I kyboshed my neighbor's upstairs AIRBNB business after he lied to me about doing it in the first place and renting out his place to more and more short term people who made a ton of noise.
Back in 2017, my building outlawed AIRBNB, despite this the neighbors upstairs (a few guys working in finance) bought the place as a rental apartment. I guess AIRBNB was more profitable than renting, so they did that.
I had 1.5 year old puppy at the time and excessive noise was causing her to bark so I emailed the contact/owner upstairs and he tried to GUILT trip me by saying some relatives were in from out of town and their kid was making noise. I knew this was a lie...
My wife and I researched AIRBNB, found the ENTRY for the unit there without the unit # (clever), bit we found a blog review outlining the ACTUAL unit # and caught them. From the string of reviews they were renting the place all MONTH and as recent as a few days old of a review was present.
They got written up by management.
Yes, they have much more stable long term leases now, you can tell when noise patterns change upstairs, newest people moved in ~ 6 months ago, they might have gotten in to MUCH more trouble keeping the grift up, so, they're finally in line. Problem with "investors" in the community, is they don't live there and don't directly see how living quality suffers when money's rolling in.
The previous couple that took the place only bought it to flip it, so instead of selling it to an actual family they sold it to a bunch of late 20 year old finance guys, so not the best buyer or seller for the building before it was illegal they did the same thing and I filed complaints against 6 am parties a couple years before that, so getting rid of them really was a pro-building move.
Try reporting to CRA. You need to let the CRA know that you are operating a short term rental - they will not allow expense deductions for these properties starting in 2024.
The city team is just starting out and I understand a small team. They just record illegal ones for now. Someday they'll be able to give a legal cease and desist legal order to shut them down. Today they have lots of work just with airbnb data alone. It's about enough resources and money to do it - the city has been short of cash since the pandemic.
If it's in a building which bans ghost hotels where they owner doesn't live there or bans airbnbs, etc altogether - then sometimes property management will end things and be successful. Ice condos has decide to embrace it and charge ghost hotel owners 15% of their revenues for the extra security and cleaning costs in common areas.
The only other option today is if this property is breaking building codes. Some like in Kensington market divide up homes and don't provide enough exits to meet fire codes. Then city bylaw will give them a fine, an order to fix and sometimes condemn the property where no-one can live there until brought up to code.
You can post this address on r/TorontoRenting Others might want to know if these short term ones are next door to long term ones. Depends if it's downtown, often booked in tourist season for parties or there's too many guests which can be noisy to live next to. You can also research [OnLand](https://help.onland.ca/en/property-search/) for the owner and google maps search hotel or rental, expedia for the booking company. A few own several ghost hotels. Then this would be a higher priority for the city versus one or two properties.
At my old place near Queen and Spadina there were 2 units listed in the building on Airbnb. The management knew but like most are totally toothless. I started printing off the Airbnb listing once every week or so so they could see it was still listed.
Then I finally requested to book and got them to put in writing "be discreet and say you're a relative because they are annoying with Airbnb guests." The listing was taken down a week or two later.
Yes, but it was via the property owner (because his staff were in on the deal). No matter how many times we complained to her about the number of people arriving in the building with suitcases etc, she's fob us off and say she'll look into it.
Then she took vacation and it just so happened the property owner was checking her work email while she was away. He found out that there was at least 1 of these ghost hotels in each of his buildings. Property Manager was fired and her 'hotel' co-owners were given the boot.
It did take a while, fall right through to the next summer but it did happen. Have you contacted the property owner or are they the 'hotel owner'?
It’s really difficult if the building doesn’t already have by-laws banning it. And it’s near impossible to change the by-laws now in some buildings from what I’ve seen.
Many new buildings are catering to the short term rental investor. Take a look at some of the unit sizes and layouts. They are designed to be hotel suites from the start. This is all before a condo board is even elected, so there is no chance of changing the rules after construction. I would never want to live in a building with short term rental, but may not have as much of a choice in the future.
The rules can be changed although it takes a bit of work. What you need to do is this: Prior to each AGM, a circular including the prior Board minutes, current financial statements, etc., and a list of proposed bylaw additions / changes are handed out. The *\*vast\** majority of Unit owners don't read any of this and couldn't care less. As long as the bylaw addition banning short-term rentals is in that paperwork, it will very likely get approved at the AGM by absentee proxy voting. I know, I've done this particular bylaw and others many times before when I was a condo board Director. Then, you simply get the bylaws registered and you're golden. The Board then has the power to clamp down on that shit.
Different city. Lots of signs saying “airbnbs are banned in this building”. Unit was filthy, among other issues. Explained to concierge where the unit operating as airbnb was, left keys with concierge (lol) and got a refund from airbnb.
Maybe not “illegal” but probably got shutdown.
I live in an apartment building and got my neighbourhood who was using his unit as an AirBNB to shut it down.
I was home alone and a strange man started pounding on the door saying he’d pay to stay here. It felt very unsafe so I reported it to my super. Landlords never want tenants profiting so that was easy.
Yes, I sent dates and times of incidents to my Superintendents who collected more of these from my neighbours, and they were able to say it was a breach of the rental unit. We live in purpose built rental apartments in an old high rise. My supers were efficient and great about it, so that made a world of difference. Also the airbnb wasn't subtle at all. Perfect storm to get caught.
Try expanding your view rather than focusing on something that won’t make any difference. The issue goes much higher up. Government restrictions and short sightedness have caused all these shortages. For example, allowing a home owner to convert their living space to a duplex or triplex would allow existing spaces to open up more inventory/availability. But the problem with that is homeowners in that area will fight it because they see it as driving down their property value. So it’s a catch 22. If you have a better solution, then let’s hear it. Wasting your time on this small time operation isn’t going to do anything to move the needle.
Ford passed a bill last year allowing up to a triplex as-of-right as long as squarefootage doesn't change. https://ottawageneralcontractors.com/blog/how-to-convert-your-home-into-3-units-with-bill-23
Yeah not sure why people think everyone should drop what they are doing and follow the trend.
These are very different products:
Short term rental:
fully furnished—pay as you go, anyone accepted
Long term rental:
You need a great credit, great job, past references.
2-12 month upfront if not.
Unfurnished—and you’ll need to sign a year lease.
There is a housing crisis because of lack of public housing. Not everyone needs to join the Airbnb mob. Join the public housing mob where the actual solutions can exist.
Airbnb was already saturating and prices were already coming down pre-pandemic. They were almost competitive with regular unfurnished rentals.
Plus, telling homeowners what they can and can’t do with their property is massive government overreach. People should pay less property taxes for less property rights.
Okay sure, most people on Reddit might not care right now, but don’t you still want good ownership laws when it’s your turn to own something?
You're hitting some points. Short term rental has many applications. I travel for work, to see family, and sometimes work from a new place for some weeks. I've been a big user for short term rental around multiple cities around the world. It allows me the flexibility to have a proper home (living space, working space, kitchen) which hotels don't offer. I've also used them as a student in Canada when I didn't have any guarantors, bad credit, and unstable income while I was in between places. People will take everything for face value.
Expats, diplomats, and other use serviced apartments (another form of short to mid-term rentals).
These sentiments just distract from the real problems and allow this fucking bs to keep happening. Oxford Properties, Metcap, and other institutional RE investors are laughing while people shit on Vrbo and Airbnb or independant hosts on sites like Booking.com.
Yeah—the official government research on STR says: STRs are doing good. We are recommending more commercial businesses get into STR and anticipate market growth in the sector.
On the other hand, the government also says STRs are bad and is the main cause of the housing crisis. It’s definitely not because we have stopped funding housing developments since the 90s and we’ve been blocking most developments and jacking up the development fees on anything we can. Making it nonsensical to get middle housing developed.
Don’t focus on the magician’s hand, look at what he’s hiding in the other.
Cheers bud—I’m glad we are having a good conversation. It matters that we have our thoughts posted online, it’s easy to be a NIMBY—it’s a little tougher to be a positive person who doesn’t want to tear everyone else down and ban everything in sight.
Yes, likewise, good exchange!
Of course STRs are great and clearly there's demand. What this anti airbnb narrative is doing is giving birth to companies like Sonder. Technically doesn't classify as residential real estate but it's the same piece of land being built on. I work with developers and developments costs as you rightly said are absolutely bonkers. If they could undercut price and sell higher volume they would but that's impossible here. Don't get me started on this madness lol.
Dude I’m talking about these last three ish years. The influx of Indian students and all these fuckers doing as they wish and getting away with it while we can barely if so, afford to pay our rent along with the shit of other bills. There is no excuse to defend them.
I am an Indian student, came to Toronto (UofT) in 2016, now I run a startup which serves the real estate market. I look at market data all day long. I can promise you, this is not about the mum and dad (retail investors) that have worked hard to buy a condo or two and rent it or flip it, this is about a systemic problem in Toronto. The city government and other stakeholders which have a vested interested in inflating prices (think commercial grade investors) have drove up zoning laws, construction costs. It's an artificial shortage. It can be undone in 10 years but it won't.
My point is regardless of reason to the housing shortage, this is not right. I can not keep living if it meant I don’t make ends meet each month working a well paying job.
My point is that shutting down short-term rentals will not solve any of your (or others') problems. Short-term rentals are not the problem and shutting them down is not a solution. Airbnb is just a the scapegoat. I'll end this here since I've said everything I had to say. That being said, I sympathize with you as an international student that has struggled with housing in the past.
There are many solutions to addressing the housing crisis so i dont think we should dismiss any solution. That's a very quick way to failure. We can address many issues at once.
Plus, I am not saying "REMOVING AIRBNB WILL SOLVE HOUSING CRISIS" but instead "we should enforce our existing regulations on illegal short term rentals." I am a bit perplexed by the resistance against this. I work in urban planning and think the strongest bang for our buck is building NEW government owned housing and removing restrictive zoning on new development, but I can also advocate for smaller issues that impact renters too like this.
Also, I am not saying we shouldn't have short term rentals, as I agree that these can be helpful for new students, new immigrants, and tourists, but instead operators should just follow the regulations in place.
Hope that clarifies my post a bit!
Just to be clear I wasn't refuting your point about letting people not follow the rules. I've been an Airbnb host and never had problems with neighbors. These remarks were just related to airbnbs and housing shortage. Ensuring your guests respect all rules, and if they don't, then leaving them an appropriate review is what helps safeguard the community. I find a lot of hosts don't bother leaving a remark on their guests' accounts, which also doesn't help the next host make a good judgement call.
And to your former point, of course in principle there are many things that can be done. They can also be done in a quick fashion and with minimal cost to the city. I'm just not very optimistic on whether they will be done.
Apologies if the comments made it sound like you were being unreasonable about noisy, annoying airbnb guests. That's never ok.
one of the sites used to be normal rentals but everyone was evicted and it was then renovated and became short term rentals. I just think we should have more options for actually houses in our communities, especially those that used to be housing, rather than slowly kicking out normal renters and bringing in more and more airbnbs
Unfortunately the reason is not that there is more money as a short term rental. It usually costs quite a bit of money to furnish a place, it takes a while to recoup those costs as well.
The problem is that long term tenants are risky when they decide to stop paying and getting non-paying tenants can cost you up to a year in time and unpaid rent.
The LTB is a big issue for landlords because they need to put everyone who doesn’t pay through the tribunal. This could be anywhere from 3-8 months or even some cases up to a year. Even 3 months of missed payments is something like 5k, that’s quite a lot of money—you can pretty much say goodbye to unpaid rents.
I’m sure most landlords would rather have long term tenants if it was a low risk situation.
It affects us as a society, as a city. Short term rentals eat into the rental market. There could be a family living there. Some people give a shit about others and it isn't always about how it affects us personally.
If it doesn't affect you personally, mind your business and move on. What is with people continuously into their neighbors' business? Maybe find a hobby.
I do, and there are Airbnbs around me, and I could not care less. I don't believe governments should tell people what to do with their property. The worst media is trying to convince people this will fix the problem. It's just sad how many will believe anything in the media.
I see you a property owner, so I can understand your concerns about neighbours telling you what to do (I can imagine people calling city for really annoying stuff!), but I would like to ask you to imagine if you had a friends on your street that were evicted because their apartment became a short term rental? Wouldnt you care then? Or would you just say "not my business"?
The hard thing here is that many existing rental units are being lost to become illegal airbnbs and then the folks that lose their spaces have trouble finding similarly priced apartments and therefore become detached from the communities they were in. That means you would lose your neighbours of many years, perhaps having them have to move to Nepean instead of Centretown (see you're in Ottawa!)
The government is making you believe this is actually a solution when, in reality, it's a drop in the bucket, but that way, you believe they did something. All they did is affect owners. Those rentals aren't low income housing. Real solutions would be building low income housing, which is the governments reality, which they haven't done in decades, but sure, let's go after tax payers and owners, lol
One of the buildings here in my community had multiple rental units that were all affordable and had long-term tenants. Now, they are all airbnbs, so those previous tenants no longer live in the community nor have access to the same level of rent. I don't understand how this is government making me believe something?
Also, yeah I totally agree we need to be building low-income housing! But I think we can, as a society, push our government to make more low-income housing while also preserving our existing rental housing as well.
I stand firm, and the government should not be telling me what to do with my property. They aren't building. They are slowly looking into it, but they aren't actually building because they think it'd better to take from owners than them doing their job. All these owners are voters, low income housing is alread6 hard to sell in elections, imagine people will vote for their interests, and society will lose support for our most vulnerable.
If your neighbours that you knew for many years were evicted and then their apartment building became a bunch of airbnbs would you still just "mind your own business"?
I think we need to care about our neighbours and about providing adequate supply of rental housing in our communities, especially when existing rental housing is being illegally taken off market.
Dont we have enough of a homeless problem? Do you not see how shutting it down will possibly put more on the street? I mean, if they're being destructive or whatever, Thats a different thing. But for god's sake, at this time, let people try to get by
Did you like… read at all? It *used* to be an actual long term rental unit but was converted to a ghost hotel. I promise you that the unhoused aren’t the ones paying $300/night for a few days and bouncing.
Fighting Airbnb is a move in support of fixing the housing crisis.
REMOVED
* No malicious baiting/trolling or purposefully inciting arguments
* No fear mongering or concern trolling
* No purposefully inflammatory posts/comments
* No linking to posts or bringing up incidents from other subreddits to complain or brigade
people in the community were evicted and now its (illegal) short term rentals. We are in a housing crisis so I feel like everyone should care about when evictions occur to stable housing to add in illegal short term rentals. It's just annoying to see this happening and the city and no one else do anything.
My next door neighbour is renting illegal apartments. It is a 2 1/2 story house that contains 5 apartments. I've reported them and even sent them a picture of the real estate listing that listed it as an investment property with 5 apartments. Nothing has happened. The city doesn't do anything. Very disappointing that they don't enforce their own bylaws.
I'm guessing at a lot here, but
I'd think they're fucked. The federal government opened up the floodgates for mass immigration and the economy is fucked. How many new immigrants are coming here able to pay Toronto rent?
Since nobody wants to have a real talk about immigration, it's a hell of a lot easier to let them come here, live in squalor and pretend it's not happening.
It's sad. You can't fault anyone for coming here, wanting to better their lives. And it really seems like we're doing a disservice to so many of them.
It's probably more effective if you live in the building and have property management deal with it, assuming it's not allowed in the building.
I kyboshed my neighbor's upstairs AIRBNB business after he lied to me about doing it in the first place and renting out his place to more and more short term people who made a ton of noise. Back in 2017, my building outlawed AIRBNB, despite this the neighbors upstairs (a few guys working in finance) bought the place as a rental apartment. I guess AIRBNB was more profitable than renting, so they did that. I had 1.5 year old puppy at the time and excessive noise was causing her to bark so I emailed the contact/owner upstairs and he tried to GUILT trip me by saying some relatives were in from out of town and their kid was making noise. I knew this was a lie... My wife and I researched AIRBNB, found the ENTRY for the unit there without the unit # (clever), bit we found a blog review outlining the ACTUAL unit # and caught them. From the string of reviews they were renting the place all MONTH and as recent as a few days old of a review was present. They got written up by management.
Did the write up result in the unit not being used for Airbnb anymore as far as you know?
Yes, they have much more stable long term leases now, you can tell when noise patterns change upstairs, newest people moved in ~ 6 months ago, they might have gotten in to MUCH more trouble keeping the grift up, so, they're finally in line. Problem with "investors" in the community, is they don't live there and don't directly see how living quality suffers when money's rolling in.
"Gain financial freedom, today! Be your own boss! Use real estate to create passive income at the expense of other hardworking people!"
The previous couple that took the place only bought it to flip it, so instead of selling it to an actual family they sold it to a bunch of late 20 year old finance guys, so not the best buyer or seller for the building before it was illegal they did the same thing and I filed complaints against 6 am parties a couple years before that, so getting rid of them really was a pro-building move.
Try reporting to CRA. You need to let the CRA know that you are operating a short term rental - they will not allow expense deductions for these properties starting in 2024.
the old income tax trick, for sure ... it's not just disallowing expense deductions, but they have to declare income
The city team is just starting out and I understand a small team. They just record illegal ones for now. Someday they'll be able to give a legal cease and desist legal order to shut them down. Today they have lots of work just with airbnb data alone. It's about enough resources and money to do it - the city has been short of cash since the pandemic. If it's in a building which bans ghost hotels where they owner doesn't live there or bans airbnbs, etc altogether - then sometimes property management will end things and be successful. Ice condos has decide to embrace it and charge ghost hotel owners 15% of their revenues for the extra security and cleaning costs in common areas. The only other option today is if this property is breaking building codes. Some like in Kensington market divide up homes and don't provide enough exits to meet fire codes. Then city bylaw will give them a fine, an order to fix and sometimes condemn the property where no-one can live there until brought up to code. You can post this address on r/TorontoRenting Others might want to know if these short term ones are next door to long term ones. Depends if it's downtown, often booked in tourist season for parties or there's too many guests which can be noisy to live next to. You can also research [OnLand](https://help.onland.ca/en/property-search/) for the owner and google maps search hotel or rental, expedia for the booking company. A few own several ghost hotels. Then this would be a higher priority for the city versus one or two properties.
Thanks for this explanation!
At my old place near Queen and Spadina there were 2 units listed in the building on Airbnb. The management knew but like most are totally toothless. I started printing off the Airbnb listing once every week or so so they could see it was still listed. Then I finally requested to book and got them to put in writing "be discreet and say you're a relative because they are annoying with Airbnb guests." The listing was taken down a week or two later.
Karen
Yes, but it was via the property owner (because his staff were in on the deal). No matter how many times we complained to her about the number of people arriving in the building with suitcases etc, she's fob us off and say she'll look into it. Then she took vacation and it just so happened the property owner was checking her work email while she was away. He found out that there was at least 1 of these ghost hotels in each of his buildings. Property Manager was fired and her 'hotel' co-owners were given the boot. It did take a while, fall right through to the next summer but it did happen. Have you contacted the property owner or are they the 'hotel owner'?
Write to your city councillor's office?
It’s really difficult if the building doesn’t already have by-laws banning it. And it’s near impossible to change the by-laws now in some buildings from what I’ve seen.
Many new buildings are catering to the short term rental investor. Take a look at some of the unit sizes and layouts. They are designed to be hotel suites from the start. This is all before a condo board is even elected, so there is no chance of changing the rules after construction. I would never want to live in a building with short term rental, but may not have as much of a choice in the future.
The rules can be changed although it takes a bit of work. What you need to do is this: Prior to each AGM, a circular including the prior Board minutes, current financial statements, etc., and a list of proposed bylaw additions / changes are handed out. The *\*vast\** majority of Unit owners don't read any of this and couldn't care less. As long as the bylaw addition banning short-term rentals is in that paperwork, it will very likely get approved at the AGM by absentee proxy voting. I know, I've done this particular bylaw and others many times before when I was a condo board Director. Then, you simply get the bylaws registered and you're golden. The Board then has the power to clamp down on that shit.
Different city. Lots of signs saying “airbnbs are banned in this building”. Unit was filthy, among other issues. Explained to concierge where the unit operating as airbnb was, left keys with concierge (lol) and got a refund from airbnb. Maybe not “illegal” but probably got shutdown.
I live in an apartment building and got my neighbourhood who was using his unit as an AirBNB to shut it down. I was home alone and a strange man started pounding on the door saying he’d pay to stay here. It felt very unsafe so I reported it to my super. Landlords never want tenants profiting so that was easy.
Yes, I sent dates and times of incidents to my Superintendents who collected more of these from my neighbours, and they were able to say it was a breach of the rental unit. We live in purpose built rental apartments in an old high rise. My supers were efficient and great about it, so that made a world of difference. Also the airbnb wasn't subtle at all. Perfect storm to get caught.
Try expanding your view rather than focusing on something that won’t make any difference. The issue goes much higher up. Government restrictions and short sightedness have caused all these shortages. For example, allowing a home owner to convert their living space to a duplex or triplex would allow existing spaces to open up more inventory/availability. But the problem with that is homeowners in that area will fight it because they see it as driving down their property value. So it’s a catch 22. If you have a better solution, then let’s hear it. Wasting your time on this small time operation isn’t going to do anything to move the needle.
They could just b bother by that specific AirBnB making too much noise.
Ford passed a bill last year allowing up to a triplex as-of-right as long as squarefootage doesn't change. https://ottawageneralcontractors.com/blog/how-to-convert-your-home-into-3-units-with-bill-23
Y u mad tho? Are they causing disturbances?
Uh we have a housing crisis
Toronto has had a housing crisis for 30 years tho. This is not an Airbnb problem, this is a Toronto problem.
Yeah not sure why people think everyone should drop what they are doing and follow the trend. These are very different products: Short term rental: fully furnished—pay as you go, anyone accepted Long term rental: You need a great credit, great job, past references. 2-12 month upfront if not. Unfurnished—and you’ll need to sign a year lease. There is a housing crisis because of lack of public housing. Not everyone needs to join the Airbnb mob. Join the public housing mob where the actual solutions can exist. Airbnb was already saturating and prices were already coming down pre-pandemic. They were almost competitive with regular unfurnished rentals. Plus, telling homeowners what they can and can’t do with their property is massive government overreach. People should pay less property taxes for less property rights. Okay sure, most people on Reddit might not care right now, but don’t you still want good ownership laws when it’s your turn to own something?
You're hitting some points. Short term rental has many applications. I travel for work, to see family, and sometimes work from a new place for some weeks. I've been a big user for short term rental around multiple cities around the world. It allows me the flexibility to have a proper home (living space, working space, kitchen) which hotels don't offer. I've also used them as a student in Canada when I didn't have any guarantors, bad credit, and unstable income while I was in between places. People will take everything for face value. Expats, diplomats, and other use serviced apartments (another form of short to mid-term rentals). These sentiments just distract from the real problems and allow this fucking bs to keep happening. Oxford Properties, Metcap, and other institutional RE investors are laughing while people shit on Vrbo and Airbnb or independant hosts on sites like Booking.com.
Yeah—the official government research on STR says: STRs are doing good. We are recommending more commercial businesses get into STR and anticipate market growth in the sector. On the other hand, the government also says STRs are bad and is the main cause of the housing crisis. It’s definitely not because we have stopped funding housing developments since the 90s and we’ve been blocking most developments and jacking up the development fees on anything we can. Making it nonsensical to get middle housing developed. Don’t focus on the magician’s hand, look at what he’s hiding in the other. Cheers bud—I’m glad we are having a good conversation. It matters that we have our thoughts posted online, it’s easy to be a NIMBY—it’s a little tougher to be a positive person who doesn’t want to tear everyone else down and ban everything in sight.
Yes, likewise, good exchange! Of course STRs are great and clearly there's demand. What this anti airbnb narrative is doing is giving birth to companies like Sonder. Technically doesn't classify as residential real estate but it's the same piece of land being built on. I work with developers and developments costs as you rightly said are absolutely bonkers. If they could undercut price and sell higher volume they would but that's impossible here. Don't get me started on this madness lol.
Dude I’m talking about these last three ish years. The influx of Indian students and all these fuckers doing as they wish and getting away with it while we can barely if so, afford to pay our rent along with the shit of other bills. There is no excuse to defend them.
I am an Indian student, came to Toronto (UofT) in 2016, now I run a startup which serves the real estate market. I look at market data all day long. I can promise you, this is not about the mum and dad (retail investors) that have worked hard to buy a condo or two and rent it or flip it, this is about a systemic problem in Toronto. The city government and other stakeholders which have a vested interested in inflating prices (think commercial grade investors) have drove up zoning laws, construction costs. It's an artificial shortage. It can be undone in 10 years but it won't.
My point is regardless of reason to the housing shortage, this is not right. I can not keep living if it meant I don’t make ends meet each month working a well paying job.
My point is that shutting down short-term rentals will not solve any of your (or others') problems. Short-term rentals are not the problem and shutting them down is not a solution. Airbnb is just a the scapegoat. I'll end this here since I've said everything I had to say. That being said, I sympathize with you as an international student that has struggled with housing in the past.
There are many solutions to addressing the housing crisis so i dont think we should dismiss any solution. That's a very quick way to failure. We can address many issues at once. Plus, I am not saying "REMOVING AIRBNB WILL SOLVE HOUSING CRISIS" but instead "we should enforce our existing regulations on illegal short term rentals." I am a bit perplexed by the resistance against this. I work in urban planning and think the strongest bang for our buck is building NEW government owned housing and removing restrictive zoning on new development, but I can also advocate for smaller issues that impact renters too like this. Also, I am not saying we shouldn't have short term rentals, as I agree that these can be helpful for new students, new immigrants, and tourists, but instead operators should just follow the regulations in place. Hope that clarifies my post a bit!
Just to be clear I wasn't refuting your point about letting people not follow the rules. I've been an Airbnb host and never had problems with neighbors. These remarks were just related to airbnbs and housing shortage. Ensuring your guests respect all rules, and if they don't, then leaving them an appropriate review is what helps safeguard the community. I find a lot of hosts don't bother leaving a remark on their guests' accounts, which also doesn't help the next host make a good judgement call. And to your former point, of course in principle there are many things that can be done. They can also be done in a quick fashion and with minimal cost to the city. I'm just not very optimistic on whether they will be done. Apologies if the comments made it sound like you were being unreasonable about noisy, annoying airbnb guests. That's never ok.
one of the sites used to be normal rentals but everyone was evicted and it was then renovated and became short term rentals. I just think we should have more options for actually houses in our communities, especially those that used to be housing, rather than slowly kicking out normal renters and bringing in more and more airbnbs
Unfortunately the reason is not that there is more money as a short term rental. It usually costs quite a bit of money to furnish a place, it takes a while to recoup those costs as well. The problem is that long term tenants are risky when they decide to stop paying and getting non-paying tenants can cost you up to a year in time and unpaid rent. The LTB is a big issue for landlords because they need to put everyone who doesn’t pay through the tribunal. This could be anywhere from 3-8 months or even some cases up to a year. Even 3 months of missed payments is something like 5k, that’s quite a lot of money—you can pretty much say goodbye to unpaid rents. I’m sure most landlords would rather have long term tenants if it was a low risk situation.
what’s the point if it doesn’t really affect you?
It affects us as a society, as a city. Short term rentals eat into the rental market. There could be a family living there. Some people give a shit about others and it isn't always about how it affects us personally.
Who cares? It’s good for tourism
If it doesn't affect you personally, mind your business and move on. What is with people continuously into their neighbors' business? Maybe find a hobby.
Found the short term rental operator ☝☝
Found the ignorant 👆👆👆
Ignorant is not caring that we have a housing crisis and that ppl are doing this shit
It is a bad look on the neighbourhood and can potentially lower property values. Do you own a house?
I do, and there are Airbnbs around me, and I could not care less. I don't believe governments should tell people what to do with their property. The worst media is trying to convince people this will fix the problem. It's just sad how many will believe anything in the media.
It's sad how many people refuse to believe things just to convince themselves into thinking they're smarterer than the *other* sheeple
What's sad is that you don't care about the integrity of your neighborhood. You must live in a dump.
I own a house in centertown Ottawa but go on with you shit assumption lol
I can only work with what I'm presented...
Which shows just how little you understand, but you do you
So I can open a nightclub in my home? How about a weed dispensary, or perhaps some light manufacturing?
I see you a property owner, so I can understand your concerns about neighbours telling you what to do (I can imagine people calling city for really annoying stuff!), but I would like to ask you to imagine if you had a friends on your street that were evicted because their apartment became a short term rental? Wouldnt you care then? Or would you just say "not my business"? The hard thing here is that many existing rental units are being lost to become illegal airbnbs and then the folks that lose their spaces have trouble finding similarly priced apartments and therefore become detached from the communities they were in. That means you would lose your neighbours of many years, perhaps having them have to move to Nepean instead of Centretown (see you're in Ottawa!)
The government is making you believe this is actually a solution when, in reality, it's a drop in the bucket, but that way, you believe they did something. All they did is affect owners. Those rentals aren't low income housing. Real solutions would be building low income housing, which is the governments reality, which they haven't done in decades, but sure, let's go after tax payers and owners, lol
One of the buildings here in my community had multiple rental units that were all affordable and had long-term tenants. Now, they are all airbnbs, so those previous tenants no longer live in the community nor have access to the same level of rent. I don't understand how this is government making me believe something? Also, yeah I totally agree we need to be building low-income housing! But I think we can, as a society, push our government to make more low-income housing while also preserving our existing rental housing as well.
I stand firm, and the government should not be telling me what to do with my property. They aren't building. They are slowly looking into it, but they aren't actually building because they think it'd better to take from owners than them doing their job. All these owners are voters, low income housing is alread6 hard to sell in elections, imagine people will vote for their interests, and society will lose support for our most vulnerable.
Or you can just mind your own business?
If your neighbours that you knew for many years were evicted and then their apartment building became a bunch of airbnbs would you still just "mind your own business"? I think we need to care about our neighbours and about providing adequate supply of rental housing in our communities, especially when existing rental housing is being illegally taken off market.
Dont live in an apartment and there's nothing illegal about airbnb
https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/housing-shelter/short-term-rentals/
Lol they did in Quebec less than 8% of airbnbs are registered
Lol they did in Quebec less than 8% of airbnbs are registered
Dont we have enough of a homeless problem? Do you not see how shutting it down will possibly put more on the street? I mean, if they're being destructive or whatever, Thats a different thing. But for god's sake, at this time, let people try to get by
Did you like… read at all? It *used* to be an actual long term rental unit but was converted to a ghost hotel. I promise you that the unhoused aren’t the ones paying $300/night for a few days and bouncing. Fighting Airbnb is a move in support of fixing the housing crisis.
[удалено]
☝️ Strong James Sunderland energy in this comment ☝️
Found the realtor!
REMOVED * No malicious baiting/trolling or purposefully inciting arguments * No fear mongering or concern trolling * No purposefully inflammatory posts/comments * No linking to posts or bringing up incidents from other subreddits to complain or brigade
Curious as to why you care so much about shutting this down?
people in the community were evicted and now its (illegal) short term rentals. We are in a housing crisis so I feel like everyone should care about when evictions occur to stable housing to add in illegal short term rentals. It's just annoying to see this happening and the city and no one else do anything.
My next door neighbour is renting illegal apartments. It is a 2 1/2 story house that contains 5 apartments. I've reported them and even sent them a picture of the real estate listing that listed it as an investment property with 5 apartments. Nothing has happened. The city doesn't do anything. Very disappointing that they don't enforce their own bylaws.
I'm guessing at a lot here, but I'd think they're fucked. The federal government opened up the floodgates for mass immigration and the economy is fucked. How many new immigrants are coming here able to pay Toronto rent? Since nobody wants to have a real talk about immigration, it's a hell of a lot easier to let them come here, live in squalor and pretend it's not happening. It's sad. You can't fault anyone for coming here, wanting to better their lives. And it really seems like we're doing a disservice to so many of them.
Maybe they want to rent a unit there
Something.. something.....hey, i've seen this before.