Changes of rental accommodations in Whistler could put British Columbia resort’s reputation for quality service at risk

Whistler officials are struggling to work out how to allow homeowners to rent rooms and accommodations in 2010 without shoving the resort’s 10,000 employees out in the cold.

“Staff is preparing a report that will go forward to council and for public consultation on how to implement a short-term rental program for properties that are currently zoned residential,” said Diana Waltmann, spokeswoman for the Resort Municipality of Whistler.

“For us the challenge is that we don’t want to adversely impact our employees. We have workers renting suites in these residential-zoned properties.”

Currently, Whistler zoning only allows day-to-day rentals in property in the “tourist accommodation” area, close to the village.

Other homeowners in Whistler must rent accomodations on a monthly basis.

Martha Lewis, executive director of the Tenant Resource & Advisory Centre, predicted the Whistler situation “is going to be a zoo.”

She said there’s nothing to stop landlords from renting for a fixed term that ends just before the “magical time” when the Olympics begins.

“It’s very difficult for a bylaw to control what landlords do with their private property,” she said.

Coun. Tim Wake said the issue will come before council in the next month. He said the resort is trying to address the challenge of finding enough rental accommodation for spectators and people coming to work on the 2010 Games.

“We don’t want an example where a landlord is renting on a six-month lease to people working here for the winter and saying, ‘You can lease it for the six months but you can’t have it for this one month,’” he said. “We cannot do anything that even implicitly suggests that that’s OK.”

Wake said, ideally, a new bylaw would apply to people who are not currently renting to Whistler workers but who want to rent rooms during 2010. He said that about 6,000 of Whistler’s 10,000 resident workforce rent market housing.

“What we’re concerned about, and I’m not sure if we’ll be able to control this, is that somebody who’d normally rent out to employees says ‘I’m not going to rent this entire winter because I want to have that opportunity to rent during the Olympics to somebody else,’” he added.

“They might take their unit off the rental market for the whole season.”

Joe Weiler, president of Aloha Whistler Accommodations Ltd., said another concern is that private rentals offer a high standard of service to protect Whistler’s overall reputation.

“If you’ve got wild parties going and you have pipes breaking with nobody to fix them, it’s going to be ugly,” he said.

“Right now, it’s totally unregulated. Just saying, ‘I have a place in Alpine Meadows and I’m going to get $3,000 a night and I will be sitting in Maui,’ — I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

He said there were high vacancy rates in both Sestriere and Park City during the last two Winter Games.

“Many people were trying to hit a home run and they struck out,” he added.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 11:56 am and is filed under Whistler, Whistler Accommodations, City, Condos, Cabins & Cottages, Lodges, Whistler lodging, Whistler rentals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.