District will use both business licenses and temporary use permit to regulate STRs, and is considering steep fines for illegal STR operators
By Steve Hubrecht
[email protected]
The District of Invermere is aiming to have a bylaw regulating short term rentals (STRs) in place by this fall.
At its most recent committee meeting, Invermere council received a report from district staff detailing how other B.C. municipalities deal with STRs and outlining options for how Invermere can tackle the issue. The report recommended Invermere take a two pronged approach, using both mandatory business licensing and temporary use permits (TUPs) to manage STRs in the district.
Council then directed staff to begin creating a draft bylaw regulating STRs, as well to draft how-to-guides and applications forms for STRs owners seeking business licenses and TUPs. It also directed staff to plan public consultation with local residents, businesses and STR operators.
STRs in Invermere and elsewhere in the Columbia Valley have been an issue for almost a decade, but one that has generated increasing controversy in recent years and the sheer number of them has exploded. Critics have slammed STRs for decreasing the already scant amount of long term rental housing here for both residents and local businesses employees, for contributing to skyrocketing housing prices, and for leading to noisy parties in quite neighbourhoods, parking issues, and trash left out (and attracting bears) by departing weekend visitors. Fans of STRs, on the other hand, point out that the earnings from them greatly help people who might not otherwise be able to afford their homes, and that the staggering variety of accommodation options offered by STRs brings many more tourists to the valley than in the past.
Other resort municipalities in B.C. began taking official steps to regulate STRs as early as five years ago. Radium Hot Springs became the first community in the Columbia Valley to begin that process starting in 2019, and last summer it officially adopted its STR bylaw. The Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) began looking at STRs in 2021, and its board of directors voted this past April to use TUPs to regulate them.
Radium’s bylaw ultimately took two years to come to fruition, and the RDEK’s efforts are still far from finished, despite being already more than a year in the making. Frustrated local residents have pressed Invermere in recent months, asking why it appears to be dragging its feet and letting other municipal entities lead the charge on STRs. Council members had often, in response, cited a desire to learn from other communities’ trial and error before embarking on Invermere’s own STR regulation process.
Having started slowly, in that respect, the district is now sprinting to the finish line, with plans to have a bylaw and the TUPs in place in less than four months time.
“We took some time, it’s true. We really wanted to dig into what others were doing to find out what works well and what doesn’t. We wanted to get this right. And staff have done a great job, so we can now move ahead quickly,” Invermere Mayor Al Miller told the Pioneer. “Hopefully we will bring it (the bylaw) to adoption before the end of our term as council (prior to the municipal election in October). We were slower going in the first stages, but hopefully this is now resulting in a faster process overall, and will result in us having something that works fairly well right out of the gate as opposed to something that needs to be revisited not long after being introduced. Several communities with STR regulations have ended up having to redo their bylaw, and then redo again and again.”
The report did indeed include a very thorough comparison table comparing and contrasting other resort municipalities’ efforts to manage STRs. Of the two-pronged approach recommended for Invermere, the report made the case that “if the TUP approach is pursued along with a rigorous STR business licence and regulation bylaw, as well as supporting application forms and information brochures… district staff believe the combined package will be especially effective.” TUPs are more flexible than zoning, noted the report.
“You’ll need both a business license and TUP to run an STR,” Miller told the Pioneer. “Using TUPs gives us as a district a bit more control, because it is much easier to revoke a TUP than a business license, if the conditions are not being met, and because by their very nature TUPs must be renewed.”
This means if owners are not managing an STR responsibly and in a way that respects neighbours — if the STR frequently accommodates far more people that it is legally allowed to, if there are many loud drunken parties, or plenty or garbage left out, for instance — “then they won’t be able to carry on,” said Miller.
He also explained that TUPs in addition to business licenses also makes sense for STRs because “there’s a lot of significant differences when it comes to running an STR, in terms of the impact to the community, as compared with running a retail business in the commercial downtown core.”
Miller said that there although the draft STR bylaw obviously has yet to be drawn up “there will likely be a part of that lays out that STR owners or operators need to be on site themselves or appoint or hire a manager who is in close proximity to the property, who can respond promptly to any issues that arise …STRs can be a positive thing, but they need to be managed property, not just be a revolving door of partiers.”
The STR bylaw will likely include significant financial penalties for those who break it, added Miller, noting that nearby Kimberley’s STR bylaw carries $50,000 fines.
“We’ve had a bit of discussion and the feeling is, they’ve (the fines) got to be reasonably stiff, so that would-be illegal STR operators don’t just view the fine as their cost of doing business,” he said.