Some Airbnb hosts lie about units being their main residence. Montreal says proving that is hard

Months into its operations, a municipal task force re‐ sponsible for tracking down illegal short-term rentals in Montreal says it still lacks the tools neces‐ sary to verify whether peo‐ ple are being honest when applying to rent out their space - something it says the Quebec government is able but unwilling to do.

City officials met with re‐ porters on Wednesday, near‐ ly a year to the day after a fire in Old Montreal killed seven people and sparked conversations about the safety of short-term rental units.

In the fire's aftermath, Quebec, the city of Montreal and some of its boroughs vowed to crackdown on ille‐ gal short-term rentals.

Since August, the city's team has carried out 394 in‐ spections and issued 42 tick‐ ets for fines ranging from $1,000 to $4,000 - 19 of which have been served to offenders, its co-ordinator Marie-Claude Parent told re‐ porters.

The inspections took place in three boroughs that make up the bulk of the city's Airbnb listings: Ville-Marie, the Plateau-Mont-Royal, and the Sud-Ouest.

In the Plateau, inspectors were able to shut down one illegal Airbnb and the accom‐ modation was put back on the housing market.

"We were able to give housing back to the popula‐ tion," said Parent.

While that's the overall goal of the squad's opera‐ tions, the city says it doesn't have the means to crack down on bad actors who falsely claim to be operating out of their primary resi‐ dence in order to circumvent municipal bylaws.

Dorais said this blindspot in enforcement can only be filled by the Quebec govern‐ ment and its inspectors.

"It is Quebec that has the powers, skills and technologi‐ cal tools to determine the principal residence of an indi‐ vidual," Dorais said.

"This is why we are look‐ ing for better collaboration with the government of Que‐ bec."

Radio silence from Revenu Québec, city says

Each Montreal borough has clear rules outlining where commercial short-term rentals are allowed, if any, al‐ though most allow people to rent out their main home with a registration number from the Corporation de l'in‐ dustrie tourisme du Québec (CITQ).

In order to get that num‐ ber, you need a notice of compliance from your bor‐ ough.

Dorais says a person can simply claim that a rental ac‐ commodation is their main residence in order to get that notice from the municipality, which cannot ensure the ac‐ curacy of the information. Even someone's listed ad‐ dress doesn't prove it's their primary residence.

For each accommodation suspected of being illegal, city inspectors need to put together a comprehensive file, complete with photos of the residence to prove it is in fact the one advertised in an online listing. Then they have to try to prove it's not the host's main residence.

Inspectors share all those files with Revenu Québec, which has the power to issue fines ranging from $2,500 to $25,000 for an individual and from $5,000 to $50,000 for a company illegally operating tourist residences.

But city officials say they have no way of knowing whether harsher fines are handed down.

"We send all the files to Revenu Québec … but we don't have any results," said Parent. "We don't know what has gotten further inspec‐ tion."

In a statement last week, Revenu Québec said it has doubled its number of tourist-accommodation in‐ spectors since the province's tougher rules came into ef‐ fect in September, and its of‐ ficials have met with more than 200 municipalities.

Revenu Québec said any‐ one operating a tourist ac‐ commodation establishment who commits an offence, such as making a false or misleading statement in a prescribed document, is li‐ able to legal proceedings.

Shared responsibility, says Tourism Ministry

Quebec's Tourism Ministry said it's a shared responsibil‐ ity to verify that a person who declares a property as their principal residence is telling the truth.

"The municipality must, for its part, carry out reason‐ able checks before issuing its notice of conformity in order to ensure … that it complies with its regulations," a state‐ ment reads.

"The CITQ carries out checks before issuing a regis‐ tration number to determine whether it is indeed a princi‐ pal residence and also re‐ quires supporting documen‐ tation."

WATCH | Critics say Airbnb restrictions not en‐ forced in Quebec:

According to the provi‐ sions of the Tourist Accom‐ modation Act, a false declara‐ tion in a prescribed docu‐ ment is punishable by a fine varying between $2,500 and $25,000 for an individual and from $5,000 to $50,000 in all other cases.

A report available on the Revenu Québec website shows inspectors have served 428 infraction notices in Montreal under the Tourist Accommodation Act, 279 of which resulted in fines to‐ talling nearly $1.2 million be‐ tween April 1 and Dec. 31, 2023.

The report does not pro‐ vide a breakdown of the fines.

In a statement, Airbnb says it's following the rules put in place by the Quebec government, but "no other municipality or province has a system as cumbersome."

Different priorities

David Wachsmuth, a re‐ searcher and professor at the School of Urban Planning at McGill University, says in Quebec, the problem is that there are three levels of gov‐ ernment, each with a partial responsibility to enforce the rules and each with different priorities when it comes to regulating short-term rentals.

"The province has been pretty clear through their ac‐ tions that they see the big question here as making sure that hosts follow the rules around registering for per‐ mits," Wachsmuth said.

"Whereas in Montreal, it's very clear that the big issue here is, 'We don't want fulltime housing being con‐ verted to hotels, effectively,' and the problem is that pri‐ ority isn't shared by the province."

Wachsmuth says it's a missed opportunity that there's not better co-ordina‐ tion between policy-makers.

"Why bother having this whole provincial registration system if they're not going to use that information to, you know, help enforce local rules?" he said.

Wachsmuth says while there are lots of people still getting around the rules, Quebec "is headed in the right direction" with its tougher laws.

"The current approach is working, its just not working as well or as quickly as we'd like."