Evicted for Airbnb: Landlords fight short-term rentals
Courts rule against tenants who sublet apartments for commercial purposes
At least a dozen Montreal landlords have obtained eviction orders since June 2016 on the grounds that their tenants are running commercial enterprises by subletting their apartments on short-term rental websites.
More than half of those rulings have come within the past six months and the majority involve the popular short-term rental site Airbnb, Régie du logement records show.
By regularly subletting their apartment for profit, these tenants have changed the intended use of their apartments from residential to commercial, the landlords in these cases have successfully argued. If a tenant does that without their landlord’s permission, it’s grounds for eviction, according to Quebec’s Civil Code.
Winning these types of cases at the Régie du logement has become easier for landlords over the past two years, said Hans Brouillette, the director of public affairs at the Corporation des propriétaires immobiliers du Québec, a group that represents landlords.
“I think it’s better, but it’s still a major problem for landlords,” he said.
Landlords can wait up to eight months before they get a hearing, he said, and have to gather enough evidence to prove their case.
That evidence, case records show, often comes in the form of online ads and reviews on shortterm rental sites. Landlords have used reviews to demonstrate how frequently apartments are being sublet and, in some cases, to show that the tenant who signed the lease isn’t actually living in the apartment.
Mathieu St-Germain said he thought he was renting his condo, located on the second floor of a duplex, to a couple and their friend.
But he soon got a call from the downstairs neighbour who reported hearing the sound of construction coming from upstairs, he said.
St-Germain’s tenant, Christian Levasseur, who runs a short-term rental website called Roominex, had built a wall to expand a threebedroom unit into five bedrooms.
“He was not even living there at all,” said St-Germain.
St- Germain sent Levasseur a legal letter demanding that he stop subletting. Between the time that letter was sent and the hearing before the Régie du logement, at least 20 people stayed in the apartment, according to the Régie de logement ruling.
St-Germain was able to get a hearing within four months, faster than many landlords, but he said he was frustrated at being forced to wait before he could do anything about the situation.
St- Germain was ultimately able to win an eviction order and $2,564 in damages.
For landlords, short-term rentals can also pose a problem if their insurance company decides those rentals are commercial and not covered under residential insurance.
“It puts the building at risk, since if there’s a fire or anything, the insurer may not pay,” Brouillette said.
Quebec law protects tenants because they’re considered vulnerable, Anne Mailfait, an administrative judge at the Régie de logement, wrote in a March 2016 ruling, but when a tenant systematically rents out their apartment for the sole purpose of making a profit, those tenants take on a role similar to that of landlord without many of the legal obligations.
When that happens, she wrote, the law isn’t protecting a vulnerable party, but rather someone who’s attempting to abuse those protections.
Allowing this would create an imbalance in a system designed to balance the rights and obligations of each party, she wrote, and could tempt landlords to leave the residential rental market for the more lucrative short-term rental business.
While her ruling has been cited in several cases that resulted in eviction orders, Mailfait ordered the tenant in that 2016 case to obtain permission from his landlord before subletting in the future.
Lawyers who practise housing law say that because these types of cases are so new, jurisprudence in this area is still evolving.
The Régie has sided with tenants who can prove they actually live at the apartment they rent and with tenants who stopped renting out their apartments on a short-term basis.
Some tenants have also successfully argued that their landlords were aware they were planning to use the apartment as part of a commercial enterprise and that their leases are beyond the Régie’s jurisdiction.
One couple, Alexandre LabergeAyotte and Laura Kneale, have done that at three hearings, with three different landlords. The couple, who describe themselves as property managers, currently have 18 apartments listed on Airbnb.
Airbnb said the majority of its users are renting their primary residence and, on average, only do so a handful of times a month.
“Montreal is home to many responsible Airbnb hosts who share their primary residences for a few nights each month in order to make ends meet. When hosts sign up on Airbnb, they must certify they will comply with local rules and regulations before listing their space and we also provide information about these local rules and regulations on our Responsible Hosting pages,” Lindsey Scully, the press secretary for Airbnb Canada, wrote in an email to the Montreal Gazette.
It puts the building at risk, since if there’s a fire or anything, the insurer may not pay.