The ‘sympathetic’ face of Airbnb
Home-sharing company’s critics say Toronto must not be fooled by feel-good tales
Mable Chu was featured in a recent Airbnb marketing campaign as an average Toronto “host” who, dealt a setback, began renting out rooms on the platform as she struggled to pay the mortgage.
“One of the things I first did when I lost my job was Airbnb,” Chu said in a 30-second video posted, and now removed, by Airbnb on YouTube.
With instrumental music playing softly in the background, the video cut to Chu warmly greeting a woman at a door, presumably a guest. Without the home-sharing income, “there’s no way I could manage to keep up the mortgage payments,” Chu said in a voice-over.
But Fairbnb, a coalition of labour, tenant and resident groups, argues this was an example of Airbnb cherry-picking hosts, ignoring the individuals and commercial players who list dozens of properties, turning rental housing into hotels and creating nuisance issues for condo residents.
“Airbnb tends to feature sympathetic hosts who occasionally share their primary home to raise additional funds,” Thorben Wieditz, a researcher with Fairbnb, wrote in an email. “We urge the city of Toronto to design regulation not around model hosts’ personal feel-good stories.”
Nor are the portrayals always accurate.
While the Airbnb marketing campaign suggested Chu “discovered home sharing” after she was restructured out of a job at a bank, Chu told the Star she lost her job in April 2016, almost three years after she first listed her Seaton Village house on Airbnb.
The company counters Fairbnb’s assertion. Alex Dagg, Airbnb’s Canadian policy lead, said in an emailed statement that the “vast majority” of Airbnb hosts share their primary residence a few days a month.
“Hosts like Mable . . . use the Airbnb platform as an economic lifeline to help pay their bills in a city that is becoming more and more expensive to live in.”
Chu’s bills included payments for “top to bottom” renovations, including a three-storey addition.
In 2012, Chu, an accountant, decided to fulfil her dream of giving the century-old home a major facelift. She and her husband, who works for an insurance company, bought the house in 1988 for $255,000. Chu borrowed money from a bank — building permits with the city estimated the cost at $400,000. She and her family moved out while contractors went to work. Costs escalated and Chu says she was “begging and borrowing” from siblings. “I was try- ing to figure out, ‘How can I pay for this renovation?’ ”
She considered creating a separate apartment to help generate income, but there were “too many things with city hall; regulation, rules, fire codes, separate doors, whatever and eventually my architect probably went crazy with me. I kept going back and forth.”
By the fall of 2013, Chu had discovered Airbnb. “This is an amazing platform. I took a few pictures of the house and all of a sudden we’re listed.”
Paying guests are invited to stay in Chu’s 3,300-square-foot home featuring five bedrooms — three with keyed doors for security. There are also five “luxurious” bathrooms and a gourmet kitchen.
Now, Chu estimates there’s an outstanding mortgage of between $600,000 and $700,000.
Chu says she, along with most people who “share their home,” probably do it because they need the money.
“So I think in that respect, I would be representative. But I’m not representative of the whole short-term rental platform. There’s a lot of eggs in that basket and I’m just one of the eggs.”
Chu says Airbnb has helped bring her peace of mind and hopes city staff looking at regulations realize “the world is changing.”
Last month, she was among the approximately 100 people who attended the city’s first public consultation on short-term rental regulations at North York Civic Centre. The next public meeting is downtown Wednesday night at City Hall. The city is also inviting the public to complete an online survey.
The arrival of Airbnb and other on- line short-term rental platforms have been controversial in cities around the world, with questions raised about the impact on neighbourhoods, housing affordability, tourism and taxation.
Airbnb has suffered blows. Last year, New York state passed a law prohibiting apartment owners from renting units for less than 30 days if they are not present.
In Toronto, city staff are examining potential options for regulating short-term rentals, including a licensing system, updated zoning bylaws, additional tax requirements and other options. Proposed regulations are scheduled to go to Mayor John Tory’s executive committee in June.
Airbnb is hard at work, asking Torontonians to “let decision makers know why home sharing is important to you and encourage them to support fair, flexible and sensible regulations.”
The San Francisco-based company was well represented in North York last month.
More than half of the attendees were Aibnb hosts, many wearing turquoise T-shirts with the company’s “Belo” logo. Dagg, a former labour leader and director of operations at the National Hockey League Players Association, was on hand for media interviews. Ensuring the evening ran smoothly, from the company’s perspective, was Darryl Konynenbelt of Navigator, which calls itself “Canada’s leading high-stakes public strategy and communications firm.”
Also present were about 10 Fairbnb representatives — minus any matching clothing.
“People in Airbnb T-shirts forget that Airbnb is the largest hotel in the world right now. They are essentially running around doing the bidding for a $30-billion corporation,” says Wieditz, who works for Unite Here, a union representing more than 25,000 workers in diverse sectors, including the hotel sector.
“We take issue with the manner in which corporately funded hotel lobby groups, like Fairbnb, would rather cater to their own interests of preserving high room rates by unfairly attacking regular Torontonians who are just trying to make ends meet,” Dagg said in a statement.
After a brief presentation on the current short-term rental landscape, staff from various city divisions heard hosts tell heartfelt anecdotes, a staple of Airbnb’s marketing and branding.
Paul and Lina Nedoszytko told staff Airbnb has thrown them a lifeline. They listed the basement of their Scarborough bungalow and a poolside studio flat on Airbnb after they both lost their jobs in their 50s.
“This is going to be our retirement. I have no pension. I have zero benefits. This is everything to us,” Paul Nedoszytko said.
“If we aren’t able to continue doing what we’ve done for the last three years, without any issues whatsoever, we’re going to have to sell our house and move.”
Their two units, each available for between $49 and $90 each a night, have almost year-round occupancy, he said.
At the end of last week’s night-time meeting, city staff were asked to share what they had heard.
Helen Bulat, a project manager at city planning, said she was struck by the pride hosts felt guiding tourists to Toronto activities and shopping experiences. “I found that to be touching, actually.”