WHO'S THAT SLEEPING IN MY BED?
Condo owner says room rented out unknowingly
A Toronto condo owner came home to a stranger in her kitchen and another person’s clothes in her bedroom last Saturday afternoon, only to learn her roommates had listed her room on Airbnb without her consent.
“At first I thought my roommates must be home and had a friend over,” Cori Carl said. “Then he asked me if I was the next guest and if he should leave the keys with me or the concierge.”
Carl is a New York Citybased graphic designer and marketing consultant in the process of relocating her business to Toronto, and is in the city for about a week every month. She purchased the Dundas Square-area condo because she found it to be less expensive than staying in a hotel for each visit.
When the stranger in her kitchen told her he was there through Airbnb, she found the listing and contacted them on Saturday to remove it.
Four days later, a caseworker with the Airbnb trust and safety department told her in an email that the company does not “verify private contract terms or arbitrate complaints from third parties,” but offered to submit a formal complaint to the host of the listing (her roommates) and “ask them whether they wish to remove their listing.”
The email stated that the company “require (s) hosts to represent that they have all rights to list their accommodations,” but proof of these rights is not required to put up a listing. A spokesperson for the company said in listing a space, the host certifies they have the right to do so.
She rents the second bedroom of her apartment to a couple, one of whom is a friend from Brooklyn, N.Y.
“They’re people I knew and trusted and that’s why I felt comfortable sharing an apartment with them, knowing I wouldn’t be there most of the time,” she said.
In listing their own room on the website and hosting other people, her roommates violated the apartment building’s rules, which stipulate tenants are banned from subletting, Carl said.
Since Carl owns the apartment, her roommates are her tenants. She said the room- mates were aware of this rule, because it was in the tenant agreement she had them sign.
“Since there was money exchanged, it puts us all at risk for eviction,” Carl said.
Carl says her roommates were not home and the stranger in her kitchen was staying in their bedroom. But when she went into her own bedroom, there were clothes on the floor that weren’t hers, and the bed was unmade.
“I’m very tidy and I definitely left everything just so,” she said. “There was definitely someone sleeping in my room.”
She said she left the apartment and contacted her roommates, and when she came home later in the evening, her roommates were home and the strange clothing in her room was gone. The roommates, themselves, removed the listings that night at Carl’s request.
“I feel really violated, and it’s bothersome to know that, as soon as I go back to New York for a meeting on Tuesday, this could happen again,” she said.
Carl said she was contacted on Friday afternoon — almost a week after she filed her complaint — by Aaron Zifkin, the Airbnb country manager for Canada, who apologized for how the situation was handled.
Zifkin issued a statement through a representative that said “the initial response to the inquiry didn’t meet the standards we set for ourselves.” It stated that the company removed the listing, although Carl said her roommates removed the listing themselves last Saturday.
It also stated that the account had been removed from the website, but the account page was still available to view hours after the statement was issued. An automatically-generated comment on the page indicated that there was a reservation for this week that was cancelled. The account page no longer exists.
Carl said she will be finding another roommate, but will add “no Airbnb” to the tenant contract.
Earlier this week, a Calgary couple returned to their home after renting it out on Airbnb to find their house completely trashed, with an estimate of repairs costing up to $75,000. Airbnb offered to cover the cost of the repair and restoration, as they provide up to $1 million under their host guarantee insurance.
‘The initial response to the inquiry didn’t meet the standards we set for ourselves.’ — Aaron Zifkin, Airbnb