Don’t be fooled – Ottawa’s new AirBnB rules are about NIMBYism, not cracking down on ‘ghost hotels’, which will still be legal.
Some background: After Ford’s changes to the Ontario Autism Program, we found ourselves faced with $82,000/yr in healthcare bills for our son. While my wife and I are lucky enough to have great jobs, that’s a whole lot of money. We have a “granny suite” in our house that we have for visiting family. When they’re not visiting, we rent it out on AirBnB. It’s a great arrangement – we can set it aside for visiting family, but when they’re not using it we can rent it out to others and help pay our healthcare bills.
Earlier this year, the City received a consultant’s report on “ghost hotels”. I have to admit, I ignored it. We don’t run a ghost hotel, and I’m broadly supportive of the goal of creating more rental housing.
A few weeks ago, we were tipped off that the City of Ottawa we’re going to propose rules that were significantly different than those recommended by the consultants. Rules that would make our rental illegal.
That’s exactly what happened. Our AirBnB is now illegal. Why? Because instead of cracking down on ghost hotels, the city has decided to instead decide to allow some ghost hotels and instead focus on NIMBYism.
Ghost hotels would still be legal in much of Ottawa
From the proposed regs:
Staff’s assessment of the rental of cottages and other vacation homes is that it is a long-standing practice that does not tend to generate the same community nuisance or public health and safety issues as in urban and suburban areas. As such, staff recommends that STR [short-term rentals] hosts of rural zones (AG, RR, RU) be required to obtain an STR permit but be exempt from the proof of primary residency and occupancy limit requirements.
While an exemption for cottages does make some sense, there’s a couple thing to note here:
- Staff has defined literally anything in one of these zones as a cottage. So ghost hotels would still be perfectly legal in large parts of the city.
- The “community nuisance” language is a tell. The city’s priority isn’t ghost hotels, it’s elsewhere.
The ban on “secondary units”
The City fully admits that they’re going against the consultant’s recommendations (which they do have every right to do):
While Maclaren recommended permitting STR in secondary units within residential zones, as well as permitting investment priorities to conduct STR in mixed-use zones, it is staff’s evaluation that this would not be in the public interest.”
So we’re banned. But there’s an out…
Apparently, the City will allow us to knock down a wall, install a security door that can be locked at all times, and it will no longer be considered a “secondary unit”.
HOW ON EARTH DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE?
We can pay a few thousand dollars, install a door we’ll never use, and reduce the fire separation between the units. Then it’s fine. It’s literally the same unit, for the same purpose, but with thousands of dollars for pointless “upgrades” that make the unit less safe.
This is so mindbogglingly dumb. Ottawa City Hall is where common sense goes to die.
