Jane Glenn | March 11, 2025
Saugeen Shores Council is pressing pause on any further steps towards regulating short-term rentals, for now. Council heard from consultants at JL Richardson, who gave an overview of the findings of their study on the local accommodation landscape at the February 23 regular council meeting.
Short-term rental accommodations (STRAs) were defined as "private, residential dwellings that are rented for brief periods, typically less than 30 days, to provide temporary overnight accommodation." They can include an entire home or just an individual room in a unit and are usually booked by online platforms such as airbnb and Vrbo.
Saugeen Shores has 163 unique STRA listings, 380 hotel or motel rooms and four campgrounds, according to the report's statistics from December 2025. The majority of hotel and motel rooms are located in the Port Elgin area, while STRAs are found in Southampton, Port Elgin and nearby agricultural areas.
The average listing is for a two or three-bedroom unit, with an average cost of $200 to 250 per night. STRAs occupy 2% of the Town's housing stock, substantially higher than the 0.7% provincial average.
Traditional bed and breakfasts differ from STRAs, as they are the primary residence of the owner/operator and that they will be "present throughout the use of the dwelling," explained Luoma.
Currently operators in Saugeen Shores are not licensed, there's "no oversight related to guest safety, impact to neighbouring properties or to the town's overall housing stock," Luoma said.
The consultants acknowledged that STRAs come with pros and cons. They can boost local tourism, drive economic growth and "generally reinforce some of the tourist capacity of the town," Luoma said. However, this need will always have to be balanced with the need for housing stock, she emphasized.
Common negative impacts such as noise complaints, parking congestion and excessive garbage "could be managed," said Luoma. "Concerns had been noted with diminished community cohesion" by survey respondents.
A key benefit to licensing is providing "a mechanism to track or limit the number of STRA operators, it can be used to geographically track or even guide where these occur in the town," said Luoma. "Licensing is an avenue to require inspections" for fire and building codes, ensuring greater safety for all. There would be voluntary compliance, but a "licensing bylaw gives it some teeth with the ability to enforce those standards...and the municipality the opportunity to recover costs."
The report gave examples of potential licensing frameworks and cost recovery models and recommended a more detailed strategy from Saugeen Shores, as they "remain silent on STRA permissions and potential mechanisms for regulation, including licensing," explained Luoma.
Councillor Dave Myette spoke first, saying he didn't see the need for regulation. "To bring in a very complicated structure of points and demerit and licenses, number of rooms and costs for multiple inspections and yearly inspections and having to hire a full-time bylaw officer; it just seems like a lot of administration, and for that reason, I don’t think I’m going to be able to support this."
He also pointed out that there are other municipalities in the province who are tackling this issue now or who have existing regulations in place for short-term rentals. "All we have to do is wait a couple of years and see how it works out for them," said Myette, adding that he would like to wait and see what happens for the other municipalities and if they actually get into cost-recovery mode.
Councillor Bud Halpin noted that many new builds in Saugeen Shores include 'granny flats,' which could be potential income properties for buyers. "Short-term rentals isn’t a bad word in Saugeen Shores," Halpin said, however, "I figure as soon as we register all these, the next logical step will be to tax them," which he didn't think owners would go for.
Councillor Rachel Stack said it was very clear what people want. "They want lower taxes but they also want investments in recreation. So we can talk about the credits and debits required to get there, but I think I would rather see the focus on a municipal accommodation tax which has plenty of evidence in this province as functioning well and not degrading tourism," she said.
Mayor Luke Charbonneau concluded the discussion by saying he has "never been in favour of a short-term rental licensing regime or a municipal accommodation tax for that matter and I don’t intend to become in favour of either of those things. I think there are definitely folks out there in the community who are interested in us talking about these things and looking at them and understanding them. So we’ve done that here and concluded that with respect to Saugeen Shores the level of the issue doesn’t necessarily merit the regime we’d have to structure to address whatever issues there are," he said.
Council did not move to proceed with any further investigation into licensing or taxing short-term accommodation.
