A Coast-wide Housing Needs Assessment (HNA) is expected to trigger a new public hearing on the draft short-term rental (STR) bylaw in Gibsons.
The bylaw is still awaiting third reading after a public hearing in the summer and votes by council to defer consideration of further readings.
A report prepared by Lesley-Anne Staats, the Town’s director of planning, for the Oct. 6 meeting of the planning and development committee, says that when elected officials from Gibsons, the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) and Sechelt met Sept. 18 for a workshop to cover key findings from the assessment, they were presented with “new information [that] may influence council’s decision on how to proceed with regulating short-term rentals and may change public perception on the bylaws.”
The full Housing Needs Assessment report, which will also be received by the committee Oct. 6, notes that a “scan” of Airbnb listings in mid-April found 854 units in the online booking site’s inventory for the Sunshine Coast.
The report says that amounts to roughly six per cent of all the dwellings on the Coast, with the highest concentration in Roberts Creek where an estimated 16 per cent of the total private housing stock, or 240 properties, include an Airbnb room or suite.
In Gibsons the assessment found the STR inventory of 83 rooms or suites amounted to about four per cent the total private housing stock.
Staats says in her report on the implications of the HNA for the short-term rental bylaw that the assessment found Gibsons has the highest proportion of renter households, 28 per cent, on the Coast.
“Feedback from the housing needs assessment community engagement suggests that there is high demand for rental housing, which is not being met by the current supply of rental options across the Coast,” the report says.
“Some feedback from the [July] STR public hearing suggested that STR’s take away from long-term rental housing stock, although some STR operators have insisted that is not the case.”
According to Staats’ report, regardless of whether council decides to continue with the bylaw as written or make amendments in light of the information in the HNA, a new public hearing will be needed.
The suggested date for the new public hearing is Oct. 21.
The SCRD’s proposed new short-term rental bylaw is also awaiting a final vote, but general manager of planning and community development Ian Hall said the regional district will not be holding a new public hearing.
The District of Sechelt has also been considering changes to how it regulates short-term rentals, but at this stage there are no bylaw amendments before council.
