Short-stay report expects us to share the pain – and pay the price

It’s a very valid point you make and I have been thinking about a few options.  All the legal advice I have had on this recently has been that it is not strictly legal to ban non-residents from common property but it is legal to charge owners for additional services above an beyond what everyone gets anyway.

Taking the first part first, the proposed laws would expect us to wait until something goes wrong and then pursue the “host” through the Tribunal, with no guarantee of success (NCAT being the chocolate wheel that it is).  My view is that we  could pursue policies that are “extra-legal”  – i.e. have a questionable legal basis but aren’t actually criminal – and let the “hosts” pursue us through the Tribunal process, with them taking the gamble on their time and money.

Barring non-residents from common property facilities would be just such a policy, as well as a highly zealous policing of noise and safety to the point of cutting off electricity to noisy apartments.  These are tactics that might not withstand a serious legal challenge but might drive out short-stay hosts whop can’t be bothered to jump through all the hoops that the inquiry committee wants us to negotiate.

Another tactic might be, as you suggest, to charge owners for additional services related to their apartments’ guests.  Phone calls to the building manager asking where the bins are and approaches to the concierge (if you have one) could all be charged to the lot owner under a set scale established by a by-law. For instance, a request to hand over keys or allow access to the garage could incur a charge of $100, payable by the lot owner.

I believe that anything that would not be a usual interaction with permanent residents could be covered by a service charge by-law.  This is covered by section 111 of the current laws and section 117 of the incoming strata laws, both of which say the same thing. 

111   Can an owners corporation provide amenities and services to a lot?

An owners corporation may enter into an agreement with an owner or occupier of a lot for the provision of amenities or services by it to the lot or to the owner or occupier of the lot.

Therefore, using the instrument of a by-law, you say “we will provide the following services to short-stay rental guests (i.e. those who do not have residential tenancy agreements) on the following basis …” and then you have a menu of charges for everything from answering a phone call to putting a sticker on a car parked in visitor parking.

Is it entirely legal?  It doesn’t matter. The way things are set up at the moment, some residents flout our by-laws then thumb their noses at us as we laboriously pursue them through NCAT.  It’s time we used the system to our advantage and let them pursue us.

Oh, by the way, there’s another battlefield – are short-stay guests “visitors” as far as visitor parking is concerned? Look forward to losing all your spare parking if and when we are forced to accept short-stay rentals.

Meanwhile, I would strongly recommend that any building that doesn’t want short-stay letting passes a by-law stating the short-stay letting is not appropriate for the building and instructing the strata committee to pursue any breaches of by-laws and strata laws by short-stay hosts and guests with the utmost vigour and to the full extent of the law. 

@JC said:
I’m wondering if a ‘class action’ type approach could be used to tackle this issue. I’m assuming it might be feasible to have a very specific by-law drafted which challenges the basic principles of certain Parliamentary Inquiry recommendations.  If a large enough number of Owners Corporations implemented this by-law, then funded as a collective the defence when it was challenged, we might bring the fundamental unfairness of this report to a head.

Nice idea but it’s a fundamental principle of strata law that you can’t pass by-laws that supersede “superior laws”.  That’s why strata schemes that are not zoned exclusively residential can’t really have by-laws banning short-stay lets. Your by-laws would never actually be by-laws because they would fail the first test.

I think right now we should be writing to our MPs and local councils, telling them that if they support this short-sighted attack on our lifestyles then we will attack theirs by sacking them at the next election.

The proposals seem to be that while strata schemes will not be able to ban short-stay lets, local councils will be able to set the number of nights per year that they are allowed before they have to have planning permission (which they will automatically get anyway).

City of Sydney has privately suggested 100 nights a year (or every weekend, if you want to look at it that way) and seem to be absolutely stunned that people aren’t dancing in the street at this wholesale destruction of fragile but growing communities just so they can look cool and trendy and their supporters can make money at their neighbours’ expense.

Money talks, principles walk and the short-stay letting industry has a lot of money to throw at this, as they have shown in Victoria and now here. It’s ironic that Sydney, that likes to kid itself that it’s a world city, is deliberately ignoring what is happening in real world cities like New York which has just imposed a minimum rental period of 30 days because its housing stock is evaporating while its hotels face closure and massive job losses.

But you are right, strata residents need to get together and let the politicians know they aren’t going to get away with treating us like third-class citizens. If you want to get involved, sign the Neighbours Not Strangers petition and have a look at their Facebook page