Growing in popularity over the last few years, short term rentals have become a concern for some areas in the Eastern Townships region. With a lack of permanent and affordable housing available for local residents, among other reasons, municipalities such Sutton and Brome Lake are in the process of regulating short term rentals to better suit the needs of the community. 

“People just rent, on a short-term basis, their house, apartments, or whatever they can rent and this is done mostly on apps, like the Airbnb process—that exploded in Sutton for let’s say the last five years at the least,” said Robert Benoit, mayor of Sutton. 

Citizens complained to the current administration and asked the municipality to revisit a policy established back in 2013 when short term rentals were booming in the village. 

“The town didn’t see a problem with that, they saw it as a good thing for economic development. The policy allowed everybody to do short term rentals all over the territory, except on one street,” said Benoit. “(…) The policy has be abrogated; we think it’s not a good policy to accept it all across the territory.”

Benoit mentioned that developing a new regulation could take up to a year due to public consultations, approval processes and the chance of a referendum.

“So, what we thought we needed to do was to restrict, and abrogate the policy, on everywhere on the territory to, let’s say, allow it in certain areas. The criteria that we used is an existing criteria, we didn’t have to write a new regulation, we just took the existing zoning by-law that says you are allowed to do short-term rentals only in zones where there is an existing country inn or B&B less than 15 rooms,” he explained.

Benoit described the move as a “plaster on a wound” and that a new regulation will be needed  eventually. 

“We will have to distinguish between principal residence, those are the residences that you may own yourself and you are a permanent resident, and secondary residence where you come during the weekends for certain months of the year. (…) Like many other municipalities, we will be writing a new bylaw to really manage the short term rentals so that it doesn’t impeded on the affordability of housing for young people,” noted Benoit. 

Lack of housing and eviction are a driving force behind seeking new regulations. 

“We’ve been seeing promoters that want to develop rentals or apartments just for short term renting. In a lot of municipalities, it is not tolerated for companies to do that. Also, eviction is starting to be a problem. There is evictions in small apartments right now, low cost rentals in the village, people are saying that you have to go in order for people to do Air B&B. This is obviously one thing that we need to manage as a town,” said Benoit. 

Recognizing that short term rentals also contribute to economic development in certain ways, more specifically in the mountain area during the ski season, Benoit said that the municipality needs to find balance and that whatever they implement must be controlled; something that was not done in the past. 

“In a market where there is no offer of low cost rentals, it can have a very negative impact on recruiting employees that will work at MONT Sutton, Diable Vert, IGA, commercial, the restaurants. We need to have low costing housing, so that means we also need to do a lot of new constructions. (…) We need to do a lot of things to improve the offering for low cost housing,” added Benoit. 

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