Saugeen Shores council has no immediate plans to regulate short-term rentals.
Councillors heard a presentation from consultants from J. L. Richardson Monday evening outlining ways rentals like AirBnBs or cottages might be monitored and regulated, from licensing them, to creating a code of conduct and displaying contact information in the event a property is a problem.
A number councillors voiced their criticism of starting a licensing program in Saugeen Shores, and in the end, a resolution to move the discussion forward didn’t get a seconder, putting a stop to the idea.
Consultants said municipal licensing enables a town to track or limit the amount of short-term rentals, penalize violations, generate revenue for the town and hold property owners accountable for issues. Consultants noted there were no reported issues or complaints. They estimate Saugeen Shores has roughly 163 short-term rentals in Southampton, Port Elgin and the rural areas.
Councillor Dave Myette noted the Town has been encouraging people to build additional accommodation in granny suites, in basements other units. “People are buying homes an using that extra suite on Air BnB or VRBO,” said Myette. He added, “I would never be in favour of regulating that out of existence.”
Myette said, “We do have bylaws to regulate these things, we have noise bylaws, we have dog bylaws, we have dogs off leash bylaws, we have lots of different bylaws — and quite frankly, we struggle to enforce the current bylaws we have.” He added, “To bring in a very complicated structure of points and demerit and licenses, number of rooms, inspections and costs for multiple inspections and yearly inspections and having to hire a full-time bylaw officer– it just seems like a lot of administration, and for that reason, I don’t think I’m going to be able to support this.”
Myette said, “I don’t think that we have a problem in our community.”
He added, “I’ll go further than that– I’ll say that we don’t need to look very far to find out whether or not this is a worthwhile program because as I’ve stated earlier, the municipality of Kincardine is going to be presumable adopting a very similar if not identical bylaw to what’s been suggested here today– in their municipality on Wednesday. All we have to do is wait a couple of years and see how it works out for them.”
Councillor Bud Halpin noted cottage park operators he’s spoken to are generally not in favour of being licenced or taxed. “I figure as soon as we register all these, the next logical step will be to tax them,” said Halpin. He acknowledged there is a concern that Saugeen Shores needs housing stock, but added, “Yet at the same time, we’re a tourist town and a lot of small business depend on tourists. A lot of restaurants do, obviously the cottage parks do and a lot of people depend on tourism. Having short-term rentals isn’t a bad word in Saugeen Shores,” said Halpin.
Deputy Mayor Diane Huber felt the Town should continue exploring the matter, explaining she felt there should be more equity between how hotels and motels are expected to operate and how STR owners operate. Huber said “I hope that even if we don’t do a licensing bylaw that we come up with some kind of education piece that is in some way provided to as many short-term rental accommodation owners as possible so that the concerns of the fire chief, the comments about insurance, the comments about a number of bylaws and parking was mentioned, noise was mentioned, I would add signage to that list too– that there’s an awareness level that perhaps we can see, I guess an opportunity for people to fit into a neighbourhood a little bit better when it’s not a ‘tourist area.’ ”
Councillor Rachel Stack agreed a lot of issues are already addressed by existing bylaws. She also suggested considering a municipal accommodation tax, explaining, “We spend a lot of time talking about what we need to do in this community to support what people want. I think it’s been very clear what people want. They want lower taxes but they also want investments in recreation. So we can talk about the credits and debits required to get there but I think I would rather see focus on an municipal accommodation tax which has plenty of evidence in this province as functioning well and not degrading tourism.”
“I’m not a huge fan of this licensing regime but I am a big fan of investigating whether a municipal accommodation tax is where we need to go,” added Stack.
Councillor John Divinski said he would support re-examining an accommodation tax. He noted he would not support a short-term rental licensing program because it would require the Town to hire a full-time officer.
Mayor Luke Charbonneau concluded the discussion, saying, “We’ve gotten a fulsome and very detailed look at short term rental licensing and what a regime might look like which is an important thing for council to see and understand because it was a topic that we identified in our 2025 business plan as something we wanted to think about.”
Charbonneau added, “Being totally transparent– I’ve never been in favour of a short-term rental licensing regime or a municipal accommodation tax for that matter and I don’t intend to become in favour of either of those things.” He said, “I think there are definitely folks out there in the community who are interested in us talking about these things and looking at them and understanding them. So we’ve done that here and concluded that with respect to Saugeen shores the level of the issue doesn’t necessarily merit the regime we’d have to structure to address whatever issues there are.”
Charbonneau explained, considering the role of short-term rentals started with a conversation about housing, saying, “This council has tried to do a huge array of things to get more housing in our community and this was one of the pieces we looked at. I think what we’ve ended up doing in Saugeen Shores is erring more on the side of reducing regulation and increasing incentives to get housing and we’ve been very successful at that. We’ve doubled the amount of purpose-built rentals in the community in the last three years. So that regime is working for us. It may not work in every community but it works in Saugeen Shores, so we don’t necessarily need additional regulation here in order to solve our housing issue. Certainly that’s my conclusion and I think maybe the conclusion of others around the table .”
Council did not support moving the discussion about short-term rentals forward.
Council has previously voted against a municipal accommodation tax, but a councillor can still bring a motion forward to see if council will discuss it again.