Short-Term Rental Enforcement Fund (STREF) │Housing, Infrastructure, and Communities Canada (HICC)

The STREF is an application-based program with eligibility for municipalities (including upper-tier municipalities, which are formed by two or more municipalities within its boundaries) and Indigenous communities with strict regulatory regimes that could have an impact on protecting units in the long-term housing market, and short-term rental activity and related enforcement and compliance challenges (i.e., lack of capacity and data to identify, monitor, and bring into compliance non-compliant short-term rentals).

Applicants need to have an existing strict short-term rental regulatory regime in place defined as including, at minimum:

• An existing principal residence requirement limiting short-term rental operation to principal residences and a licensing system for short-term rental operators;
• An enforcement and compliance program for their short-term rental regulatory regime; and,
• One additional existing regulation from this list:
  • Short-term rental licensing/registration process requiring a proof of consent from condo corporation/strata and property owners for a unit to be used as short-term rental
  • Spatial rules, quotas or moratoriums to restrict short-term rentals to specific zones, neighbourhoods or blocks, limit the number of units within those zones, neighbourhoods or blocks, as well as suspend or restrict issuing of short-term rental licenses
  • Enforcing a night cap on bookings to restrict the maximum number of consecutive days that a unit can be rented and/or the total number of days per year that a unit can be rented as a short-term rental
  • Establishing accountability measures for platforms, including mandating short-term rental platforms to obtain a license to operate, to share data with enforcement personnel or to remove non-compliant listings