Housing groups call for federal government to release $50M short‑term rental enforcement fund

“We welcomed the Federal Government’s announcement of the Short-Term Rental Enforcement Fund in the fall of 2023, but urgently need these funds to be released and put to work. Canadian tenants pay for every month that goes by without strong, well-enforced short-term rental regulations in the form of higher rent increases,” explains JJ Fueser, a researcher with the Fairbnb network.

The call comes on the heels of a series of reports led by David Wachsmuth, Canada research chair in urban governance at McGill University, which found strong evidence that existing STR regulations designed to protect housing saved BC tenants $600 million and Ontario tenants more than $1 billion last year in avoided rent.

The reports are based on a multi-year independent research project evaluating the impact of STR regulations on Canadian housing markets, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

“Our findings build on peer-reviewed studies from around the world linking growth in commercial short-term rentals to community-wide increases in housing costs,” says Wachsmuth. “They also let us quantify the cumulative impact of regulations that restrict short-term rentals to a host’s principal residence.”

Advocates say that robust enforcement is needed partly because of the lucrative nature of STRs. Wachsmuth’s team found that in Ontario, commercial short-term rentals generated nearly five times the revenue of long-term tenancies.

“Our priority must be to ensure that people in Canada have access to safe, affordable, secure and adequate housing,” explains Michèle Biss, national director of the National Right to Housing Network. “The federal government recognized housing as a human right in 2019, now it’s time for action to make that real for tenants.”

Tenants could see increased relief with better enforcement. After B.C. passed landmark provincial short-term rental regulations covering most of the province in May, only 15 per cent of non-compliant listings had been removed by July. Thousands of illegal listings remain even in cities that have long restricted STRs to a host’s principal residence, like Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver.

“We still see tenants who are facing eviction from their homes so landlords can pursue short-term rentals,” says Sarah Sproule, director of legal services at Community Legal Services of Ottawa. “While we see signs that Ottawa’s principal residence regulations are having an effect, there are still some hosts who violate the rules with impunity.  No one should lose a home due to illegal short-term rental speculation. The enforcement fund will help municipalities deter this practice.”