880 short-term rentals on P.E.I. could be people's homes, says Statistics Canada

Prince Edward Island had 880 short-term rental units that could have been used as long-term housing in 2023, according to a new analysis by Statistics Canada.

That represented 1.3 per cent of all housing in the province. Only B.C. registered a higher percentage in the review, at 1.38 per cent.

For the study, Statistics Canada looked at listings on the short-term rental sites Airbnb and Vrbo.

To qualify as a potential long-term residence, a listing had to be up for at least 180 days of the year, and it had to be an appropriate type of listing: for example, a house, apartment or condo, rather than a cottage or bed and breakfast unit.

Overall, Statistics Canada found 4,636 short-term rental listings in P.E.I. in 2023, of which 880 would have been suitable for long-term accommodations.

'I think it speaks to the priorities'

"I think it speaks to the priorities of the province, in terms of keeping an avenue of unregulated hotels open for tourist season while we're in a housing crisis, when these are units which could be returned to the long-term housing market and serve as people's homes," said Cory Pater, with the group P.E.I. Fight for Affordable Housing.

Across the country, there were 107,266 potential long-term dwellings being offered in the short-term rental market, representing 0.69 per cent of all housing units.

Marie-Christine Bernard, assistant director of Statistics Canada and co-author of the report, noted that the research, which used data up to 2023 from Statistics Canada and short-term rental tracking platform AirDNA, did not look at the impact of short-term rentals on affordability or vacancy rates.

"We wanted to put it in perspective in terms of the housing market. We didn't want to necessarily say that it's not significant. It depends on the community," she said.

Restrictions in place in Charlottetown

This year, B.C. introduced a restriction applying to dozens of communities across the province, restricting short-term rentals to accommodations in the owner's principal residence only.

The City of Charlottetown implemented a similar bylaw in November 2023. It's not clear whether any impact the bylaw had on the number of short-term rentals in the capital city was taken into account by the numbers gathered by Statistics Canada for the report. 

After the bylaw passed, Charlottetown council issued an exemption for pre-existing short-term rental units. 

Pater said Charlottetown's bylaw requires better enforcement, adding that he thinks P.E.I. should have a province-wide law similar to the one in B.C.

"The entire province is a tourist province at this point, so we need to look at this in the big picture," Pater said.

"We are years into a well-acknowledged housing crisis … and we've seen very little action from any levels of government in terms of short-term rentals."

New legislation to be debated this fall

In a statement, the province said it recognizes a "one-size-fits-all policy does not support the varying needs of local communities," and added that it feels municipal governments are best positioned to regulate short-term rentals.

The provincial statement said short-term rentals located within a municipality that has a planning authority must get written permission before obtaining a tourism establishment licence.

"Tourism P.E.I. has compliance officers who inspect and investigate these matters," the statement said. "Tourism P.E.I. also monitors booking sites and marketing platforms to ensure that any accommodations advertised list their licence number."

Proposed legislative changes to the Tourism Industry Act would require online listings to have a valid licence number, and would require online booking platforms to remove unlicensed listings within seven days of being notified by the province. Those changes are expected to be debated in the legislature this fall.

P.E.I. listings doubled over 2-year period

Last year, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation measured P.E.I.'s apartment vacancy rate at just 1.1 per cent. That's tied for the lowest provincial rate in the country — and according to this new study, lower than the percentage of the housing market being used as vacation rentals.

Statistics Canada looked at seven years of data, and found that on P.E.I. the number of short-term rental listings doubled over a two-year period, from 2,435 in 2017 to a peak of 4,878 in 2019.

Of those 2019 listings, Statistics Canada said 1,080 would have been suitable as long-term housing.