Retired school principal Mary Alice St. James struggled to maintain her composure before Burlington’s planning committee last week. She was pleading for the city’s help in curbing the noise, parking hassles and trespassing emanating from a Lakeshore Rd. mansion listed on Airbnb.

St. James and her neighbours say a nearby house advertised on Airbnb for more than $1,200 a night is operating as a banquet hall. Their previously quiet crescent has been shattered by loud music, beeping car fobs and shouting. Revellers are alleged to have urinated and defecated on neighbours’ yards. Wedding parties have used their gardens as a backdrop for pictures.

“Nobody can sleep, everybody’s traumatized,” said St. James.

Worse, she said, the city has left the residents to deal with the issue. Their calls to Burlington’s bylaw enforcement office and local police have been mostly ignored.

As Toronto awaits the outcome of a provincial tribunal that will decide whether the city’s Airbnb regulations ever take effect, 905-area municipalities such as Burlington are also coming to grips with the impacts that short-term rentals can have on previously quiet residential streets and on their long-term housing prospects.

Oakville and Mississauga have already regulated rentals advertised on platforms like Airbnb, Kijiji and Expedia. But Burlington city staff hadn’t planned to tackle the issue until the third quarter of next year, said Ward 4 Councillor Shawna Stolte, who represents St. James’s area and is a member of the planning committee that heard St. James’s presentation. It has referred the matter to a meeting of council later this month in the hopes it might direct staff to expedite its response.

In the absence of a bylaw restricting short-term rentals, city enforcement officers are virtually powerless to address the issues emanating from the Lakeshore Rd. house, said Stolte. Police have made it clear that noise and nuisance complaints are lower on their response priority. They respond to citizen safety and crime-related calls first, she said.

Also awaiting the outcome of the Toronto planning tribunal is the Town of Newmarket where a man was killed and a woman shot at an Airbnb near Yonge St. and Mulock Dr. earlier this month. Airbnb immediately removed the listing from its platform.

The “awful occurrence” is related to many issues, including criminal sentencing and gun control, said Mayor John Taylor.

But, “I know many people are asking questions about Airbnb in relation to it and that’s fair,” Taylor added.

Newmarket is part of a working group of York Region communities, including Vaughan, looking at the issue of short-term rentals in their communities, including the types of bylaws that would restrict the practice to the principal residence of landlords and licensing, some of the measures Toronto council approved but landlords appealed to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT).

But Taylor said the outcome of the Toronto appeal will give Newmarket the advantage of provincial direction on the matter.

He also said it’s important to look at both sides of the short-term rental issue. The accommodation appeals to families or patients using the local hospital and Taylor says he knows of one woman, who rented part of her home as a source of income during an illness when she couldn’t work.

Thorben Wieditz of Fairbnb, a coalition of tenant advocacy groups, academics, residents’ associations and the hotel industry, says issues ranging from noisy parties and vandalism to concerns about the region’s long-term housing stock, have radiated out from downtown Toronto, where the majority of Airbnb-style rentals occur. Fairbnb has been talking to cities like Hamilton and Vaughan.

While the outlying municipalities may not necessarily be tourist hubs, Wieditz said, “There seems to be a market for the rental of party houses in the 905.”

He recommends other communities look at the same type of provisions that Toronto council approved nearly two years ago that have stalled due to the appeal by landlords. Those include a requirement that short-term rentals only be permitted in the homeowner’s principal residence; that they not be allowed in secondary suites and that licensing be used to restrict the commercial operators, who rent multiple units and, in Toronto, account for the largest share of Airbnb revenue.

“As soon as they grapple with these issues, the better off these municipalities will be in the long-run to protect themselves from the party house phenomenon, but also the housing market impacts,” said Wieditz.

In an email from a city official, Vaughan said it expects to approve regulations in December that will take effect in January. According to a city committee report in May, there were 320 short-term rentals in that city in February, earning $6,700 a year on average, according to a staff report to council. About half of hosts rent their entire homes — a number that equates to about 157 properties. The other 154 hosts rent rooms.

Oakville approved its regulations in March 2018 in response to a growing number of complaints about noise and partying, said director of municipal enforcement Jim Barry. The regulations are likely to stand since the appeal period has passed, he said. The town is restricting the short-term rental to homes that are the principal residence of the landlord. Unlike Toronto, it is not restricting the owners of its approximately 300 legal secondary suites from using them as Airbnbs.

“We wanted to make sure from a public standpoint there was always safety, there was consumer protection and to control any nuisances. But the actual use of secondary units based on scale wasn’t going to be a problem,” said Barry.

There were about 200 short-term rentals in Oakville in 2017. But so far, only about a dozen have registered for the town’s new licensing system. That will change, he said, once Oakville hires a company that will enforce the licensing rules.

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The largest number of complaints that the town receives now, said Barry, relate to absentee property owners. In its consultation process, Oakville heard that “from the operators’ side they would like to own more than one.”

Like many communities, including Toronto and Oakville, Hamilton’s municipal complaints system doesn’t isolate calls related to short-term rentals , said Robert Ustrzycki, senior project manager for the city’s bylaw office.

In 2017 there were 540 Airbnbs in Hamilton. In October 2018 it had risen to 600, he said.

While the city is watching the Toronto appeal, Ustzycki said it is developing its own “made-in-Hamilton” regulations and is still gathering input from residents and stakeholders. A 15-question survey about matters such as where Airbnbs should be allowed and where the city should prioritize matters such as affordable rentals and tourism, drew about 1,700 responses from residents and stakeholders. The findings, which are still not public, will go to council by early 2020.

“There is no simple template any municipality can adopt. The city of Hamilton is seriously considering regulating this industry but they want to make an informed decision,” said Ustzycki.

In Burlington, St. James’s neighbour Isabelle Rae said she hopes the city will pass an interim bylaw to deal with the Lakeshore Rd. situation.

She has also complained to the city and police after coming home one evening to find more than a dozen men blocking her street with an altercation between two in the midst of the gathering. Another time, a group of men standing around with beer bottles disappeared behind some bushes, coming out zipping up their pants.

“It’s unreal, we’ve lived here 35 years. They are not paying city taxes. That’s a single-family residential home. If you’re selling something the legalities have to be correct,” she said.

Another neighbour, Miena Bishop, has complained to Airbnb twice. The first time was late on Wednesday, Aug. 28, after Bishop confronted a man who was urinating on a neighbour’s yard. When she told him to stop, he hurled some colourful language before he and some others staggered to their cars and drove off. That night she also called the police, who she says told her she was the fifth person to complain.

Bishop has written directly to Airbnb twice, she said. The company told her it would share her concerns with the host but nothing has changed.

Just after midnight, Rae also sent a note via the Airbnb site to the superhost listed on the property, a man named Daud.

He wrote back with a sympathetic note saying he understood the neighbours had been affected. He said they should contact him if there were other incidents.

“We have been trying extremely hard to limit all these events,” he wrote, adding he had stopped all events and was unaware of the party.

The Star received no response to a message to Daud through the Airbnb site. The listing says no high school, prom, college or university parties are allowed.

It says the house is “well suited for small corporate events, photo shoots, filming, music videos, etc.”

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