Opinion: Making room for home-sharing in Calgary

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Municipalities across Canada are grappling with how to regulate and integrate home-sharing into their communities. And I don’t blame them. There is no cookie-cutter approach, no one-size-fits-all solution.

That said, our experience in jurisdictions across Canada and around the world has shown that keeping rules simple for hosts is the right move. For this reason, we are confident that if city council approves the proposed short-term rental regulations being debated today, Calgary will become a leading city in our country’s modern sharing economy.

The proposed rules would see a two-tiered online licensing system with a modest annual fee. Our hosts want to follow the rules, but they need to be fair and accessible. This streamlined approach achieves both these criteria and will allow hosts to easily comply and adapt.

Calgary didn’t just come up with these rules overnight. The city took the time to listen to community members and with minor exceptions, created sensible rules that work for Calgary and the people who live here.

For the most part, our hosts are regular Calgarians sharing their extra space a few nights each month. Like everyone else, they’re just trying to get by. For many, our platform has become an economic lifeline that makes it possible for residents to pay the bills, save for retirement and stay in the city they love.

We’re proud to have been there for families as they weathered tough economic times in Calgary over the last few years.

These families have proven to be resilient — many of our hosts discovered home-sharing during these tough times, relying on it as a way to make ends meet. And, as Calgary works to move past recent economic challenges, hosts today continue to take advantage of our platform to maintain their homes and investments.

The city’s proposed rules aren’t just good for hosts. They are also great news for the city as a whole. Legitimizing home-sharing will help invigorate Calgary’s local economy — bringing in additional visitors, supporting local businesses and demonstrating to the rest of Canada, and the global community, that Calgary is leading the way on embracing innovation.

By encouraging responsible home-sharing, the city is preserving a flexible supply of tourist accommodations that can expand and contract as demand in the city ebbs and flows.

For example, this summer we saw record-breaking attendance at the Calgary Stampede. Airbnb absorbed some of this high volume of visitors. Local residents opened up their homes to roughly 20,000 guests, offering them a flexible supply of accommodations.

These guests stay outside of major tourist hubs, bringing an influx of people to neighbourhoods where they inevitably support local businesses and the neighbourhood economy.

Calgary isn’t the first and it certainly won’t be the last Canadian city to regulate home-sharing. But it’s unique and forward-thinking approach is one that should be noted.

We often find ourselves working with a handful of communities at any given time. Unfortunately, rather than take a modern approach like Calgary, we often see jurisdictions create cumbersome processes that only prove ineffective and expensive for taxpayers.

With reasonable regulation, Calgarians will continue to benefit from our platform. They can continue to monetize their most expensive asset. And most importantly, they can continue to do so while being a good neighbour.

These proposed regulations are a positive step forward for Calgary’s sharing economy. Airbnb is proud to be a part of the Calgary community — now and into this new chapter of regulation.

Alex Dagg is an Airbnb host and the public policy director for Airbnb in Canada.