02/11/2017 – Jurisdiction Ontario
Part 60 published on 01/12/2017
Court dismisses corporations’ Application to amend Declarations
The condominium corporations applied for orders amending their declarations to eliminate provisions (in the declarations) that expressly permit transient, short-term rentals.
The Applications were dismissed. The Court held that there was no error or inconsistency to justify amendments under Section 109 of the Condominium Act, 1998. The Court said:
If developers can enshrine business protections in the declarations of the condominiums they develop, the solution for the unit owners who find this undesirable is to amend the declaration pursuant to s. 107 of the Act. If the 80 percent threshold is unreasonably high to facilitate change that is desirable, and perhaps especially desirable to some in the current climate where websites like Airbnb make short-term leasing widespread and readily available, the remedy lies in legislative change to the threshold. The remedy is not to take what is fundamentally an amendment to a declaration that the board desires and repackage it as an inconsistency in order to seek relief under s. 109 of the Act.
TSCC No. 1556 and No. 1600 v. Owners of TSCC No. 1556 et, al.