September, 2026

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Dear guests and neighbours, 

 

We are applying to add “neighbourhood hotel” to our site-specific zoning here at the BoHo (Bohemian House) Bed and Breakfast, at 731 Vancouver Street.

 

WHAT? A HOTEL? HOLY COW, THERE GOES THE NEIGHBOURHOOD! 

 

Nope, no hotel. No limos or late nights, no awning or doorman, no delivery trucks or laundry service, no valet, no concierge, no noise, no lounge, and no renovations. None. No tree cutting nor rose pruning. The BoHo will not become a hotel. Absolutely not. Rather, the BoHo hopes to add “neighbourhood hotel” to its existing site-specific zoning, which is a different thing. The phrase “neighbourhood hotel” is perhaps an unfortunate name created by the city, because it includes the word, “hotel”, which may immediately give the wrong impression. 

 

OKAY STOP RIGHT THERE BECAUSE OMG THE PARKING!

 

Over half our guests do not have vehicles; they walk or cycle. We have a driveway, which has kept the need to park a vehicle on the street very low, so parking impact is minimal. Still, as we are hoping to add one room to our offerings (to have four rooms for guests instead of three) it does mean there will potentially be one more vehicle to park on the street sometimes. We’ve been running The BoHo for a few years now, and have yet to receive a parking complaint.  

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OKAY, DETAILS PLEASE!

 

So, last year (July 2025)  the city completed their zoning modernization plan which simplified and reduced many zones, automatically adding most older Bed and Breakfasts around town to a new zone called, “neighbourhood hotel.” So, chances are pretty good there's already a neighbourhood hotel in your neighbourhood.

 

Here’s their definition of neighbourhood hotel:

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“ … small-scale transient lodging to the general public within a Building under single ownership that was constructed prior to 1925, which has occupancy for no less than five Guest Rooms and no more than eighteen Guest Rooms, and which includes: 

a) a guest register

b) an attendant available at all times

c) housekeeping services available with no fee”

 

Here’s a link to that zoning document where you’ll find our house (731 Vancouver Street) listed on page 43. If you scroll to nearby pages, you'll see that all Bed and Breakfasts lurking in our city's neighbourhoods with at least five rooms have automatically become neighbourhood hotels. Some are in James Bay or Rockland, and five are in Fairfield (Humboldt St., Cook St., Vancouver St./Humboldt St., and Su'it St.).

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According to city planning, setting the minimum number of rooms at five for their new zone was arbitrary, and since we have only three rooms licensed, our Bed and Breakfast wasn't included. The idea for us to apply for this new zone originated with the city’s Senior Bylaw Officer during our annual inspection earlier this year. Each year the city inspects all Bed and Breakfasts, and during this inspection the officer agreed our situation was challenging in terms of our home's layout, and serving all guests a sit-down breakfast within our main floor living space. He suggested the new neighbourhood hotel zone may be a better, more flexible fit for us. When we read the definition and spoke with the planning department, we said, Hey! That’s us! Except for the five-room minimum. 

 

BREAKFAST SERVED BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

 

During our first year after renovating we received our license and began renting rooms short term. Things were balancing well with flexibility in how busy we chose to be to make ends meet, as we both work as contractors in the arts. But the following year the city told us we couldn't do that anymore – now we must offer breakfast to every guest, or we could wait and try to get onto a council meeting agenda to plead our case.

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And you might be thinking, well of course you bought a property zoned for bed and breakfast, so you get what you get! Yet it was never our intention to run a bed and breakfast here, in the traditional sense. To be fair, some context: a few years ago the local short-term rental guidelines were more vague, but began evolving quickly (as you might remember) as city staff were making strong efforts to define what works and what doesn't in each zone. Short-term rentals in our home were perfectly fine with them until they weren't. So now we could wait and hope that council would be more understanding than bylaw, to get back to renting rooms without breakfast, or we could cave to bylaw's wish that we offer breakfast. Either way, until sorted, the city would grant us no license at all. Months flew by while we tried to get on a council meeting agenda, but eventually, with no rental income at all, we had to cave, and agreed to offer breakfast. Bylaw issued us our license. 

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We began that new chapter stipulating to guests that breakfast arrangements be made when booking, and since most guests did not follow through, breakfasts remained rare. So things were once again balancing pretty well. Guests were happy, we were happy, until this year (2026) when, during our annual inspection the bylaw officer insisted that we now must serve breakfast to every guest rather than just offer it. He stipulated that it must only be served in our dining room on our main floor, and that it must be served by me, the host. So now we were left with no choice. I joke now that as a child I was “chained to the piano” (daily piano practice) and now I'm “chained to the dining room table.” It is an odd situation – the one we were hoping to avoid.

 

And it immediately forced a substantial change at the BoHo: I'm on the hook to meal plan, purchase food, prepare food, serve food, freeze and refrigerate food, (and think about food, which I do a lot), set up, clean up, and move some of our furniture back and forth every day. It's meant finding space for another freezer, another fridge, and working our kitchen hard, as if it were a commercial one. (Fun fact: Bed and Breakfast hosts in Victoria do not need even level one BC Foodsafe training! But don’t worry, I have mine.) 
 

Add to this the fact that, because our rooms are not exactly luxurious and are all rather close together, it isn't possible to raise our prices to cover these new labour costs, now running up to 60 hours a month. This is exactly what we had tried to avoid. And being this busy with breakfasts has meant cutting back on my career, replacing those hours with unpaid work. Now when I do take on a contract in my career and deadlines begin to loom, I have to shut down our Bed and Breakfast entirely, sometimes for weeks at a time. Inconsistency and uncertainty: not a good business plan! 

 

FOOD?

 

The breakfasts, I admit, brought people together more than I thought they would. People enjoy meeting each other, and us (I assume), and we enjoy meeting them. There's a part of me that enjoys serving and hosting breakfasts, but it’s expensive for us; we simply can’t recoup costs. Food is expensive, heck, even just coffee is expensive. But working for free is really, really expensive – I don't recommend it. We’re no longer able to put funds away for maintenance – exterior painting or a new roof, for example. The traditional bed and breakfast business model clearly and simply does not work in this home. 

 

AWKWARD 

 

Having up to six people join us every morning in the main floor area of our home can be taxing, as our home's main floor is a pretty open plan. While guests are breakfasting in our dining room, they’re basically in our living room and in our kitchen too. This makes for some occasional interesting moments during morning dressing, and bedroom - bathroom travels with some of our family. 

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FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS

 

Yes we have a nice home in a great neighbourhood, and it can generate income! We’re very fortunate. We renovated and restored it carefully, retaining lots of character. A big part of the renovation was updating safety and infrastructure such as hot water, heating, cooling, wiring, so everything works! Guests are comfortable! It's charming, it's our kind of place, and we love it, and we just want to keep it that way. We need to keep it in good shape as stewards of a historical home for sure, but also, since we are contract workers in the arts, we have no pensions or benefits. These are first world problems for sure, I mean, wow, we’re homeowners and we have our health, so yes, we’re privileged in the big picture, but the reality is that we have a lot riding on this beautiful old home. If we can take care of it, it can take care of us, which is precisely why we bought it and fixed it in the first place. 

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FOURTH ROOM? WHAT?

 

Our three guest rooms are on the second floor, and our attic is already a developed space, it has been for decades. We've used the space for ourselves – our jobs and our hobbies – and for visiting family and friends. It’s a bright space with a full bathroom, it needs no alterations, so we thought adding this space as a fourth guest room would do three things: (a) give us additional flexibility with that space, (b) increase the number of guest rooms closer to the minimum of five, and (c) increase our potential income if and when necessary to help us with rising upkeep, utilities, and insurance costs.

 

The main attraction for adding "neighbourhood hotel" to our site-specific zoning is so that serving breakfast won't be mandatory, it will become our choice again. We'll be returning to the balance we had in the first place before this whole rollercoaster began. I work from home and will continue to tend to guests' needs at any time. This is precisely the flexibility we felt confident we were buying into in the first place.

 

A NEIGHBOURHOOD HOTEL IN OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD

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This home has been many things to many people, and it first became a Bed and Breakfast in the mid 1980s. It's a quiet business – I doubt most people even know we are here. Did you? We rent for reduced rates to neighbours looking for somewhere nearby to house their visiting friends and family. We rent to local arts groups looking to house out-of town musicians – we have a good bond with local music festivals and our neighbourhood cathedral, offering greatly reduced rates.

 

We've hosted folks from out of town coming to the birth of a first grandchild, and newly arriving immigrants from India, we've hosted Russians in one room with Ukrainians in another. We've met countless couples exploring Victoria for the first time, spending on local meals and tours. We have visiting patients from up-island here for treatments, wanderers from Europe, hikers from Asia, business people, conference delegates, and families here for big weddings. We've hosted a team in the Race To Alaska, and runners in the Royal Victoria Marathon. We love our home – we're a part of the fabric of our neighbourhood, and we want to carry on living here and sharing it.​​

 

SO THAT’S IT?

 

I think so. Please send me any questions or concerns, I’d be happy to hear from you. Thank you. 

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Tobin Stokes (& Jude Isabella)

 

tobinstokes[at]gmail.com