How to get clear on your goals when it comes to regulating RGA/STRs
When designing Residential Guest Accommodation/Short-Term Rental (RGA/STR) regulations – as with any policy project – there is often an instinct to create a sense of balance.
Of course, balance is often a good thing. It can mean that if there are two sides to an issue, both sides will get some, if not all, of what they want. Balance can mean that unintended consequences are carefully considered, and that negative impacts of going too far in either direction are avoided or at least muted.
One problem with chasing balance, though, is that it can lead to a fundamental lack of clarity around priorities. And a lack of clear priorities easily leads to regulatory programs that are overly complex, internally contradictory, unenforceable, or some combination of the above.
When it comes to RGA/STR, this lack of clear priorities often ends up creating programs that try to be permissive on the one hand but restrictive on the other, causing confusion and leading to a situation where none of Council’s goals are achieved particularly well.
This is why one of the first steps we now recommend for local governments looking to create or refine their RGA/STR programs is a facilitated Council workshop to clarify and prioritize their regulatory goals.
Here’s what this exercise looks like:
Internal review – we begin by reviewing
Local data to identify the nature and scale of RGA/STR activity in the community and its associated impacts on housing and neighbourhood character (e.g. via AirDNA, other services)
The history of community and Council debate and action on the issue, paying particular attention to local tension points and positions on this issue’s key trade-offs.
Council presentation – we then develop and deliver a 30 minute Council presentation laying out the findings of the above review, and put the community's own situation in the context of this issue's key trade-offs, what other local governments are doing (particularly local peers and issue leaders), and the role of provincial and federal action. A key message in this presentation is always "you can't have it all" and to beware of so-called "messy middle" programs designed to chase multiple goals that are insufficiently clear or not prioritized. We talk about where different kinds of “balance” can be achieved/is workable and realistic, and where instead, clear choices need to be made between competing objectives.
Council workbooks – following the Council presentation we develop custom workbooks for Council that help them clarify their own goals for RGA/STR in the community. These workbooks help Council members and the project team gain a precise understanding of where each Council member is at.
Council workshop – we facilitate a ~2-3 hour Council workshop with the end goal being a clearly-defined list of goals for RGA/STR that are listed in clear order of priority. An actual vote on such a list usually happens at a subsequent formal Council meeting. Even where Council is relatively split on the issue, this exercise leaves everyone with a crystal clear understanding of the trade-offs and what each Council member's position means for those trade-offs. Sometimes more than one workshop is required.
Only once something like that has happened ☝️do we feel confident in helping local government clients create or refine a truly successful RGA/STR regulatory program.
This exercise is just as valuable for communities with a long history of regulation as it is for communities who are new to the topic!
And here’s an example of what this kind of Council presentation and workshop ends up looking like (from the Town of Gibsons, BC):
If your community feels a bit stuck when it comes to designing an RGA/STR program, or if your current program feels like it’s not working as well as it could, consider undertaking this kind of project as a first (or next) step.
Get in touch anytime to chat more.
