Comox Valley 2026 Municipal Election series, Post 5 of 10
A few years ago my parents came for a visit, and they stayed in a little house just off Church Street in Comox, walking distance to the marina, the coffee shops, the taphouse, all of it. It made the whole visit easy. When they wanted to come again more recently, there was nothing like it left to book. The Airbnb listings that used to dot those streets have thinned out considerably, and the only sure bet left in Comox is the aging Port Augusta motel.
Those listings did not disappear on their own. Over about two years, the province, all three Valley towns, and the Comox Valley Regional District (CVRD), which governs the rural areas, decided that houses rented to visitors by the night were part of the reason local families could not find long-term places to live, and they tightened the rules. That trade-off is on your ballot this fall, in everything but name: an easy visit for out-of-town family on one side, a neighbour trying to find a place to live on the other. Every candidate will have a tidy line on it. Start with the number that set it all in motion.
0.6 per cent
In October 2022, the last year the Valley’s squeeze was cleanly measured before the rules changed, the rental vacancy rate for Courtenay and its surrounding area sat at 0.6 per cent. That was tighter than Vancouver at 0.9 per cent and well below the provincial average. Average rent had climbed to about $1,308 a month, up roughly 50 per cent from $877 four years earlier.
A healthy rental market runs around 3 per cent vacancy, the point where someone who has to move has a reasonable chance of finding somewhere. At 0.6 per cent there is effectively nothing available, and every unit used for travellers instead of tenants is a unit the long-term market does not get. That was the argument behind the crackdown. Whether it worked is a separate question, and one I will come back to.
What Courtenay decided
On May 7, 2025, Courtenay council adopted its own short-term rental rules, and they are strict. Only the property owner can run a short-term rental, and only if they live on that same property as their principal residence, the home where they spend most of the year. One short-term rental per property, up to three bedrooms, a maximum of six guests. Anything rented for fewer than 90 consecutive days counts as short-term and falls under the rule. Operators need a city business licence, currently $300 a year, an extra parking stall, and a registration number from the province on top of that.
The practical effect is that the whole-house investment rental, the condo or cottage bought purely to list by the night with nobody living there, is no longer allowed inside Courtenay. What remains is the homeowner renting out a room, or a suite on the same property, while living there themselves.
What Comox, Cumberland, and the rural areas decided
Comox landed in a similar place a few weeks earlier. Through a zoning amendment that went to public hearing on April 16, 2025, the town set out the zones where vacation rentals are allowed, raised its bed-and-breakfast limit to three bedrooms and six guests, and brought in a $300 annual short-term rental licence to match. Comox, like Courtenay, is large enough that the provincial principal-residence requirement applies on top of its local rules.
Cumberland got there first and, in some ways, went furthest. The village wrote its rules back in 2022, out of a 2020 housing needs assessment that flagged how little attainable housing the community had left. A vacation rental in Cumberland is permitted only on a property where a principal resident, owner or tenant, actually lives. One unit per property, three bedrooms, six guests. Operators need a village business licence, have to display it inside the unit and quote its number in every advertisement, and post a small outdoor sign with contact information. Crucially, Cumberland only permits short-term rentals in a handful of zones, its infill residential zone, its recreation and tourism zone, and two individually rezoned properties in the village core. Everywhere else, it is simply not allowed.
Out in the rural areas, the CVRD took a different approach. In most residential zones, a short-term rental can operate as a bed-and-breakfast within the existing home-occupation rules. Other formats, including using an entire dwelling as tourist accommodation, require a site-specific land-use application such as a temporary use permit or rezoning. A temporary use permit costs $1,500, can run for up to three years and the CVRD estimates the process at about six months. Mount Washington is the major exception, with zoning that specifically allows short-term rental accommodation in designated residential and resort areas.
Taken together, the rules have made the traditional absentee-owned Airbnb much harder to operate across the Valley, but they haven’t eliminated it everywhere. Courtenay, Comox and Cumberland largely tie short-term rentals to a resident on the property. In the rural areas, the CVRD took a different route: whole-home rentals can still be considered, but generally need site-specific approval.
The provincial layer
None of this happened in isolation. British Columbia’s Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act put a floor under every local bylaw. The provincial principal-residence requirement applies in Courtenay and Comox. It limits short-term rentals to a host’s principal residence, plus at most one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit on the same property. Cumberland and the CVRD electoral areas aren’t automatically subject to that requirement, although their local rules still restrict where and how short-term rentals can operate. The province also stood up a registry: every operator needs a provincial registration number, it has to appear on the listing, and platforms like Airbnb are required to pull listings that do not have one.
A municipal bylaw is only as strong as the ability to enforce it. Requiring the registration number on the listing itself, and putting some of the enforcement burden on the platforms, gave the province a much more direct way to remove non-compliant listings.
Cumberland’s own bylaw already requires a resident on the property, so in practice it holds a line the province would not have made it hold.
Whether it worked
The evidence is less tidy than either side of the debate would like.
Provincewide, the numbers have moved in one direction. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s 2025 Rental Market Report found vacancy rates rising sharply: in B.C. municipalities over 10,000 people, the average climbed from 1.9 per cent to 3.5 per cent. Separately, Rentals.ca reported that asking rents across B.C. had fallen 8.5 per cent over two years. The province says its short-term rental rules helped return thousands of homes to the long-term market.
The caution is that the province has not published a number for how many of those homes are in the Comox Valley, and vacancy is moving for more than one reason at once. A wave of new purpose-built rental construction came online across B.C. in the same window, and a softer resale market pushed some would-be sellers into becoming landlords. The available local data can’t tell us how much came from returned short-term rentals, how much from new construction and how much from a cooler housing market. What the numbers do show is that the rental market isn’t as tight as it was in 2022.
The part that lands on a ballot
The province set the frame, but many of the decisions that remain are local.
The province requires principal-residence rules in the bigger towns, but council sets the business-licence fee, decides how much enforcement to fund, and chooses whether local rules should go further. Cumberland’s decision to restrict short-term rentals to just a few zones was a council decision, not a provincial one, and a future council could widen those zones or narrow them further. The tourism side matters too: tighter rules mean fewer places for visitors to stay in a region that depends on tourism. That balance still gets debated at the council table, not just in Victoria.
This is the same split that ran through the first post in this series, on Bill 44 and who actually holds housing power. The province draws the outer boundary. Council still has choices inside it, including how far local rules go and how aggressively they are enforced.
A question for the doorstep
When a candidate raises housing this fall, short-term rentals will be an easy applause line in either direction: tougher on investors, or friendlier to tourism and homeowners’ side income. Push past the applause:
The Valley tightened short-term rental rules significantly over the past few years. Do you think they went too far, not far enough, or got the balance about right? And what evidence are you using to decide?
Then get more specific. How many staff hours does the town actually spend enforcing this, and is it enough? Should the licence fee go up to cover that cost, or stay where it is? In Cumberland’s case, would you expand the zones where short-term rentals are allowed, or hold the line? And if a candidate claims the rules freed up local housing, ask them for the number, then watch whether they have one.
For one household, a short-term rental is a mortgage helper or a small business. For another, it may be a year-round home that’s no longer available. A serious candidate should be able to say where they land and still explain what that choice costs the other side.
Next in the series: Who Pays, the new Housing Authority, your tax bill, and the cost of waiting.
Sources
- “Short-term rentals,” City of Courtenay (regulations adopted May 7, 2025; principal residence, one per property, three bedrooms / six guests, $300 business licence). Link
- “Comox Zoning Amendment Bylaw 18,” Comox Valley Record, April 2, 2025 (Town of Comox vacation-rental zones, three bedrooms / six guests, $300 annual licence; public hearing April 16, 2025). Link
- “Vacation Rentals Regulation Review,” Village of Cumberland (principal-resident requirement, permitted zones, business-licence rules; adopted 2022 from the 2020 Housing Needs Assessment). Link
- “Short-Term Rental Accommodations,” Comox Valley Regional District (electoral areas: bed-and-breakfast home occupation in the principal dwelling, temporary use permit for other formats at $1,500 for up to three years, Mount Washington short-term rental zone; provincial principal-residence requirement not opted into). Link
- “Minister’s statement on CMHC’s 2025 Rental Market Report,” Province of B.C., December 11, 2025 (CMHC vacancy in municipalities over 10,000 up from 1.9% to 3.5%; short-term rental rules credited with returning thousands of homes to the long-term market). Link
- “Minister’s statement about December 2025 rental report,” Province of B.C., December 2025 (Rentals.ca: B.C. asking rents down 8.5% over two years). Link
- “Short-term rentals,” Province of British Columbia (Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act: principal-residence requirement in communities over 10,000, provincial registry and registration number, platform enforcement). Link
- “Renting in the Comox Valley: Low vacancy, high rents, no ease to the squeeze in sight,” Capital Daily (October 2022 CMHC data: 0.6% vacancy in Courtenay area; average rent about $1,308, up roughly 50% since 2018). Link