection of Privacy Act in 2019, seeking records about Airbnb and other short-term rental operators in Vancouver, including names, addresses and business licence numbers.
The city refused and Airbnb opposed the release, leading to years of legal wrangling involving B.C.'s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, and the province's Supreme and Appeal Courts.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
An adjudicator with the privacy office ruled in 2021 that the city wasn't allowed to 'refuse access' to business licence numbers and addresses of short-term rentals, but Airbnb and the city went to court claiming the office was obligated to notify 20,000 short-term rental operators to give them a chance to weigh in on the dispute.
An adjudicator's decision released Wednesday says the commissioner's office is not required to contact the thousands of owners, finding it 'would not be a fair, timely or efficient administration' of the act, and both the city and company could have raised the issue 'as early as possible but failed to do so.'
Rezel says the information he's seeking is likely out of date now, but he plans to continue fighting for access, over the dispute that has evolved from access to housing data to a 'battle for public transparency' and corporate interests versus a citizen's right to access public information.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 8, 2025.
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Winnipeg Free Press
8 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
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Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Global News
7 days ago
- Global News
Despite pushback, Montreal forges ahead with strict new short-term rental rules
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Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy Before the new bylaw, it was easier for people to rent their main residences for short periods, such as during a vacation. That led some people to use different schemes to falsely declare a full-time rental as a principal residence, and forcing inspectors into lengthy investigations to prove otherwise, the city said. Montreal's mayor said in January that despite the provincial law, more than half of the 4,000 units on short-term rental platforms did not comply with the rules. 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CTV News
7 days ago
- CTV News
Despite pushback, Montreal forges ahead with strict new short-term rental rules
Fog hangs over the skyline of Montreal on Jan. 1, 2025. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes.) Montreal is forging ahead with new rules banning many short-term rentals for nine months a year, hoping to alleviate a housing crunch and strike a blow in a lengthy battle against unauthorized listings. City council in March passed a new bylaw that will allow people to rent their principal residences for periods of 31 days or less only during peak tourist season, between June 10 and Sept. 10. They must also obtain a $300 permit from the city and meet previous requirements to register with the province. Full-time Airbnb units run by commercial enterprises are still allowed in parts of the city, but are restricted to a few streets and areas. Despina Sourias, a city councillor in charge of housing, said previous rules were hard to enforce because they allowed some property owners to avoid getting fined by stating a rental property was their main residence. The new rules, she said, will shift the burden of proof onto listing owners instead of inspectors. 'Before it was like, we have to go out and catch people, we've got to roam the streets,' she said in a phone interview. Banning short-term rentals in principal residences for nine months a year makes issuing fines much easier, Sourias said. 'You don't have your permit, you get a ticket,' she said. 'If you're doing it outside the time that you're allowed to do it, you get a ticket.' The new rules are the next step in a progressive crackdown across the province that began after seven people died in a fire in an Old Montreal building in March 2023. Six of the victims had been staying in Airbnb rentals, which the mayor confirmed were not allowed in that part of the city. After the fire, the provincial government tabled new legislation requiring platforms like Airbnb to only display ads that include a tourism licence number and expiry date. The city also hired a squad of inspectors to try to crack down. Before the new bylaw, it was easier for people to rent their main residences for short periods, such as during a vacation. That led some people to use different schemes to falsely declare a full-time rental as a principal residence, forcing inspectors into lengthy investigations to prove otherwise, the city said. Montreal's mayor said in January that despite the provincial law, more than half of the 4,000 units on short-term rental platforms did not comply with the rules. The new rules have received pushback from the province's tourism department, as well as from platforms such as Airbnb, which claim that they will hurt the city's economy and do little to improve housing affordability. Alex Howell, Airbnb's policy lead from Canada, called on the city to reverse what she called an 'extreme and short-sighted' rule change. 'This poorly thought-out decision will drive up hotel prices and make travel more expensive for Quebecers – nearly 140,000 of whom stayed in an Airbnb in Montreal last year – and weaken Montreal's ability to attract visitors for major events that fuel tourism throughout the year,' she said in a statement. Saif Yousif, a property manager for Park Place Properties, believes the new rules are overly restrictive. Yousif manages about 80 short-term rentals in the Montreal and Mont-Tremblant areas, including many owned by clients who want to rent their homes when they're travelling. Yousif feels the existing rules were already strict enough to prevent people from falsely claiming an investment property as a principal residence. The regulation, he said, 'makes it difficult for (homeowners) to take vacations or take some time off and leave the city' and is unlikely to result in units being returned to the long-term rental pool. The best way to keep rental prices down would be to build more housing, he added. Likewise, the province's tourism department said the new rules would not put an end to illegal rentals or the housing crisis. 'On the contrary, they could even worsen the situation by pushing more operators into illegality, returning Montreal to the Wild Web of before our reforms,' it said in a statement to The Canadian Press. But David Wachsmuth, the Canada Research Chair in urban governance at McGill University, believes Montreal may succeed where other cities have failed at cracking down on illegal rentals. He said platforms leave it up to cities to track down rule-breakers, which forces municipal officials to 'play detective' and figure out who's actually a principal resident and who isn't. He said enforcement will be easier under these rules, because anyone running an Airbnb outside the designated full-time rental areas can be automatically fined outside the summer season. 'Anybody who's running an Airbnb in March, if you're not on one of those very small number of corridors where you're allowed to do this (legally), it's just guaranteed that you're breaking the law,' he said. 'So that's just a really fundamental shift in how the overall process of being a short-term rental host is going to interact with the laws here in Montreal.' He said that most Montrealers who want to rent out their principal residence would likely do so mostly in the summer anyway. Therefore, the rules will only inconvenience legitimate home sharers while making it much harder for full-time unauthorized rentals to turn a profit. Wachsmuth also dismisses any claims that limiting short-term rentals won't help alleviate housing pressures, saying the research shows 'beyond any possible shred of a doubt' that communities that put short-term rental rules in place see their rents rise less slowly than those who don't. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 2, 2025.
