According to one short-term-rental (STR) operator, the media and nosy neighbours are partly to blame for portraying all STRs in a negative light.
Ken Nagy, a Mississauga resident who has operated an STR in Tay for the past dozen years, contacted MidlandToday to make note of the bad press happening to good people in the recent coverage of STR stories for North Simcoe.
“It’s the media,” stated Nagy. “They don’t ever say anything about good renters. They only say things like that there was a party.
“Also, people complain to the townships that there’s a property next door to them where every weekend there’s a new group of people in there and there’s a lot of them, and they’re noisy and loud and do all kinds of things they shouldn’t do as neighbours… they leave their garbage there, they have dogs running around wild.
“You get all these things and it’s come out, and people are saying: ‘I don’t want this,’" Nagy noted.
Within the last few years, short-term-rental accommodations have become a hot topic across the province as municipalities scramble to revise regulations for zoning and licensing, and sometimes even what is defined as an STR in difference to a commercial bed and breakfast or hotel.
Nagy is no stranger to negative feedback from regional residents impacted by STRs.
According to Nagy, his Tay property was scouted by a person last summer who later made two consecutive reports to fire services over two days. The first response noted a legally-permitted backyard firepit where hot dogs were being attended, and the second falsely claimed a mattress was on fire in the front yard, said Nagy.
“Do you know what it costs to get volunteer firefighters out of their houses, and go to the firehall and do all that, get all the trucks and get their uniforms and put all their stuff on and drive out to something that’s a waste of time? Two days in a row? What do you think that’s costing the township?” asked Nagy. “That’s against the law. You can’t do that, you can’t cry wolf.”
Tay fire chief Shawn Aymer responded by email to MidlandToday regarding the average cost per burn complaint, stating that a cost ranged between $120 to $750 depending on the number of firefighters responding.
“When a person calls in to report a burn complaint through fire (most take the correct route and contact bylaw directly),” wrote Aymer, “our dispatch then contacts our bylaw department to confirm there is no one on duty to respond. For this reason we only had two calls last year that I would consider to be false and even that is open to interpretation.
“Since instituting the procedure with our dispatch where they contact bylaw first and an increased summer bylaw presence (extended hours),” added Aymer, “we have seen a significant decrease in all burn complaints through the fire department.”
He added that the process had nearly eliminated burn complaint calls for Tay fire service.
“The main drawback would be having apparatus out of position (while) dealing with a false call when a higher priority call comes in remote from that location,” said Aymer of false alarms and prank calls.
When asked what the difference between a good STR and a bad STR was, Nagy explained that impartially running rentals through agencies such as AirBnb, VRBO, and even Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji was a step away from being a responsible operator.
“If the person who wants to rent that property gives that agency a credit-card number, off they go; that’s about as much screening as they do,” said Nagy. “If they’re people who don’t live in the country or live somewhere else completely a long ways away, all they care about is money. They don’t care about the neighbours because they don’t go there anyway.”
Depending on weather, Nagy rents his property between 12 to 15 weeks of the year from the non-school months of June through September. He stated the importance of actively screening applicants, being in close contact with neighbours and leaving educational information for renters as contributing to being a good STR operator.
However, Nagy warned of the possibility of heavy-handed regulations from municipalities attempting to stay on top of STR accommodations to appease residents, noting that excessive and cost-prohibitive inspections of fire, insurance and septic systems could drive STR operators “underground” when renting properties.
Nagy’s final words for those wanting to disrupt short-term rentals: “There’s a lot of good STRs and people should mind their own business. And if there’s a problem, call the owner and talk to them.”
