
Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals - Tiktaalik
http://vancouver.ca/news-calendar/city-signs-first-mou-in-canada-with-airbnb-for-short-term-rentals.aspx
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pkaler
This seems like reasonable regulation.

And all of this demand-side management is going to do nothing for
affordability. Housing affordability is a supply-side zoning issue and can be
fixed very quickly:

\- Unify/standardize zoning. The entire country of Japan only has about a
dozen different zoning types. I see more than a dozen zoning types from my
home office window.

\- Stop going to council for spot upzoning. This should not be a council
function. This should be handled by city operations.

\- Upzone Grandview-Woodland and Hastings-Sunrise from RS-1 to RM-4. RM-4 is
how Kitsilano is zoned. TADA! You’ve just created 50,000 housing units and
solved the whole problem.

Zoning visualization:
[http://maps.nicholsonroad.com/zones/](http://maps.nicholsonroad.com/zones/)

~~~
knuththetruth
Supply is part of the problem, but the real culprit is that housing has been
financialized and opened up as an investment vehicle for global capital. It
doesn’t really matter if you change zoning laws if everything that gets built
is to serve this kind of investment. Major cities in the US, such as LA and
NYC, simultaneously have huge lots of vacant luxury housing stock and
homelessness crises for precisely this reason.Vancouver has obviously taken
steps to curb the worst excesses of this, but it’s still vulnerable to this
form of “market failure.”

~~~
stale2002
The solution to housing being used as an investment is to build so much
housing supply that this investment becomes worthless.

Why SHOULDN'T we just let the Chinese build a bunch of empty buildings? It's
their money and if they want to waste it building us cheap housing on an
investment that will eventually go bust, I say we let them.

The solution is scorched earth, "LOL, you thought your investment was going to
go up, but instead we built such a ridiculous amount of housing that houses
are now free for everyone".

~~~
freshhawk
Why not? Because we've seen places where that basic series of events took
place.

That takes a long time to play out, and other factors come in to play during
that time.

~~~
mistermann
Places where the building was via foreign investment, in cash, absorbing all
risk?

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eumenides1
This looks like a pretty good agreement for both parties. AirBnB continues to
operate in Vancity, Vancity can set rules and governance to short term
rentals.

The most important is that Vancity can deny the ability for commercial
operators pretending to be residential operators and punish those that
persist.

\- Short-term rentals will only be allowed in a principal residence, where the
operator resides for more than 180 days of the year and receives mail \-
Commercial operators or other properties that do not qualify for the short-
term rental business license program will be subject to these new fines
effective April 19.

The ball is really in Vancity's court here as they can enforce (or not) as
necessary.

~~~
walrus01
Please don't call Vancouver Vancity repeatedly. This is not a local thing.
Vancity is a credit union. In local development, politics and such the city
government is usually abbreviated as CoV (City of Vancouver) to distinguish it
from the other similarly named entities, all of which are separate cities:

City of West Vancouver

District of North Vancouver

City of North Vancouver

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancity)

~~~
parliament32
Hearing someone call it "Vancity" is the quickest way to spot an out-of-towner
trying to blend in.

To us, Vancity is a credit union. The only related abbreviation I hear time to
time is "Van".

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lwansbrough
Still can't get a taxi most nights unless you call an hour ahead. In fact,
you'll be able to get legal weed in this city before you can hail a ride
service.

~~~
fatbird
On a Saturday night at dinnertime, I get cabs within 5-10 minutes, and I'm
(just) outside downtown. Between the individual cab company apps and eCab,
Vancouver's taxi services have shaped up a lot. One cabbie even described in
detail how their company punished drivers who don't respond reliably to
booking requests through the app. Same company told me one time when I called
that it would be as fast to book through the app since it all goes into the
same system anyway.

I'll credit the threat of Uber with triggering this systemic change, but I
never recognize complaints like yours. I get cabs reliably and reasonably
quickly even on peak nights.

~~~
lwansbrough
> I'll credit the threat of Uber with triggering this systemic change

This is a really, really important caveat in your argument. Even the _threat_
of Uber was enough to improve cab services. Now let's actually have ride
hailing _competition_ (provided Uber is held to the same standards as taxis.)

As for cab drivers, I've heard no shortage of complaints from friends and
family about cabs (be it the money, service, availability, etc.) Living just
outside downtown I suspect is much better for getting cabs than living
downtown, as cab drivers are heading back downtown for more pickups anyway
quite often (especially on Saturday nights.)

Never mind trying to just hail a cab off the street - I've been denied a few
times based on where I was going, which I'm pretty sure is illegal. There's no
legitimate argument against ride hailing services like Uber so long as they're
operating with the same standards, unless you're a cabbie who stands to lose
work.

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jaclaz
As always happens in these cases, I believe that whatever public authority
(the municipality, the governement, etc.) making an "agreement" with a private
company does three (IMHO) _terrible_ things:

1) undervalues its own authority (ultimately the authority of citizens/people)
to simply make a Law or regulation and enforce it

2) recognizes to a private company (which big as it might be is only one of
the various playes in the field) a "contractual force" that the company should
not have, besides giving to it a lot of brand publicity for free

3) consequently all other companies operating in the same field are (without
any particular reason) underprivileged, somehow reinforcing and helping the
attempts to become a monopoly of the "big one".

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vkou
The rules for qualifying for a rental license are detailed, and pretty
reasonable. They permit renting out a room, or your house if you live in it,
but do not permit turning an apartment complex into an AirBnB hotel. In short,
you can let on AirBnB, as long as you are not diminishing housing stock. [1]

It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good.

[1] [http://vancouver.ca/doing-business/short-term-
rentals.aspx](http://vancouver.ca/doing-business/short-term-rentals.aspx)

> Short-term rentals are allowed when:

> It's your principal residence, in other words, where you live most of the
> year and the residential address you use for bills, identification, taxes,
> and insurance

> It's a legal dwelling unit (a home with an address that complies with all
> applicable regulations, including building code and fire safety)

> You have a short-term rental business licence

> If you're renting, your landlord allows you to sublet your home as a short-
> term rental

> If you're in a strata, your strata bylaws support short-term rentals in your
> building

~~~
conanbatt
Short term rentals do not diminish housing stock, and help a city get more
tourism which is by all means good for the whole. Its one more case of locals
that vote vs non-locals that dont, even if they are way more numerous.

If Vancouver finds itself short of houses by whatever measure, they have to
look elsewhere.

~~~
vkou
When I buy an apartment, and sublet it to a long-term tenant, one unit of
housing exists.

When I kick that long-term tenant out, and turn it into a AirBnB hotel, I just
took one unit of housing from the market for locals, and added one unit of
housing to the tourist market.

> more tourism which is by all means good for the whole

This is contentious. The city may be better off as a whole if it did not have
4,000 homeless people, many of whom were priced out of their apartments, due
to tourism, foreign buyers, etc.

To many people, more tourism brings little to no benefit, while a reduced
housing stock brings much direct harm.

~~~
conanbatt
> This is contentious. The city may be better off as a whole if it did not
> have 4,000 homeless people, many of whom were priced out of their
> apartments, due to tourism, foreign buyers, etc.

Homeless people existed in SF long before Airbnb existed.

> To many people, more tourism brings little to no benefit, while a reduced
> housing stock brings much direct harm.

Yes, to long term renters. There is no doubt that long term renters would
prefer no short term renters existed. They would also prefer for all units to
be rent controlled, or that landlords and property owners gave their
properties for free.

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chillacy
Nice, I hated feeling like I was doing something shady whenever renting
AirBnBs in vancouver, they always had directions like don't talk to anyone,
always mention that you were a relative from out of town, etc, so as not to
attract attention.

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tareqak
There was no definition of MOU in the article.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) is an agreement between two (bilateral) or
more (multilateral) parties. It expresses a convergence of will between the
parties, indicating an intended common line of action. It is often used in
cases where parties either do not imply a legal commitment or in situations
where the parties cannot create a legally enforceable agreement. It is a more
formal alternative to a gentlemen's agreement.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding)

