We go through a lot of articles in a day here at PT. So I’ll pull out one a day that I think is worth the click.
From Alan Durning at Sightline:
The Roommate Gap: Your City’s Occupancy Limit
… more than 5 million Cascadian bedrooms — more than one third of the total — go unused on any given night. Were it not for occupancy limits, some of their owners would offer them for rent …
Why not do as Surrey and Victoria, BC, and Sandpoint and Idaho Falls, Idaho, have done and strike occupancy limits from the code?
Is there is any other policy change in the Northwest — or wave of policy changes in the region’s cities — that could instantly make tens or hundreds of thousands of inexpensive housing units available?
Gord – as interesting as this may be in theory – and maybe in reality elsewhere – I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been bylaw restrictions that have kept elderly west side Vancouver homeowners from renting out spare bedrooms. They could do so if they wished, and it might be good for them to have the (younger?) companionship as well as potential caregiving assistance, not to mention rent supplement.
Fear has probably more to do with it on the west side.Lack of financial incentive is another, I suppose.
I’m also convinced that in downtown areas and less well-off parts of Vancouver that there aren’t a lot of empty bedrooms for the taking.
I’d be happy for the stats-savvy types out there to confirm or disprove these admitted conjectures.