A Vancouver couple residing temporarily in Portugal to be with a family member in ill health heard Tuesday that council’s business licence review panel will not reinstate a short-term rental business licence for their house in the city.
Safana Jetha and Imran Hirani told the panel via a video link from Portugal that Jetha’s mother is ill and needs help to sort out the future of a longtime business she runs in that country.
That is why the couple, who have two children, said they are not living in their four-bedroom house on Prince Edward Street in Vancouver, which the city targeted last year in an investigation related to use of the property for Airbnb rentals.
The house includes a separate suite.
The city concluded the couple’s property was not their principal residence, as defined in a bylaw governing short-term rentals, and was being used regularly to accommodate Airbnb guests.
The city suspended the couple’s business licence.
“At least 80 per cent of the days throughout the calendar year of 2024, the residence was occupied by somebody else — was occupied by short-term renters,” city lawyer Robert LeBlanc told the panel.
LeBlanc said the city also has an admission from the couple that they didn’t spend any time as an entire family in the property in 2024 because they were residing in Portugal, where the couple signed a three-year lease on rental accommodation.
“I don't know how we can make a finding that this is the present principal residency of the licensee under those circumstances,” he said, before the panel comprised of three city councillors agreed to uphold the chief licence inspector’s decision to suspend the couple’s short-term rental business licence.
'I feel sorry for them'
LeBlanc emphasized the purpose of the bylaw is to preserve permanent rental housing stock so people can live in Vancouver. The bylaw allows a homeowner — or tenant — to rent property via Airbnb and other home-sharing platforms for less than 90 consecutive days at a time.
The key regulation is that the entire home or room must only be rented from a homeowner or tenant’s principal residence — the home where a person lives as an owner or tenant, and used for bills, identification, taxes and insurance.
“It is not to have a property on hold to pay your mortgage while you live elsewhere because that robs the city of a principal housing unit that somebody else can avail themselves to,” LeBlanc said.
“I feel sorry for them because of their personal circumstances and why they're in Portugal. But in reality, this is not their principal residence.”
The couple’s evidence, which also included submissions from their lawyer, Arash Ehteshami, was that Jetha had stayed in a locked-off suite in the main house or in the separate secondary suite between November 2023 and April 2024.
“I was staying in the secondary [suite] when it was available, with my mother-in-law, and then otherwise, I was staying in the one bedroom of the main house,” she said, noting the other bedrooms were listed on Airbnb.
This occurred while her husband and two children were in Portugal. She and her husband run separate food businesses in Vancouver, and own two other properties, which are rented by long-term tenants.
'Unfair situation'
Jetha’s evidence was contrary to what the city’s inspection department concluded.
“That is what they advised us of, however, we don't have evidence to prove that, to show that, or know how often that occurred,” said Sarah Hicks, the city’s chief licence inspector, in an exchange with Ehteshami over Jetha’s evidence that she stayed at the house between November 2023 and April 2024.
Hicks presented a city inspector’s report from May 2024 that found the main house and secondary suite “to be vacant and empty of belongings.” The couple said they were in Portugal at the time.
Hicks also referred to a Residential Tenancy Branch ruling involving the property, where it was learned the couple was not living in the house at the time their initial short-term business licence issued in April 2023.
Ehteshami said the couple was being put in “an unfair situation.”
“If these were investors, they wouldn't have lived in the city for as long as they have and been contributing members to this society by owning a business, paying taxes, paying business licence fees to the city,” he said.
“They would have just stayed in Portugal and likely not fought this altogether. But that's not the case. Our clients do contribute to the city of Vancouver. They do live here, and it's important for them to have this be acknowledged by the city, to allow them to continue their short-term rental licence.”
'I need to be able to go home'
It wasn’t clear when the couple moved to Portugal, but the panel heard the family planned to break their three-year lease and return to Vancouver in the fall. In the meantime, renting the house on Prince Edward Street to a long-term tenant would not work for them, said the couple, arguing it was the family’s principal residence.
“I have to go back in a month or so,” Jetha said.
“I need to be able to go home. I can't have a tenant or somebody [where] I can't actually access my own home. So the short-term tenancy just allows me, or [my husband] or us as a family, to go whenever we feel like it over the next little while, while we're just kind of sorting out this temporary family emergency issue.”
A long-term tenant now rents the secondary suite in the house.
Coun. Rebecca Bligh, the chair of the business licence review panel, said in her closing remarks that Vancouver continues to be a city with a shortage of rental housing.
“Through this bylaw and this process, we protect our very precious housing to be available to those that are living in the city,” Bligh said. “Unfortunately, we are not able to determine outcomes of these business licence hearings on compassionate grounds.”
X/@Howellings
