Editor:
I agree with the points Richard Carton made about short-term rentals (STRs) in his letter of Nov. 20 (“Henderson misses mark”). Here in Gibsons the process of developing a bylaw to regulate STRs seems to have gone down the proverbial rabbit hole. After starting out with the best of intentions, council unveiled a reasonable proposal for a bylaw in June. One of the main provisions of this bylaw would have required the STR owner to live on-site. Council has since buckled under sustained pressure from a small group of STR “stakeholders” and has proposed kneecapping the bylaw by now allowing what they call “un-hosted STRs.” To his credit,
Mayor Beamish has opposed this change and the bylaw has been sent back to the Planning and Development Committee yet again.
I doubt many would dispute the fact that many rooms and secondary suites that previously had been rented on a long-term basis have over the past few years become STR listings. A town that allows this process to go unchecked, especially a vacation destination such as Gibsons, risks having its residential neighbourhoods hollowed out. Renters of every description – single family, low income, seniors, young singles – will be displaced by transient tourists staying at what are really “mini-hotels.” With each room or suite converted to an STR, one more desperate renter is forced into a dwindling, ever more expensive rental market. I know of a young single working mother with a five-year-old boy who lives in a trailer on an unserviced lot up the road. She is now facing eviction.
Let’s get our priorities straight here. Is it going to be money or people and community? With the rental market in Gibsons and the Sunshine Coast being the tightest it has been in 15 years (Coast Reporter, Nov. 13), and the bleak plight of renters of all kinds documented in the recent Sunshine Coast Housing Needs Assessment Report, why is Gibsons town council giving priority to the needs of a small number of STR operators over the greater needs of the community?
Joseph Davis, Gibsons
