Frances Bula header image 4

Entries from January 2016

Thoughts from someone who has pondered Airbnb: Don’t allow tenants to do it; limit the number per neighbourhood

September 30th, 2016 · 2 Comments

Got this by email from a former Nelson city employee and SFU grad student who has spent some time thinking about Airbnb. As the former City of Nelson employee responsible for preparing its upcoming short-term rental regulations (Nelson is one of the case studies that Vancouver staff reviewed) and as a tenant in Vancouver, I […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Short-term-rental regulations come to Vancouver, after a big lobbying effort from Airbnb

September 28th, 2016 · 10 Comments

So the city has come out with its proposed new rules for regulating short-term rentals. City report is here and my quickie hit here. This is already prompting a lot of questions on Twitter, many from people wondering how the city will stop people from declaring that their former basement suites are now part of […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Empty-homes tax might go even higher than original two per cent proposed, with higher penalties

September 20th, 2016 · 9 Comments

Vancouver councillors debated the proposed empty-homes tax this morning, with some unexpected results. (Well, at least to me, so perhaps I’m clueless.) The NPA councillors came out AGAINST the tax, which I thought would have been seen as very popular with their base. (See my story for their various reasons.) And then Vision councillors started […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Proposed new regulations for Airbnb and others coming next week

September 20th, 2016 · 2 Comments

It’s getting confusing, all the new housing taxes popping up here and there. Hope to help you keep it straight, especially since some cases will fall under multiple taxes and regulatory regimes. (Just imagine a foreign investor who buys a unit in Vancouver and decideds to rent it out only through Airbnb. Three new laws […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Vancouver sets off into the choppy waters with an empty-homes tax, one of a few cities around world

September 15th, 2016 · 2 Comments

So here we go. Vancouver will become the first city in Canada and one of a very select group around the world to charge an empty-homes tax as a way of trying to curb the effects of speculative investment and to get some housing stock back on the market. I wrote two stories this week […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Vancouver’s new immigrants not here to make money but to find a better quality of life — and policymakers haven’t caught up

September 6th, 2016 · 14 Comments

As some of you sharper readers may have noticed, I’ve become interested in our significant new bloc of immigrants, those people from mainland China. (Okay, I’ve always been interested. I got an Asia Pacific Foundation fellowship in 1990 that allowed me to live in China for three months, another different fellowship that took me to […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized