MAPLETON – Short-term rentals such as bed and breakfasts are not monitored, regulated or inspected in Mapleton – but staff and council may change that.
The township’s planning department presented a draft bylaw to council on July 9 that outlined options for regulating short-term rental accommodations (STRA).
The draft defines STRAs and includes rules regarding number of guests, parking spaces, fire safety, inspections, insurance, licensing and municipal fees.
It strives to “strike a balance between housing availability and attainability while at the same time supporting economic development and tourism,” planning staff stated in a report to council.
A public meeting will be held to gather input on STRAs but a date has not yet been set.
Mapleton planners have been reviewing their approach to managing STRAs since 2021, when Ontario announced additional rental accommodations were to be granted as-of-right zoning, meaning owners only require a building permit – not official plan or zoning bylaw approvals – to create rental accommodations on their property.
The provincial change was made in response to the housing crisis, as an effort to make more long-term and permanent rental housing available sooner.
Mapleton planning and development manager Michelle Brown said ever since the change, “everybody wants to put a tiny home, a bunkie, something on their property.
“There’s a lot of really good reasons for that,” she said.
“People are hurting. People need other forms of income. So they can either try and sell their home, or they can put in an extra unit.”
But without a bylaw or zoning amendment, “I have no enforcement piece for when people go ahead and do whatever they want – if it doesn’t meet building code, if it doesn’t meet property standards, if it doesn’t meet a number of things.
“I have to be the person that crushes dreams to say, ‘yes the province has said you can do that. Unfortunately, we still cannot allow it,’” Brown said.
The township does allow bed and breakfasts, Brown noted, “We always have.
“We put a cap on it in terms of the number of rooms – it’s supposed to be minor [and] within your primary residence.”
But Mapleton STRAs are popping up online, Brown said, and “we have no way to monitor it. I don’t know if people are being taxed properly.
“Unless somebody complains, I only get to hear about the ones that people want to put up on their property,” when they apply for building permits.
Brown said the planning department gets frequent calls such as “‘Can I put three on here?; I want to create a glamping situation; I want to create these other types of experiences.” There are no hotels or motels in Mapleton, “so its not to say there’s not a need,” Brown noted.
“Ideally, to help grow our economy, we need all of these different pieces. But when things go the wrong way, I don’t have a good way to address it.”
Brown said there are STRAs in Mapleton with no one living on site, leading to concerns about what will happen when issues arise – will someone be able to come to the property?
The draft addresses these concerns by stipulating the owner or person responsible for the property “must be able to respond and can attend at the property and premises not later than 60 minutes after the initial contact in case of emergency.”
If the municipality required STRAs to be registered, “then if people are contacting us, at least at a bare minimum we would be able to tell them that ‘yes, they exist in our community, here’s where they are, here are the ones that we know that exist and have a floor plan, a fire escape, are built to code and fire code.’ And that there is a responsible individual … within the vicinity or somewhere close by,” Brown said.
Owners would register and pay the fee online, Brown said, and township staff would inspect the properties annually.
The 14-page draft bylaw includes a wide range of regulations, but Brown told councillors “it’s purely a draft, purely a sample,” and suggested they may opt for something more simple.
“I do need to know how to move forward with this,” she noted, “because it is not my intention to penalize people who are looking for another source of income, who are also providing a service.”
Councillor Michael Martin expressed concern about “over regulation.
“I know we need some regulation on this, but … I read countless articles in cottage country where this is just an absolute nightmare trying to enforce. And I would expect it to turn into the same thing here.
“Which means increased staffing costs – these things are never revenue neutral, which turns into another burden on the taxpayer.
“I would welcome a more comprehensive look at what option two would be, in the absence of this bylaw,” he said.
“You’re absolutely correct – as we grow, and as things happen, it’s either going on the tax base or we’re doing fee-for-service, and we’re going to have to increase our staff … so it will have a potentially large financial impact,” Brown said.
“But right now it could be completely minimal. We could offer anything up as a trial basis,” she said, including not going any further than defining STRA.
The public meeting will be an opportunity to “see if there’s an appetite. Is it something that people want?” she added.
In some municipalities, STRA owners pay $5,000 to register, on top of an annual licensing fee moving forward, Brown said, and in others, the initial fee is less than $500, and the annual licencing $50.
Councillor Marlene Ottens said she agreed with Martin: “I think there’s something we need here, but I don’t want it to be onerous for the owners.”
Ottens said the two biggest problems with STRAs are parking and capacity.
“Having a public meeting might really test the water, as far as what people think about this and how many are already out there – how many have one or are considering it, and what their feeling is about the regulatory aspect,” Ottens said.
“I think a public meeting might be kind of useful just to get them out of the woodwork.”
For Mayor Gregg Davidson, the draft bylaw “seems a little bit of overreach at the moment.”
He suggested, instead, that the township take “baby steps.
“Maybe … just saying the definition of what they are might be enough for us at this point … We can move on, later in the future, if we need to, with a comprehensive bylaw as you do have here.”
Davidson shared Martin’s concern about the financial impact: “If you regulate it, you have to enforce it … And with that enforcement comes cost.
“We have been working really hard at this council to do cost recovery,” he said. “What does that cost recovery look like, if you have to have inspections” and involve bylaw, the planning department, and the clerk?
“That would have to be put into the application fee,” he said.
“Before I would even consider going for this large [bylaw], I would want the numbers for how we are going to recover the costs of enforcement,” he noted.
Instead of adopting the bylaw, Davidson said he’d “be more apt to … look at a simpler version for identifying these short-term accommodations that we have in our community.”
“Do we play the ‘we know about them but we’re not going to bother inspecting them’ card?” asked councillor Amanda Reid.
“We have to figure out what the balance would be – because we can’t just ignore it, maybe, but we also can’t say ‘yes we know they’re there’ but not do any kind of regulation for it.”
STRAs have existed in Mapleton for “many, many years” with very few complaints, Davidson said.
“If we are not having a problem with this … I don’t think overregulating is the answer.”
Councillors Ottens, Reid and Martin Tamlyn voted to receive the draft bylaw for information and authorize staff to schedule a public meeting, summarize public submissions, and bring forward a final bylaw for council review, consideration and approval.
Davidson and Martin voted against the resolution.
