Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
editor@qctonline.com
Quebec City residents who plan to rent out their principal residence on Airbnb or similar sites for part of the year will need to get an official authorization from the city starting in April if new proposed regulations are enforced.
The city permit, which will cost $250, will be in addition to the permit required by the Corporation de l’industrie du tourisme du Québec (CITQ) which costs $51.50 for a primary residence. The city has also expanded its short-term rental inspection squad from three inspectors to five. Coun. Mélissa Coulombe-Leduc, member of the executive committee responsible for housing, said she believed the new certification requirement would cushion the impact of short-term rentals on the city’s long-term rental housing shortage, as July 1 looms on the horizon with long- term vacancy rates around 1 per cent.
In the past year, the city has moved to protect long- term rental housing by making short-term rentals in secondary residences and investment properties in large swaths of the city, particularly in Lower Town, illegal. However, people can still rent out their primary residences on Airbnb and similar sites for short stays.
Coulombe-Leduc said the current rules allowed unscrupulous real estate investors to rent out secondary residences or investment properties by passing them off as their primary residence.
“There is a lot of illegal tourist housing, where people claim a place that they are renting out is their primary residence when it’s not,” she said. Under the new rules, “people will have to prove the address of their primary residence by submitting their notice of assessment from Revenu Québec.”
Nicole Dionne is the co- ordinator of the Bureau d’animation et information logement (BAIL), a Saint- Roch-based renters’ rights organization serving the greater Quebec City region. “Ninety- eight or 99 per cent of the housing units [in the busy sector of Lower Town along Rue Saint-Joseph] have been protected under the current rules, and from now on there will be a more attentive look at conversions … but as long as vacancy rates are under three per cent, we would have liked for there to be a complete freeze,” she said.
Dionne added that invest- ment properties that were converted for short-term rental use before the bans came into effect are “grandfathered in,” reducing the rental housing stock for the foreseeable future. Guillaume Béliveau-Côté, co-ordinator of the Comité des citoyens et citoyennes de Saint- Sauveur, said an estimated 100 rental units in the Lower Town neighbourhood are being used for short-term rentals – about the same number of units as there are families on the social housing waiting list, he said. (The QCT could not independently verify these numbers.)
Saint-Roch neighbourhood council president Alexia Oman said she is “grateful for any- thing put in place to protect [housing for] residents.”
“Short-term rentals are not the only cause of the housing crisis, but they are a factor,” she said. “There’s definitely more stress looking for a home this year than past years. We’re in a very tight position as renters.”
The Ville de Québec is hold- ing a public consultation about the proposed regulations on Feb. 19 at 7:30 p.m. at the Club Social Victoria in Limoilou (170 Rue du Cardinal-Maurice- Roy). People who are unable to attend the event in person can participate on Zoom.