Too Much for the Community

In many cities around the world, including New York, Barcelona, Tokyo and Berlin, the impact of short-term rentals has crept far beyond any property’s direct neighbours. When there are very few barriers around running a short-term rental, many property owners make much more money offering short-term rentals than they would offering traditional longer-term leases. When too many people rush to capitalize on that opportunity at once, it sets cities back on social issues they’re working hard to fix.

Converting homes into commercial short-term rentals takes those homes out of the city’s available housing stock. As housing supply decreases, housing costs increase and housing shortages get worse. A lack of affordable housing is an issue on its own, and it’s also a driver of complex social problems like homelessness and poverty. In Edmonton’s current economic downtown, it’s easy to forget the pressures we’ll feel again when strengthening market conditions start bringing workers back to Alberta. Those workers and their families will need housing, and having housing available will be key to economic growth and recovery.

Without any limit on how many short-term rental properties can be opened or where they can be located, the impacts neighbours notice, like higher traffic, more noise, congestion and parking shortages, can spread across whole communities, compromising livability and quality of life. Not every neighbourhood was designed to accommodate commercial traffic – when commercial short-term rentals start popping up, those limitations become obvious. And of course, when short-term rentals become the site of terrible crimes like shootings, human trafficking and sexual exploitation, that also affects the whole community.

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