While Centre Wellington staff are currently investigating best practices from other municipalities, those involved and those impacted by Airbnbs weigh in on what the township should potentially do
CENTRE WELLINGTON – Thawing out from winter is something a lot of people look forward to, but seeing the calendar flip to April is something that fills Darcy Saunders with some dread.
That’s because Saunders, an Elora resident who lives just outside downtown, could throw a stone and hit the full house Airbnb built in 2021 right next door.
It’s been mostly a headache and a list of problems he’s had with it including blocking a shared right of way, guests exhibiting rowdy, obnoxious and drunken behaviour that goes late – sometimes as often as three times a week – through to November.
“They party until one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock in the morning,” Saunders said. “We have no idea what is going to come in, we don’t know if a family is going to come in here and is going to be good or whether that family is going to have a shit show. You’re basically walking on eggshells all the time.”
Saunders has never felt like he has a lot of recourse and short-term rentals like Airbnb are unregulated in the Township of Centre Wellington.
But that’s changing. Council recently passed a motion to have staff investigate best practices from other municipalities to create a program for short-term rentals in 2024.
Whether that be licensing, limiting the amount in the township or other means, most agree something needs to be in place. How far they should go, depends on who you ask. Some want to see the township crack down hard but others maintain short-term rentals are necessary reality in a growing tourist town.
Precisely what regulations may be coming remain unclear. Township spokesperson Kendra Martin said in an email staff were not ready to comment on what might be coming as they were investigating and would bring a report back to council.
Whatever might be coming, a group of Airbnb hosts are looking to make sure they’re heard by council through the process.
“We’ve been going at council for the first half of the year to make sure that nothing is going to be over-regulated for us,” said Janet Etherington, a host of two Airbnb units for the past eight years, but not the one causing Saunders the headaches. “(We’re) making sure that they see the need for and the importance of short-term rentals.”
A significant rise in tourism over the years in the region simply means short-term rentals are necessary, Etherington said, with the only traditional hotels being the modest-sized Village Inn or the high-priced Elora Mill — which itself is a big driver of Airbnb users.
“I would say probably 80 per cent of my bookings downtown are people who are going to (Elora) Mill weddings who want affordable accommodations,” Etherington said.
According to Etherington, overnight guests end up spending more locally as they typically eat out multiple times, have more time to shop at stores and take in events than someone taking a day trip to the area.
If there weren’t places to stay, overnight guests would take their business to another town.
“This is a problem across the country where you have regions that have become popular with tourists, but they don’t have enough vacation rental units, there are not enough hotel rooms and a lot of these places make up for the lack of tourist accommodations by converting housing stock into quasi-hotel inventory,” said Thorben Wieditz, executive director with Fairbnb, an advocacy organization launched in 2016 to advocate for protecting housing stock from being turned into hotel inventory.
Wieditz sees this as an increasing problem as Airbnb has shifted away from it being a home sharing platform — people temporarily renting out their primary residence — to the “commercialization of home sharing” with housing stock becoming full-time hotels.
“Tourists out-compete long-term tenants and folks can charge significantly more a month than they would be able to charge a long-term tenant,” Wieditz said.
In Wieditz’s view, this decreases the housing supply which brings a new set of problems like a lack of housing for hospitality workers and other local businesses which, ironically, could hurt the tourism industry.
Nathan Rotman, Airbnb’s regional lead for the US northeast and Canada, doesn’t agree with this being the case based on the units he saw on the platform in Elora and the area.
“In many cases, the properties being rented on the platform are generally not somewhere that are going to be good for someone coming in for the summer to work in a restaurant or anything like that,” Rotman said.
Etherington finds this to be the case too. When she tried to rent out to a long-term tenant, she couldn’t find anyone who wanted to live in a tiny unit above a restaurant.
“There was no parking, it was too loud downtown, people really didn’t want to live downtown and for the price I would have to rent them … it just wasn’t a good fit for anybody,” Etherington said.
Neither Rotman nor Etherington are opposed to regulations with Rotman adding Airbnb is willing to work with municipalities to ensure regulations meet local needs.
“We generally tell cities that they should be regulating based on the problem they’re trying to solve,” Rotman said. “If they want to know who is short-term renting and where, they should create a registration system.”
A registration or licensing system could help identify problem Airbnb rentals, said Centre Wellington Mayor Shawn Watters, and could potentially run on a merit based system where problem Airbnb units could lose their status with the township.
Watters also noted there is a need for short-term accommodations because of the growing tourism sector and didn’t expect to see Airbnbs be outright banned in town.
He stressed the need to find a balance to maintain the community feel as he’s heard of other towns being overrun with short-term rentals.
He recalled meeting a person who had moved from Picton, a small town in Prince Edward County, to Peterborough explaining to him, “I lost my community, I lived on a street we owned a house and houses were being bought up for Airbnbs and I lost my neighbours, to me that’s not a balanced community.”
“That struck me, in terms of, we have to be cognizant of that and make sure we maintain the heart and soul of our community,” Watters said. “We don’t want to lose our street to all Airbnbs. I know our community doesn’t want that to happen and even if you’re in the business of Airbnbs, I don’t think you want that to happen either.”
This may mean a potential cap on the number of short-term rentals in the township as part of upcoming regulations.
The current number is hard to quantify, even by Airbnb, as Rotman explained the area doesn’t register on the system as having enough listings to give him good data.
Etherington has found there are about 92 units in Centre Wellington, run by 68 hosts with most being local residents. She said a common misconception is these properties are mostly owned by out-of-towners.
She has also never had an issue with noisy Airbnb users and suspects units that are a nuisance to neighbours are an anomaly and hasn’t had any problems personally although her units are meant for two or three people at most.
While some are worried about over regulation, Saunders is hoping the township cracks down to help alleviate the problems he’s had living next door to a noisy Airbnb. He believes the short-term rental units should have to be in someone’s primary residence.
“This wouldn’t be happening if the homeowner lived there,” Saunders said, referring to his problems with noise and rowdy behaviour.
This is something Fairbnb is calling for too, along with more accountability from the platform itself.
“It’s all anonymized on these platforms,” Wieditz said, explaining in some cities platforms have to register to do business in the city and can only list licensed properties. “Platforms themselves can then be fined if you go and check the listings and see that the listing advertised on the platform doesn’t have a valid permit.”
Wieditz said the province may need to step in to establish rules and regulations, as is being seen in Quebec and B.C.
“They do this precisely because smaller townships and smaller jurisdictions often don’t have the resources (for enforcement),” Wieditz said.
As per the motion passed at a previous council meeting, the Township of Centre Wellington will have a program in place starting May 1, 2024.