Halifax creating enforcement team for short-term rentals like Airbnbs

Halifax is creating a team to better enforce the rules for short-term rentals on platforms like Airbnb, and streamlining regulations to allow more rentals in rural areas of the municipality.

The Halifax Regional Municipality's short-term rental bylaw has been in effect since September 2023. All rentals in Nova Scotia must be registered with the province, and as of last fall, owners have to show proof they are following their local regulations.

Since September 2024, a staff report said Halifax has received about 1,137 requests for documentation to register short-term rentals with the province. 

The process "exposed several non-compliant [rentals] which were previously unknown," the report said.

But during a council meeting Tuesday, Coun. Kathryn Morse was among multiple councillors who said they are still seeing issues with trash, or multiple cars on side streets causing problems with snow removal.

"In some cases, they have quite an impact on their neighbourhoods," Morse said, describing a complaint about a five-bedroom house with 10 visitors at a time.

The current bylaw states entire homes or bedrooms can only be rented in residential areas if the owner lives on the property as their primary residence. That owner-occupied rule doesn't apply if the property is in a commercial zone, where hotels are allowed.

Sean Audas, program manager with land development and subdivision, said enforcement has been a challenge because there are only three bylaw compliance officers for the entire municipality.

"Are we effectively enforcing that now? I would say no, because it goes in the queue with everything else," Audas said.

But he said Halifax was recently awarded $300,000 for this year from a federal short-term rental enforcement fund through Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada that is described as an "effort to make more long-term housing units available in Canada."

Listings have fallen from 2,400 to 1,200

Audas said the two-year grant will fund seven positions including a planner, two compliance officers and two assistant building officials. He said these staff will focus solely on short-term rental data analysis and enforcement.

Back in September 2023 when the bylaw came in, the data analysis platform AirDNA showed 2,418 active Airbnb rentals in the municipality, with most of the listings for entire homes. There were 1,218 on the platform on Tuesday.

Although Halifax is officially aware of 1,137 short-term rentals now, staff said they need time to figure out whether the bylaw has led to short-term rentals being switched to long-term housing stock.

"It's still in the early stages for us to be able to ascertain any kind of correlation, causation or results," said planner Kate Clark.

Looking at other cities, the report said Vancouver has evaluated its own program and has "experienced continued increase in the long-term rental housing stock since short-term rental regulations were enacted."

Halifax staff said they are also making changes to address the patchwork approach for regulations in rural areas, and to help boost tourism.

Most districts in the rural western parts of Halifax, like the St. Margarets Bay area, now allow one short-term rental per lot that doesn't have to be owner-occupied. The new rules would see this applied to rural districts elsewhere in the municipality, like the Eastern Shore, Lawrencetown, Musquodoboit Valley, Porters Lake and Fall River.

Rural operators 'anxious' to launch listings

"I have a lot of operators anxiously waiting to legitimize their short-term rental units," said Coun. David Hendsbee, who represents Lawrencetown-The Lakes-Chezzetcook-Eastern Shore.

Bylaw changes for these rural areas will come in early June.

Halifax will do more consultation with African Nova Scotian communities like North Preston, Upper Hammonds Plains and Lake Loon to find out what short-term rules those residents would like to see.

Secondary suites or backyard units in residential areas are not allowed to be short-term rentals unless they are rented by the person living in them, because staff said the intent is for these spaces to remain as long-term housing.

Coun. Laura White, who represents Halifax South Downtown, asked for staff to explore tweaking this rule so that secondary suites in urban areas around universities and colleges could be rented short term in the summer, if they have long-term tenants through the year.

"I'm wondering if this would be an incentive to open up more units because people could rent to students for an affordable price during the school year, and then have some flexibility to do tourism rentals in the summer," White said.

That report will return to council at a later date.