The short-term rental (STR) bylaw that’s been sitting at second reading in Gibsons is going back to the planning and development committee as a process one councillor described as “painful” continues.
At its Nov. 3 meeting the planning and development committee voted to recommend a report on amendments that would allow one unhosted STR per owner, limit an unhosted STR to 60 rental days a year, allow them in commercial zones and require the operator to be a resident of Gibsons.
When the recommendation came to council Nov. 17, Mayor Bill Beamish, who was not at the committee meeting, said he wouldn’t support any of the proposed changes.
“I am not one to believe that we should gut our community by keeping houses empty for weekend visitors,” he said. “It does nothing for us. It does not create community. It does not create neighbourhoods. It further isolates seniors who already live in those neighbourhoods and feel isolated.”
At one point in the discussion Coun. Aleria Ladwig, who also chaired the planning and development committee, referred to the process of finalizing the bylaw as “a painful one.”
“There’s so many nuances to this bylaw and it is a challenging, a challenging situation,” she said.
Beamish said the question of how to handle unhosted STRs is the main stumbling block in moving forward with a bylaw that council had said previously it wanted to have in place by next year’s tourist season.
“I don't think that short-term rentals, per se, are a problem in the community. We have a minority of short-term rentals that are unhosted and that seems to be where we’re having a problem… And the unfortunate part about it is we’re leaving everything in limbo for the sake of [dealing with] a few.”
Coun. Stafford Lumley also spoke of the need to move forward and suggested that an entire committee agenda should be dedicated to hammering out the details.
“This cannot be one of eight things on the agenda… This is a lot of discussion, and I just don't want to hurry through it,” he said.
Ladwig said council should also rethink why it wants an STR bylaw in the first place.
“I think maybe we just got off on the wrong foot a little bit on this one in that we didn’t ask ourselves what do we want out of this bylaw for the community,” she said. “We took the perspective of just the stakeholder as opposed to perhaps some broader community needs like ensuring long-term rental space … and maybe that's why we are where we are today.”
There was no date set for the bylaw to go back to committee.
