[URBAN NOTE] "To snitch or not to snitch? Airbnb in the city is a complicated thing"

[rfmcdonald]

In the Toronto Star, Sean Micallef considers the question of how neighbours of Airbnb properties should react to them. Are they entirely new threats, say, or are do they continue age-old patterns of people trying to eke out a way in their city?

It took me a while to realize my neighbour was running an Airbnb across the hall in my rental building.

It’s a slow thing to notice. There are longer hellos and goodbyes at the door, suggestions to go to the ROM, and one morning three guys came out with an empty case of beer and suitcases.

There’s only so much you can glean from overhearing the occasional interaction through a door and what the peephole reveals. “Peep” is such an accusatory word: it’s my innocent fish-eye look out into the public corridor. Further poking around on the Airbnb site revealed rentals that match my building.

An Airbnb next door is not an imminent crisis by any means, but when I mentioned it to a friend, he said, “You’ve got to report that!” Not only do unauthorized short-term rentals violate the lease agreement, they eat into Toronto’s precious rental stock. If my neighbour is renting her place out full time, it takes a relatively affordable unit off the market.

A study published in September by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives called “Nobody’s Business: Airbnb in Toronto” said Airbnb is constraining the city’s supply of housing and even threatens the hotel business and character of neighbourhoods.

Recently, Toronto’s municipal licensing and standards department charged owners of three homes on Bleecker St. with zoning violations for allegedly running short-term rental businesses at properties that aren’t their full-time homes. This last bit is the crux of the Airbnb problem: Is it a business or is it just a way to make extra cash?