Calgary city council approved new bylaw regulations for short-term rentals like Airbnb on Monday. Part of the recommendations included having a two-tiered business licence category for the short-term rental operators, based on number of rooms they are renting out.
The first tier would be for operators with one to four rooms with business license fees of $100 per year. The second tier, for five rooms or more, would have to pay $191 for a business license and have a mandatory fire safety inspection for a fee of $104.
Diane Colley-Urquhart, chair of the community services committee, said these new bylaw regulations will help bring the short-term rental market legitimacy.
“There are people in the business now that maybe have 10, 20 or 30 of these units and they are renting them out,” Colley-Urquhart said Monday.
“People are really making this quite a business opportunity and good for them. But guess what? They’re not paying any taxes on that revenue they are generating.”
The Ward 13 councillor also told members of city council that a public hearing drew a lot of interest from the public.
“There were a lot of excellent suggestions brought forward and the committee was assured that these ideas and concerns would be taken into account by administration and put into the operational practice and the licensing piece.”
City administration aims to have the new regulations in place for February 2020, with a report coming back to the standing policy committee on community and protective services in December.
“These regulations are all aimed at ensuring safety for guests and create transparency between guests, operators and the community,” Cody Weiss, City of Calgary business strategist, said in a statement.
“We are developing a policy document that will clarify for operators their requirements to comply with the new regulation. Our goal over the next couple of months is to get citizens comfortable with what a regulated environment will be like.”
Council also approved amendments to the Lodging House definition and regulations which currently do not include Airbnb-style short-term rentals.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi said the recommendations are a great first step.
“Overall, this is the right way to go,” Nenshi told council Monday. “However, in some cases we need to go much further, to one we cannot actually do.
“Because the provincial government has stalled on the changing of the destination marketing fee to an actual hotel tax, it makes our life very difficult. The destination marketing fee is purely voluntary.
“I really want to see a world where we charge a hotel tax for these folks to help us fund our tourism and other activities in the city, and I know in my conversations with Airbnb they are fine with that,” Nenshi said.
In a release, the city said they will approve tier one licences in as little as 24 hours and plan to offer a short-term rental operators guide online.
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