Residents of a “ghost hotel” off Yates Street want to see how they can help the City of Victoria crack down on illegal short-term rentals — and are planning for the condo to levy its own fines against short-term rental operators who don’t follow the rules in their building.
Marv Gandall, council strata secretary of the Era on Yates building at 728 Yates St., said members of the council are meeting with the city’s short-term rental bylaw enforcer to see how they can co-ordinate efforts to ensure that no illegal short-term rentals can operate in their building.
As of April 29, only 30 of the 157 units in the Era were lived in by their owners, Gandall said.
“We knew the imbalance was acute but were shocked by its extent.”
Incomplete records provided by the building’s property manager to the building’s council strata seen by the Times Colonist show another 62 units in the building had long-term tenants.
Of the other units, 38 were licensed for short-term rentals and the status of the remaining investor-owned units was unknown or had incomplete information.
The strata council believes many of those investor-owned units were operating as unlicensed short-term rentals, Gandall said.
Building residents have complained about the increased litter, lack of garbage room etiquette, and the chipped walls resulting from short-term stays, he said.
Residents also blamed package thefts on visitors.
Some even suspected that a prostitution ring was operating out of one of the short-term rental units, though that had never been confirmed, Gandall said.
“Everybody called it a ghost hotel,” Gandall said.
Gandall, who has been involved in the building’s strata governance since 2015, said that many owners had long been resistant to limiting or banning short-term rentals at Era.
“I had been fighting for a STR bylaw for years and we couldn’t get anything because there was a big STR constituency in the building,” he said.
The Era is one of the buildings in Victoria that was specifically zoned for short-term rentals and wasn’t subject to a City of Victoria bylaw that restricted short-term rentals to one’s principal residence prior to the new provincial regulations.
At one point, short-term rental owners on the strata council proposed hiring a concierge for the building, though that idea was quickly shot down, he said.
But in February, at the strata’s annual general meeting and ahead of the provincial changes, owners in the building voted to effectively prohibit non-resident owners from marketing short-term rentals.
It also empowered its strata council to levy fines of up to $1,000 a day against short-term rental operators who were not complying with regulations.
No one has been fined by the strata yet, but there has been a noticeable decrease in short-term stays in the building since, Gandall said.
Half of the units on Gandall’s floor still have keypad door locks installed, a relic of when they were used for short-term rentals, he said.
But Gandall suspects that some are still skirting the rules to keep the rental income flowing.
One owner, who was listed as living outside of the building as of April 29 in records provided by the property manager, recently asked for strata documentation that would allow her to apply for a short-term rental licence with a driving licence that listed her address at 728 Yates, he said.
“That’s a common ploy,” he said.
“How the city is going to deal with that, I don’t know.”
Gandall is hoping that other strata councils in Victoria will follow their lead and help the city crack down on short-term rentals.
“We’ll be their eyes and ears,” he said. “We’ll be able to help them, and they’ll be able to help us too.”
