Tell David Eby:
Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon just dropped a bombshell – your dream wedding could be in jeopardy! If you, or your guests, have booked an Airbnb for your special day, the latest legislation could force you to make last-minute changes.
Excerpt from the Debate in Legislature on Oct. 26:
“The provincial statute will require short-term rental platforms [AIRBNB] to enable and display local government business licence numbers. It requires hosts to display this number in addition to a provincial registration number.
Local governments may send notice of failure to comply with business licence requirements to platforms and hosts. They will also be able to require a platform to cease providing services to non-compliant hosts. If the bill passes, further details of the process will come through regulation.”
— Honourable Ravi Kahlon, Minister of Housing
“If the wedding or if the event is booked now, and the Airbnbs are booked now, and they’re compliant today under the communities’ regulations, but they become noncompliant when this legislation comes in, so that by the time the wedding is happening, these are now noncompliant Airbnbs, will they be…?
I mean, whether the host notifies them or not, the platform may notify them. Government, may notify them. What happens? Do they no longer have accommodation for the wedding that they booked in June?”
“Oh my goodness. These [weddings] have been booked for years. The Airbnb has probably being booked for six months. Or they’re not going to…. Wow. Okay. This is something I hadn’t even anticipated until people started contacting me in a big panic about this. I thought: “Surely that can’t be the case.” But it does appear to be the case. There are going to be a lot of wedding planners upset right now across British Columbia.”
