A Sarnia realtor believes that advancing the city's short-term rental bylaw to a hearing will cost taxpayers around $200,000 and take away from public input on the issue.
In July, council voted 6-3 in favour of directing staff to request that the short-term accommodation zoning bylaw be advanced to a hearing through the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT), an independent administrative tribunal responsible for hearing appeals on a variety of contentious municipal matters.
Sean Ryan with Blue Coast Team realty has an appeal in against the bylaw, which was passed in March 2020.
"The city's bylaw pretty much outright bans short-term rentals... for no reason. For all the reasons they quote, they don't exist and the facts do not line up," said Ryan. "There has not been really any public consultation and [the city] is not working with stakeholders. There's like 100 people in town that have a short-term rental, that operate it as a business and they have for years, and the city just outright banned them."
Ryan said he was upset with Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley's comments as to why council voted in favour of directing staff to request that the bylaw be advanced to a hearing. However, Ryan agreed with Bradley that there should be a public process when it comes to establishing short-term rentals in the city.
"I think there should be regulation, I think there should be licensing -- we're not against that, none of the other owners ever have been -- but there is no public consultation happening. By [council] voting that down, it's just going to an LPAT hearing, and then the city is going to have a bill of about $200,000 in legal to fight it."
Ryan said Sarnia residents really don't have any issues with short-term rentals.
After completing a freedom of information request with the city, Ryan learned that the city has reported a total of four complaints related to bed and breakfasts (Air B&B's) since 2015.
"What started all of this was a lady in College Park had a student rental beside her house, and she called it a short-term rental. But it's not a short-term rental, it's student housing, it's actually a long-term rental. But there were 30-something complaints about student rentals and the city hasn't done one thing about that."
The document showed there have been a total of 61 complaints related to rooming and boarding houses since 2015.
Ryan believes some of the restrictions placed on short-term renters are too harsh.
"If you're non-owner occupied, you can't have one, unless you have a commercial zoning. So any residential area can't have one," he said. "We were kind of thinking why not make some zoning specific areas? The city is redoing their master plan right now, so why not put that in there into some of the high-density housing areas?"
Ryan said it would make sense to have a site specific zoning code for short-term rentals.
Ryan also said short-term rentals in Sarnia provide about $3-million a year in employment in the area.
"Between cleaners and landscapers, all of the people we hire to maintain these properties. Also, by the city banning them, they're going to be missing out on the [Municipal Accommodation] Tax that they'd be subject to for anything 29 days and under. And also, the city is going to be missing out on all of the licensing fees too."
Ryan said stakeholders were trying to do mediation with the city through LPAT, but that failed. He believes there needs to be some more forward thinking on the issue rather than just shutting down discussion.
"We want the city to open up some dialogue with stakeholders instead of just going to an LPAT hearing."
The hearing is expected to take place later this year or early into next year.
