[SignalHillHiker]

The impact here seems to be mixed, with strongly positive and strongly negative attributes.

We're a somewhat unusual market in that the province is a closed system and functionally all of the population growth in St. John's comes from rural Newfoundland. This makes the city very suburban. The size of our urban core is today exactly the same size it was in the 1940s, if not, smaller. The majority of those moving into St. John's are passionately opposed to any sort of urban lifestyle and prefer modern subdivisions as sparsely populated as possible. Front page controversies here have included everything from four-floor "highrise apartments turning us into Toronto" to the absolutely offensive installation of sidewalks on BOTH sides a street. This is what we're dealing with. On top of that, the vast majority of our suburbs remain separate municipalities with lower taxes than St. John's. All this just creates a situation where the urban core is, by far, the cheapest area of the city to buy property, and the most expensive area in which to rent.

AirBnB's arrival coincided with the loss of oil and gas industry executive rentals. As these business people who paid multiple thousands in rent each month left, there was no one left who could afford to match those prices. Through AirBnB, though, property owners were able to recoup pretty much the same income. And even people with lacklustre properties were able to bring in much more money than they could otherwise.

I, for example, can get about $600/month for a room in my house - at best. If I had the time and patience to do AirBnB, I could easily double or triple that income. I've friends doing it right now.

The downside is that it pushes less affluent locals out of the core, which is really the only area of the city designed for people who aren't middle class with personal vehicles and disposable income. It even pushes some middle class downtownies out. I've had friends given notice of eviction from apartments (always the best-looking and located ones) because those were going to AirBnB in a few months.

There's definitely a need, though. We don't have enough hotel beds in the core so the hotels actually work with people with these units and shuffle excess guests out to them for a night or two. One of my friends is doing that for one core hotel and she's had both rooms in her house rented for months, with almost not vacancy.

So, it's a trade-off. It's helping weather the loss of visiting executives, and improving the downtown housing stock, but preventing locals from accessing and enjoying these improvements. I suspect we'll get into a cycle where locals move into the core in the fall and winter, and out of it in the spring and summer tourist season.