The pandemic has made Quebecers want to take advantage of the largesse of their larger-than-life territory. The pressure for short-term rentals has become so strong and so sudden in several municipalities with undeniable charms that mayors and residents fear the breaking point, as eloquently illustrated by our reporter Zacharie Goudreault dispatched to the Laurentians to document the phenomenon. Legitimate, their cry from the heart nevertheless calls for an exercise in reason.
The danger with the dialogue that has begun between promoters, vacationers, municipalities and residents is that it carries the seeds of a syndrome: that of “not in my backyard”. However, if there is one thing that we have learned the hard way during our long months of forced confinement, it is that the court, precisely, and more broadly nature are not wealth equitably shared between all.
Good air and wide open spaces are for many an inaccessible daily luxury. Especially for younger generations and low-income households and families for whom access to property looks like a chimerical unicorn, even more so since inflation has gone into a spin. Imagine owning a cottage! These short-term rentals are, for them, real and necessary breaths of fresh air.
For the municipalities that host them, these clienteles – much more numerous, moreover, than the gang unbridled young people who are systematically singled out by the destroyers of short-term rentals — are also sources of income that can become predictable and structuring if they are well supervised. It is in this spirit of social equity and generational equity, and therefore so that the good times belong to all to paraphrase “the good times” of Piché, that we should work.
This in-depth reflection is urgent. The Legault government has adopted a regulation that will allow Quebecers to rent their main residence for the short term, anywhere in Quebec, as of March 2023. Municipalities therefore have less than six months to decide on the matter and welcome the reservations, both reasonable and irrational, that come with the use of Airbnb-type platforms, which are often demonized. Not without reason sometimes.
Loopholes, there is already a whole range of them. The Ministry of Tourism has planned referendum mechanisms that give a lot of leeway to towns and villages that wish to remain masters of their own land. The good ideas that allow this autonomy must travel and grow.
Some have taken the lead with restrictive zoning. In the Magdalen Islands, where the housing crisis is raging, we have chosen to reserve the creation of new tourist residences for targeted resort areas. The goal is to prevent devitalization, discourage one-upmanship and protect heritage and ecosystems. It’s not perfect, but as Mayor Jonathan Lapierre summed up in these pages last February, it “puts the lid on the pot”.
In the Laurentians, where pressure from developers is immense, some municipalities have added to their arsenal a measure that more directly targets the portfolio of recalcitrant owners. In Morin-Heights, for example, fines of $200 a day did nothing to discourage offenders whose handsomely paid rentals were more than enough to relieve a little swipe on their fingers. At $1,000 a day, the deterrent effect is immediate and long-lasting.
The problem is that with these flexible tools in their arsenal, the municipalities still keep their hands tied because of the limits of a fiscal pact that they constantly denounce. Having powers without having the necessary means to think about their implementation and to enforce them inevitably opens up breaches. This fragility has not escaped speculators and pleads for the revision of city financing.
The example of Brownsburg-Chatham, where a real estate project for 165 rental chalets intended for tourists is causing concern, is a good illustration of the tensions faced by municipalities seeking to diversify their income. Claiming to listen to its citizens, the City has planned zones allocated to vacationing and buffer zones in order to minimize nuisances in residential sectors. Many doubt this approach. But with a double tax rate for tourist residences, the City does not intend to stop there.
This example alone concentrates the balance that is so difficult to find between economic development and the quality of life of permanent residents. Each region would benefit from adopting a land use plan providing quantified targets for the protection of green spaces and equipped with mechanisms that allow tourism to be concentrated or even restricted to certain places chosen and designed as such. As it stands, greedy promoters still have too much leeway.