Property rights, tourism, and short-term rentals.

Much venom pours forth from the letters page of my local daily newspaper berating "dictatorial" governments' "undemocratic" revocation of property holders' "right" to rent houses and condos they control to whomever for however long they like.

According to the Province of British Columbia:

Zoning implements municipal and regional district land use planning visions expressed in official community plans and regional growth strategies, and may support community sustainability and resilience goals. Zoning bylaws regulate how land, buildings and other structures may be used. (emphasis added)

A quick perusal of Langford's and Victoria's Official Community Plans yielding no reference to the phrase "short-term rental," one must assume that houses, condos, and apartment buildings proposed to be constructed in these municipalities and duly approved by Council are assumed to be used as long-term dwellings by residents of these communities.

House and condo holders arrogating to themselves a supposed right after the fact to exploit those properties in ways that were not explicitly – democratically – approved when they were built are in fact behaving lawlessly.

While on the subject, may I suggest that readers claiming to be "capitalists" read Adam Smith and learn the distinction between capitalism and rent-seeking, the latter from which he sought to free capitalist economies.

Leaving aside unilaterally reducing the availability of dwellings approved and constructed for use as long-term residences (LTRs), if claims after the fact were accurate that the motive for repurposing houses and condos as short-term rentals (STRs) was to help the tourism sector, not exploit it for personal gain, STR rates on a monthly basis would not be multiples of the monthly rent on an LTR.

The obvious motive was to make a killing at the expense of local residents. Besides, STRs are only one way, with respect to houses and condos, that repurposing housing as financial assets contributes to BC's housing crisis.

Consider "immigrants!" – the agreed bête noire in superficial analyses of BC's housing crisis – who did not cause but brought to light the housing crisis that began more than 40 years ago across the neoliberal economies.

House and condo holders actually motivated by a desire to "help" their communities give short shrift to the option of renting their holdings long-term to immigrants BC needs to perform useful work in, for example, healthcare, agriculture, construction, and transport.

It should be transparent to the most casual of observers that holders repurposing houses and condos as STRs are motivated by one and only one objective: big, big bucks they would never see if they used their houses and condos as intended when they were built, namely to house BC's population.