What goes around

AirBnB offers a contribution to affordable housing

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities held its annual series of meetings in Halifax, Nova Scotia recently. The conference focuses on hot-button topics for municipalities and two of our local councillors, Bill Roberts and Kevin Gale, were in attendance. AirBnB makes sure that a number of their executives attend these types of conferences, given the nature of the company’s relationship with municipalities across Canada. As a part of those undertakings, AirBnB reached out to Roberts and Gale and the councillors met twice over the three-day conference. AirBnB has over 600 listings in the County, with a total host earning of more than $4.8 million and 40,000 total annual guest arrivals (2017 data). The rental company also has extensive memoranda of understanding between themselves and communities around the world, some with close to 275 items. As far as North America is concerned, a part of these memoranda include a “voluntary” contribution built into the cost of the short-term rental. This contribution is set at four per cent, and that revenue would go back to the municipality with the intent that it be used for affordable housing. That would translate into an additional $250,000 annually starting in 2019 to put towards an affordable/ attainable housing fund for residents. This partnership opportunity is not unique to the county, and relationships like this have already been established in Ottawa and Vancouver Island, and will commence in August of this year.

Councillor Bill Roberts (above) recently attended the Federation of Canadian Municipalities meetings in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

There are couple of steps that need to be taken by the County for this tax to be introduced. Luckily, headway towards this has already been made by Roberts, who in the 2018 budget process, put forward a motion and called for a recorded vote to insert $250,000 into the 2019 budget as a catalyst for affordable housing initiatives. That combined with the potential $250,000 from the AirBnB contribution would mean a half million dollars annually put towards affordable housing.

“What we learned at the conference from the workshops on affordable housing is that many communities in Canada have taken their municipal contributions to affordable housing and approached their provincial and federal counterparts and have been successful in triggering similar amounts from senior levels of government. So, with a little sweat equity, I’m pretty confident we can turn our municipal $500,000 into $1.5 million. Those upper levels of government always look favourably on municipalities that have already put skin in the game,” says Roberts.

The federal government recently announced its first ever National Housing Strategy and on July 11 in Kingston a meeting will be held to launch that strategy. A component of the National Housing Strategy has to do with matching funds collected by Canadian municipalities. Roberts has confirmed that he will be attending that meeting.

The next steps for the County in making sure that this AirBnB relationship is established requires two things: getting the due-diligence done and getting the policy framework articulated. After those are completed, the County can move to an implementation plan. Luckily, Roberts and council have already made progress on most of this.

“Now, we need our senior civil service people to find the opportunity to sit down with the AirBnB counterparts and look at what a memorandum of understanding looks like. Luckily, we don’t have to re-invent the wheel because three hours away in Ottawa, they are already through to the finish line. It’s about photocopying and moving forward,” says Roberts.

AirBnB also wanted to make it clear to our councillors that they are cracking down on the “bad apples” in the BnB world. Those that break noise bylaws, overcrowd rental properties and are destructive and abusive to properties. Repeat offenders of that nature, and ones that have been reported by the municipality will be taken off the AirBnB roster.