Editor:
Once again your letters page is inundated with complaints about short-term rentals on the “coast” – the theme of which is reducing the shortage of housing – which led me to wondering.
I wonder how many of those so vehemently opposed to STRs have made space available in their homes and taken in a long-term renter to help ease the housing shortage.
I wonder if the complainers know that by far the majority of operators of STRs do so because they have to, not because they are rapacious capitalists. STR operators have space in their homes available to accommodate friends and family that wish to visit. But they also need extra income without getting involved in long-term rentals. STR operators often have lower than average income. Young people struggling to afford the cost of housing and in need of a “mortgage helper” to get by. They are pensioners who do not have huge taxpayer-funded, gold-plated, indexed pensions to carry them through their old age.
And I wonder where all this much vaunted “mayhem” in STRs occurs. I have numerous STRs in my neighborhood and have never experienced a problem with any of them. I am barely aware of their existence!
Government involvement in attempts to force people to rent their properties against their will have all failed miserably – as is self-evident from the fact that the problem continues despite governmental interventions over the years. Attempting to force homeowners to offer long-term rentals within their private homes will fail just as miserably in the stated aim of increasing the availability of housing.
Allan Goulding, Gibsons
