Regulations needed for Airbnb, city says
Growth of big players shows need to limit short-term rentals to principal residence
New research showing Toronto’s top Airbnb’s earners are big commercial players is further evidence of the need for regulations limiting shortterm rentals to a person’s principal residence, a senior city staff member said Friday.
A draft report by urban planning researchers at McGill University identified Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver’s biggest Airbnb earners as large, commercial hosts with multiple listings, not regular people sharing their homes.
The report says these Airbnb listings are eating into Toronto’s already scarce long-term rental housing stock and an absence of regulatory intervention may threaten the loss of more rental housing units.
The city, in its June staff report on the burgeoning short-term rental market, estimated that of the 10,800 properties listed on Airbnb in 2016, 3,200 were not in a principal residence, Carleton Grant, the city’s director of policy and strategic support, said Friday.
Those 3,200 units would not be allowed under the city’s proposed regulatory regime, which is intended to protect the long-term rental market for people who live in Toronto, he said. “Our regulations are based on a number of principles that allows people to rent their homes for short periods of time and take into account housing availability and affordability.”
The city is currently receiving feedback on its proposed regulations which would allow short-term rentals for up to three rooms or an entire home for up to 28 days. Would-be online hosts have to register with the city, pay an annual fee and remit a tourist tax.
The proposed zoning bylaw changes and licensing and registration requirements are scheduled to go to council in the fall.
Airbnb disputed the McGill University report’s findings and insists “the vast majority of its hosts are middle-class Canadian families sharing their homes to earn a bit of additional income to pay the bills.”
Fairbnb, a coalition of groups pushing for regulation, says no one disputes that.
“But the fact is that countless nonAirbnb commissioned studies using publicly available data, including ours, have shown that the real money made for Airbnb is made by a small percentage of multi-listing hosts who run ghost hotels,” said Fairbnb spokesman Thorben Wiedtiz.
Ben d’Avernas emailed the Star on Friday to say he is one of those regular Airbnb hosts who rents a room in his Leslieville house because the money is good and the company offers liability insurance coverage for damages caused by guests. He also explained why he prefers short-term renters.
“Renting to long term tenants is a crap shoot, if things go south, getting them out is like swimming in quicksand, they can stay for months on end while the landlord has to wade through the rental tribunal bureaucracy,” he wrote.
“When the deadbeat tenant is finally evicted after trashing the flat, there is rarely any hope of collecting back rent or damages.”
“Our regulations are based on a number of principles that . . . take into account housing availability and affordability.” CARLETON GRANT CITY’S DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND STRATEGIC SUPPORT