It’s Time to Treat Short-Term Rentals Like Businesses – Because They Are

Home sharing started as an opportunity to help homeowners make ends meet. Owner-occupied short-term rentals, which support that original objective, don’t pose the same issues as commercial short-term rentals.

But there is a big difference between opening part of your home to guests and running separate investment properties as de facto hotel suites. When properties are used exclusively as short-term rentals to generate income, they’re no longer being used as a home. They’re being used as a business.

Treating commercial short-term rentals like businesses, and regulating them responsibly, could reduce many of the risks they bring and create public benefit. An appropriate consultation process with neighbours could help protect neighbours’ rights. Collecting reasonable commercial property taxes, like all other businesses have to pay, could help fund important public projects and priorities. Holding short-term rental operators accountable to the same health and safety standards as businesses like hotels would help ensure guests’ safety.

Online short-term rental services like Airbnb have been running for over a decade, and they’ve grown exponentially. In 2017, the CBC reported a 284% increase in the number of annual Airbnb bookings in Edmonton in just one year. Across Alberta, the short-term rental industry has grown by an astounding 1713% since 2015.

These services were designed to support home sharing, where homeowners open part of their home for short-term guests to rent. Some people still use these platforms that way, but they are now outnumbered by a different type of host – operators who run whole-property rentals, and often more than one property, as a commercial enterprise.