By John Francis
STAs — Short-Term Accommodations — are properties rented for periods of less than a month, primarily for recreational purposes. They’ve been around a long time.
I first stayed at an STA nearly 70 years ago. Our nextdoor neighbours in Toronto had stuck their necks out and built a cottage at Wendake Beach, which is halfway between Wasaga Beach and Balm Beach. They couldn’t really afford it but they rented it by the week to friends, neighbours and family to help with the payments.
I remember it well. It was open underneath the cottage with stacks of blocks every few feet. The inside of the cottage was finished in plywood — that was an exciting new material in the 1950s. There was no insulation at all — I remember we used to have to build a fire on chilly mornings in late August.
But it was a huge step up from the other cottages we had rented in previous years. I remember one of the places we vacationed was on the Trent system, a property with twenty or so cottages, too scruffy to call itself a resort. The two-bedroom cottages were about twenty feet square, with no ceiling, only a roof. The interior walls only went up eight feet. They were two-by-four studs with masonite on one side only. Some of the cottages were even smaller. But they were full, all summer.
You could rent a wooden rowboat by the day or by the week. If you had more money than we did, you could rent a motor, too. We went fishing every day and had fresh fish for dinner every evening. There was a rudimentary playground, a scruffy “beach” with leeches and lots of kids to play with.
I remember another “resort”. It was on a beach at Lake Simcoe. There were half a dozen cottages arranged around a central lawn. The cottages were about twelve feet by twenty feet. Inside they were completely unfinished — stud walls, no ceiling.
But all of these places were dramatically better than the alternative, which was a tent. I still have the family tent. I inherited it. It’s nine feet by twelve; five foot side walls with screened windows; seven foot ridge pole. The tent weighs about a hundred pounds (plus poles and ropes) when it’s dry; maybe double that when it’s wet. It’s made of canvas and always smelled of the linseed oil you had to paint on it every year to make it somewhat water resistant. You had to carefully avoid touching the canvas on the inside of the tent when it rained — a touch would create a leak and capillary action would keep it dripping until the tent dried out. It always leaked along the ridge pole…
I offer these details to illustrate how much people’s expectations have changed in the intervening decades. Or have they?
Parks Canada has a bunch of “yurts” that they rent out. They are full all summer and are booked up far in advance.
When you think about it, they bear a startling similarity to those long-ago cottages. Small, open concept, not well insulated… You’d think they’d be a summer-only proposition but actually people stay in them in winter too.
So why aren’t there modern-day equivalents of those down-at-heel resorts of my youth?
I think the main reason is building codes. (Note that the National Park yurts don’t have to meet the local building codes because they’re in a National Park.) The moment you tack the word “commercial” onto an accommodation building, a whole bunch of extra rules apply.
They don’t just have to meet current residential code — which is draconian enough — they have to meet special commercial code. Fire barriers between units; sprinkler systems, regular drinking water monitoring and so much more.
A lot of people take vacations in RVs or travel trailers, which don’t come remotely close to meeting any residential building code. Yet they’re perfectly legal.
But you couldn’t build a resort with those standards. Even if you only wanted to rent in the summer, you’d still need to meet commercial code.
Is it any wonder that investors prefer to just buy houses and use them as DIY commercial resorts?
Is it any wonder that nobody’s building commercial resorts anymore? It’s pretty hard to compete with STAs that don’t have to meet commercial regulations or pay commercial taxes.
Should we trash the regulations and “get out of the way” of commercial development?
In the aftermath of Walkerton, do we want to reduce the regulations on drinking water? After the Montreal STA tragedy, do we want to cut back on fire regulations?
Maybe we should go forward instead — regulate and tax the STA sector enough to make the commercial sector competitive again.
Do you think it’s fair that commercial businesses have to pay the same 4% Municipal Accommodation Tax (MAT) as STAs? Wouldn’t it make sense to charge a much higher rate for STAs?
Fun fact: MAT in Toronto is 8.5%…
