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LETTER: Advocate says Good Neighbours Alliance behind STRs ban

'It is time for all stakeholders in the township to recognize how and why we are where we are and to come together to support a solution that will work for all residents,' says letter writer
2021-05-05 Oro short term rental sign 2
The Oro-Medonte Good Neighbours Alliance has created lawn signs draw attention to disruptive short-term rentals.

OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor ([email protected]). The following letter is from Barry Sookman, president of the Association for Responsible STRs, one of the appellants in the Ontario Land Tribunal appeal. It is in response to a recent letter, 'Residents disappointed' with council over STRs' and 'Council needs to stand up to township staff on STRs', regarding short-term rentals, published June 15 and June 8 respectively.
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Diana Wells and Gene Stein blame Oro-Medonte staff for their actions – or lack of action – in the fight to regulate disruptive short-term rentals (STRs). In fact, any objective reflection on the situation shows that the reason there is no zoning or licensing bylaw to control STRs in the township lies squarely at the feet of the Good Neighbours Alliance and its fervent supporters, and not township staff.

STRs have been a mainstay of cottage life for decades in the township. When STRs became an issue in 2018 and 2019, township staff recognized that STRs could be legally offered in the township. This was acknowledged in the 2018 and 2019 planning reports, in statements made by township officials in public and private, and in the two interim control bylaws (ICBL) passed by the township to respond to public pressure to halt future STRs from being established while the township worked out a regulatory solution.

Township staff's advice to the council and the public was, undoubtedly, their honest opinions – and not some attempt to mislead the council as alleged – and arrived after getting legal advice from council lawyers. The township’s strategy at the time was consistent with a leading Ontario court decision that ruled that if a municipality wanted to regulate STRs via zoning, it needed to do that by amending its general zoning bylaw.

After the ICBLs were passed, the township sent demand letters to residents that started STRs after the ICBLs came into effect. Its only claim was that such rentals violated the ICBL, not the 1997 zoning bylaw. In the township’s history, including after the ICBLs came into effect, it never prosecuted or threatened to shut down STRs that operated prior to the ICBLs coming into force.

The township was poised to enact a licensing bylaw to regulate STRs in 2019. However, residents that supported the Good Neighbours Alliance were not content with strict regulations that would target disruptive party houses but would leave the decades-long STR practice in place. They pressured the Oro-Medonte council to take an extreme approach of claiming that STRs had always been illegal in the township and to defend that position at the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT).

Their goal was to completely shut down STRs and to try and take away fundamental property rights of residents under the Planning Act to legal non-conforming uses. This put township staff in an impossible position before the OLT; they had to change their narrative to try and defend their newly adopted theory in the face of a mountain of evidence and long-standing practice and the law to the contrary.

The chair of the OLT that heard the appeal of the township’s 2020 bylaw clearly stated in her oral reasons that the 1997 bylaw did not prohibit STRs. This is admitted in the township’s appeal of the chair’s oral decision.

The continued insistence of the Good Neighbours Alliance – and its supporters Wells and Stein – that the OLT decision did not change anything is plainly inconsistent with the reasons given by the OLT chair. The OLT confirmed what the township staff had previously maintained and advised the council, namely, that STRs were not illegal under the township's 1997 bylaw.

The evidence before the OLT was also that 99 per cent of short-term rentals are not problematic. Based on the evidence before it, the OLT held that the township “ban all” approach “was not good planning.” The OLT, accordingly, revoked the township bylaw that it had been pressured into enacting by the alliance.

Wells and Stein blame township staff for offering a zoning amendment to the OLT they say would have legalized STRs in Oro-Medonte. The township’s proposal would, however, to the contrary, have resulted in a ban of all STRs except those operated on a “casual” basis.

What they seem not to understand is that the township recognized that the appeal was not going its way and that the only way to salvage a total loss was to offer the OLT an amendment that could have gone into effect immediately.

The Good Neighbours Alliance vociferously objected to the township proposal. While the proposal was flawed – and was also objected to by the appellants in the case, including me –  the proposal had no chance of being accepted, given the Good Neighbours Alliance's strident attempt to ban all STRs, even innocuous ones which its expert planner admitted at the OLT were not problematic.

The Good Neighbours Alliance wants to keep Oro-Medonte cottage country to the affluent residents that can afford the luxury of owning a home here. Their one-sided proposal for banning short-term rentals would adversely affect not only those residents that defray the costs of ownership by renting their homes, but also the opportunity for many non-cottage owners, including many new Canadians to enjoy our beautiful cottage country.

The township is now proposing a new licensing bylaw to regulate STRs. It is time for all stakeholders in the township to recognize how and why we are where we are and to come together to support a solution that will work for all residents of the township. 

Barry Sookman
Oro-Medonte
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