What does it mean to be free?
I know, I know, you’re thinking, “Oh geez, what’s David about to go on about this time?”
Is this going to be a lecture on libertarianism?
Not quite.
But I would like to introduce the concept of “freedom” as we delve into the debate about how and if the prevalence of AirBnB rentals is exacerbating the housing crisis in Canada.
I believe in many freedoms.
Freedom of choice. Freedom of thought. Freedom of speech. Freedom of information. Freedom of movement. Political freedom. Personal freedom. Economic freedom. Educational freedom. Religious freedom. Intellectual freedom. And that’s just to name a few.
I believe in “rights” as a type of freedom as well, and that introduces the concept of property rights.
I have often stated that Canadians, over the last several years, have been so quick to give up their rights and freedoms, that I remain shocked and confused as to why. That, folks, is a topic for another day.
But when it comes to property rights, I have also expressed my displeasure with the government’s interference with our “freedoms,” notably the idea that we now are required to sign a sworn declaration that we reside in our own house, and the failure to do so results in punitive damages. How we allowed this to happen, I can’t figure out.
This, of course, is deemed necessary as the government fights to somehow “solve” the housing crisis that we are all, apparently, collectively responsible for.
The government has also decided, unilaterally, that property owners who do not reside in the homes that they own for a certain percentage of the year shall pay a tax. Well, alrighty-then.
All this is necessary, apparently, in the government’s quest to solve the housing crisis.
But what comes next?
Oh, I have to think we already know.
It’s the right and freedom of a property owner to lease or rent the property that they themselves own, the way they see fit.
Those rights and freedoms have already been infringed upon, and there’s a growing sentiment that the rights will continue to be diminished.
We have talked a lot on TRB this year about “problem tenants.”
We have talked, and will continue to do so, about the unimaginable rights that tenants in the Province of Ontario enjoy, much to the detriment and often bankruptcy of landlords. Not all landlords are evil, deep-pocketed corporations that print money from a large machine, running day and night. In fact, the downtown condo rental pool is primarily comprised of individual investors, many of whom are exiting the space because they can’t wait twelve months for hearings at the LTB for their tenants who aren’t paying rent, or who aren’t allowed to sell their condos because the tenants refuse to move out.
The public sector seems to be relying on the private sector more and more to assist with the housing crisis, often against their will.
Consider the plight of a condo owner who sells his property, provides the month-to-month tenant with an N12 and the requisite one-month’s rent, only for the tenant to say, “I’m not leaving; let me know when my LTB hearing is.” Then eight months later at the LTB hearing, when the judge says, “Where’s your buyer?” and the condo owner answers, “The buyer left because it’s been eight months,” the judge replies, “Come back when you have another buyer.”
Oh, the insanity.
Follow the bouncing ball here; the condo owner is now being forced to be a landlord, against his will.
Maybe this is why more and more people are looking to rent their apartments, condos, and bedrooms on AirBnB?
Short-term renters through AirBnB don’t benefit from the same outlandish protections that long-term renters do, via the Residential Tenancies Act.
Not only that, a well-manged AirBnB can provide double the return.
So let me ask again:
How long until the government comes for this right and freedom?
When will the government decide, for the good of the residents of the country, who can’t find housing, that short-term rentals such as AirBnB shall be banned from now until eternity?
It’s not that crazy a suggestion if you think about it.
We have a vacant housing tax, we have an underused housing tax, and if you do want to rent your property out on a short-term basis, there’s a “registry” you need to be a part of.
It was only a matter of time, right? Before the city wanted you to ask their permission? “Sign up here!”
I mean, there’s Pet Licensing in Toronto, you know. For real; did you know?
From the City of Toronto website:
“All dogs and cats owned in Toronto must be licensed and wear a tag.”
Uh-huh.
I’ll get right on that…
There is a growing sentiment among housing critics, would-be renters, and market onlookers alike that to allow a unit of housing to be rented on a short-term basis, on a platform like AirBnB or otherwise, is to “take a unit of housing out of the long-term accommodation pool.”
Yeah, okay.
But that’s like saying that the Jets won the game, so now the Giants can’t.
No kidding.
The theory behind this novel realization, of course, is that “short-term housing is therefore bad.”
Forget the fact that there’s a need for both short-term and long-term housing, but rather the sentiment goes that if there were 100,000 listings in the country for short-term rentals then these represent 100,000 dwellings that are not available to individuals looking for a long-term arrangement.
My cynical side is going to now explain, as I already have above, that the government is increasingly looking to rely upon the private sector to help, at least in part, “solve” the housing crisis.
So what will become of the “Freedom of Choice?”
What will become of the property rights afforded to an owner who may decide to rent to a short-term tenant but also may elect to rent to a long-term tenant?
An article appeared in the Globe & Mail earlier this month which I think a lot of people likely read.
The headline is extremely unfair since it not only blames AirBnb for the “housing crisis” but also the people who use it…
“AirBnB’s Ravenous Appetite For Residential Units Is Contributing To Canada’s Housing Crisis”
The Globe & Mail
October 2nd, 2023
The article was written by the executive director of Fairbnb Canada Network, so take it with a grain of salt, or a slant, if you’d like.
From the article:
Short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb have helped convert tens if not hundreds of thousands of residential units into dedicated, ghost hotel suites. Units once planned, zoned, approved and built as residential have been converted to commercial space to accommodate the travelling public. Last week, a report by McGill University researchers estimated that roughly 17,000 housing units had been lost to short-term rental platforms in B.C. this summer alone.
The problem is the short-term rental operators, not the people who occasionally rent their properties.
Studies have shown repeatedly that a minority of hosts control the majority of Airbnb’s inventory and are responsible for most of the company’s revenue. In B.C., the McGill report states, 20 per cent of the hosts are responsible for 48.8 per cent of total revenue generated, while the top 1 per cent of hosts – just 1,930 operators – accounted for 20.7 per cent. In Winnipeg, according to watchdog InsideAirbnb, an operator hidden behind the profile name “New Host” operates 87 entire homes in that city alone.
In short, commercial operators are systematically buying up or leasing housing stock and converting it into dedicated, short-term rental use, with platforms providing anonymity. So if we agree that housing is in short supply, why don’t we rein in this home-devouring activity?
Note the last sentence in that quote:
“Why don’t we rein in this home-devouring activity?”
Exactly.
Why don’t we eliminate an individual’s right to lease or rent his or her own condo, house, or apartment, the way that he or she sees fit?
That person, after all, only pays property tax to the municipality for the right to own the property, only saved after-tax dollars to provide the down-payment for the property, only took the financial and personal risk and liability associated with purchasing the property – in order to provide a unit of housing to the public, only pays income tax on the revenue generated, and only pays a capital gain to the federal government on any profits made on the venture.
That’s clearly not enough!
Why not limit the person’s ability to do what they want with the property?
Hell, why doesn’t the government just take the goddam keys?
“Oh, David, here you go, gaslighting again.”
Well, I believe in hyperbole as an effective medium of demonstration, what can I say?
Now, on the flip side of the McGill report, which is probably written with a bias from the other side, is this article from the website www.biv.com.
“AirBnB’s Don’t Cause Residential Rent Increases”
BIV: Business Intelligence For B.C.
October 11th, 2023
From the article:
Rents in Canada have gone up, along with the growth of Airbnb businesses, but there’s little evidence that the two are connected, a new survey from the Conference Board of Canada finds.
The survey appears to contradict others, including one from from McGill that drew direct links between higher rents and increased conversion of rental properties to commercial short-term rentals.
As BIV reported last month, the Urban Politics and Governance research group at McGill’s School of Urban Planning concluded that short-term rentals took 16,810 housing units off of B.C.’s long-term rental market in June 2023, “signifying a 19.1 per cent decline in housing availability over 2022.”
It concluded that, for every addition of one dedicated short-term rental per 100 rental units in a neighbourhood, rents increased an average of $49 for that neighbourhood.
But the Conference Board of Canada has also looked into the rise in both Airbnb-style short-term rentals and long-term rents, and found little correlation.
“We tested for a causal link between Airbnb activity and rent increases between 2016 and 2022 across 330 neighborhoods in 19 Canadian cities,” the Conference Board study states.
“We find no compelling evidence that the level of Airbnb activity had a meaningful impact on rents. Out of the 30 per cent increase in rents observed in our sample of neighbourhoods between 2016 and 2022, at most less than 1 percentage point, or just under $10, can be attributed to increased Airbnb activity.”
The Conference Board study zeroed in on Airbnbs that are likely to offer short-term rentals on a full-time basis, as it was assumed these would be most likely to affect the long-term residential rental market. It then compared that data to the number of households across 330 neighbourhoods in 19 of the largest cities in Canada.
“Rents and Airbnb activity are positively correlated — neighbourhoods that have higher concentrations of Airbnb tend to also have higher rents,” the report acknowledges.
“The key question is whether higher Airbnb activity is causing higher rents in Canada and contributing to a worsening of rental affordability, or if both higher rents and higher Airbnb activity are driven by other factors, such as proximity to amenities like restaurants, public transit, and parks, which would increase desirability for both long- and short-term renters.”
The study used a “difference-in-difference” analysis model, “which compares how rents evolved in different neighbourhoods within cities and how this was affected by the level of Airbnb activity in each neighbourhood.”
“Airbnb activity, at its current levels, has not resulted in an economically meaningful increase in rents across 19 of the largest Canadian cities,” the Conference Board study concludes.
“At the provincial level there is evidence that Airbnb activity has put some upward pressure on rents in Quebec. Policies introduced by municipalities and provinces regulating Airbnb activity have not been successful in reducing rents, though they were associated with a significant reduction in Airbnb activity.”
My father was a criminal lawyer for almost forty years.
He told me that the only thing as amazing as the prosecution’s ability to always produce an “expert witness” that would testify on their behalf was the defense’s ability to produce a different “expert witness” that would testify to the complete opposite finding.
Yeah. There are two sides to every coin. Likewise, there are two sides to every argument.
Let me say this since I’ve already been cynical enough in this post to come off as completely unsympathetic: even if a study, or multiple studies, concludes that the presence of short-term rental accommodations in a city, province, our country has a net effect of fewer residences in the long-term rental pool, and this increases rents over the long-term, I still think that the property owner should be afforded the freedom of choice.
FairBnB won’t agree.
Tenant rights advocates won’t agree.
But if all else fails, we should simply hand home ownership over to the government and let them decide who lives there.
Ugh. More gaslighting. David, David, if you’re able, keep your elbows off the table…
So why then am I suggesting that after already stripping away multiple property rights and interfering with a property owner’s simple and quiet enjoyment of their homes, that the government could “come for” the right to lease out a property as one sees fit?
Well, because of this:
“Ottawa Looks At Limiting Number Of AirBnBs To Free Up Rentals”
The Globe & Mail
October 5th, 2023
From the article:
The Liberal government is planning limits to Airbnbs to free up more rental units as part of a broader political strategy to counter Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s campaign to win over Canadians who are upset about the rising cost of living, federal officials say.
Oh, well, I mean, it’s a good thing that this isn’t a knee-jerk reaction by Justin Trudeau to combat the momentum that his political rival is enjoying.
(gulp!)
Who ever said that politics was about serving the best interests of the people, anyway?
This is not part of some well-thought-out, heavily-researched “strategy” by the federal government to solve, cure, or eliminate the housing crisis.
This is the sign of a government that not only has no plan but also has no clue.
If it is, indeed, the responsibility of a government to provide its citizens with housing, then so be it.
But I do not believe that a government should do so, in part or in whole, by firstly infringing upon private property owners’ rights…
Marina
at 8:19 am
Yes but “housing is a human right and so my right to housing trumps your right to your property”.
That’s the core of every counter argument I read. And if you start with that assumption, that your right to housing is paramount, then any logical discussion is preemptively over.
Irony is, if rent controls are removed, there would be a lot more rental units in the market. but anyone who suggests it is apparently an out of touch sadist who wants people to die in the streets.
Josh Hryniak
at 9:12 am
Yes yes YES! Property owners must be afforded the freedom of choice!! All of these communazi government overreaches must stopped!!!!
I own property on wellington and can you believe the jackboot bylaw officers keep telling me I can’t raise and slaughter pigs in my studio condo?? Its my property and I should be 100% free to do with it whatever I like!!!
Government has run amok and it is time for us to rise up and cast off their shackles of oppression!!!
Andy Z.
at 4:46 pm
Beautiful, thank you! Could not word it better 🙂
I like a lot David’s blog, and enjoy insightful and data-ful posts. This one, however, is a.. classical switch from discussing the content of applicable regulations to calling it infringement on freedoms. An equivalent to ad hominem – cannot attack the argument, so let’s attack the speaker. Cannot discuss the content of regulations – let’s call them commie oppression.
Appraiser
at 9:27 am
Interesting article here looking at the world wide market for short term rentals and how major cities regulate them. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/083115/top-cities-where-airbnb-legal-or-illegal.asp
Cities with the most acute housing shortages like New York (est. 500k unit shortage) often have the most restrictive regulations on short term rentals. It’s almost as if regulators believe that treating the symptom will lead to cure.
Sirgruper
at 9:35 am
Blame Trudeau Sr. When the Constitution Act of 1982 was passed, unlike the US constitution, our Bill of Rights within the Act purposely excluded property rights and thus, government can tread on your property rights. What they always fail to understand is that markets are complex, and as you keep making things harder for investors to buy real estate, they will eventually stop. Current development practices are dependent on investors to buy the initial pre built condo and starter housing stock to quickly and cost efficiently bring a development to market. Between pricing, construction costs, interest rates, tenant issues and government costs and over reach, the development machine is getting close to seizing which will exacerbate the housing stock issue. But this is complex and can’t be explained or sold by politicians in a sound bite, so stop Airbnb is so much easier.
Appraiser
at 10:30 am
Not sure what part of the US constitution you are referring to, but New York city has some of the most restrictive short-term rental rules of any major city.
The law was challenged this year in court and dismissed:
“Airbnb, which characterized the law “a de facto ban on short-term rentals,” challenged it in court in June 2023. After that lawsuit was dismissed, the city announced plans to proceed with enforcing the law, effective September 5, 2023.”
San Francisco and Santa Monica California also have very restrictive short term rental regulations. Yet not a peep about the constitution.
Laying blame for the current situation on the Canadian Constitution and specifically PET is one hell of a stretch.
Geoff
at 12:20 pm
But … Narrative!
Island Home Owner
at 2:12 pm
And it was PEI Premier Angus MacLean who was the first minister really pushing to exclude a property rights clause from the Charter so he could protect the Island’s land ownership regulations.
Sirgruper
at 12:15 am
On property rights, Canada’s Constitution has rightly been described as “something of an outlier among the liberal constitutions of the world.” While property rights clauses appear in virtually every written constitution amongst the world’s liberal democracies, Canada’s written Constitution contains no property rights provision. The Exclusion of Property Rights from the Charter: Correcting the Historical Record, 2015 CanLIIDocs 113.
Appraiser, I was talking about property rights in Canada as a whole and stand by my statement. I had a good prof in Constitutional Law (Peter Hogg) and I must have been paying attention that class back. PET most certainly was instrumental in the exclusion of those rights. It’s just a historical fact. I doubt anyone thought of Airbnb back then.
Appraiser
at 12:12 pm
The only stipulations for property rights in the US constitution are the 5th & 14 amendments which guarantee fair market compensation for expropriation and equal protection under the laws.
Canada has similar laws regarding expropriation. Not everything has to enshrined in the Charter.
In addition from the article you cited: “the exclusion of property rights certainly did not arise from any outright unwillingness on the part of Trudeau to include them”
David Fleming
at 3:58 pm
@ Sigruper
This couldn’t possibly be more accurate:
“Current development practices are dependent on investors to buy the initial pre built condo and starter housing stock to quickly and cost efficiently bring a development to market.”
The government has enjoyed two decades of watching individual investors help finance the increase in housing stock, while few units of government-owned housing were actually built. But now the government has taxed development to death so very little will be built in the next five years. Is this “milking the goat empty” or is it “picking the mine clean?”
cyber
at 10:08 am
This is a tricky issue.
Yes, a good chunk of AirBnB units would be in the long term residential pool if there was a guaranteed 2 week hearing at LTB and another 2 months max Sheriff eviction for non-payment. Despite higher profit potential, I’m sure plenty of current hospitality providers on the platform would switch to the more passive rental market – especially at today’s rental rates, and with the emerging availability of new rental insurance options that can protect against non-payment.
At the same time, you are conflating the freedom to use residential real estate as one sees fit (which is already subject to plenty of restrictions via zoning and other bylaws…), with the freedom to use residential real estate as a commercial hotel operation without being subject to the location/zoning, licensing/regulation, and tax rates that the hotel industry is subject to. It’s basically “wanting your cake and eating it, too”. It’s the difference between my neighbour having a garage for own cars and running a car repair shop, having two kitchens in their home for family use and running a takeout restaurant operation, or growing some “herbs” for personal use and running a grow-op next door.
To not be subject to LTB and rent increase caps, one literally needs to argue that they are providing “temporary accommodation to the vacationing public”… which is what hotels do. So one of the main reasons AirBnB is so profitable is because investors that effectively compete with hotels don’t have the same cost structure that hotels do – for starters, hotels pay a commercial tax rate that is several times higher than the residential tax rate.
And I don’t see anyone involved in this AirBnB market arbitrage – including myself here – lining up to re-classify their commercial real investment investments into the most applicable regulatory framework, i.e. that of the hotel industry…
Reply to Cyber
at 11:09 am
This is simply not true. The majority of Airbnb rentals would not end up back on the long term market. There is a regulation in Toronto that states that Airbnb’s must be the primary residence of the owners who rent them. These homes are not secondary income properties. A few years back, the city of Toronto reduced the number of Airbnb listings by 66% and it had virtually no effect on the long term rental market. There are maybe 5,000 homes left in Toronto that operate as full time Airbnbs, and only a very small percentage of those would end up on the long term rental market. New housing starts should come from the city of Toronto, not from tax paying home owners.
Adrian
at 10:57 am
I think the reason for many laws that restrict our personal freedom is trying to account for externalities of our actions. When you have airbnb in a condo it doesn’t just affect the owner. There’s many residents who have to put up with the noise, trash and general disrespect from short term tenants who have no reason to behave since they are leaving the next day. I think condo boards are right to restrict short term rentals because when you live in a condo you sign up for the type of lifestyle where you have rules restricting the use of your property in order to be considerate to others. But not sure we should restrict use in single family homes or other communities. I can’t believe it’s really detracting from supply. Maybe in certain downtown condo areas that are near tourist attractions.
Francesca
at 12:01 pm
I totally agree with you. One of the reasons we bought in the condo building where we live is that short term rentals are not permitted. We already have issues dealing with an increasing number of long term renters compared to a few years ago because now many owners cannot sell due to higher interest and high maintenance fees so prefer to rent out to long term tenants as they are getting all time high monthly payments. Some tenants are very responsible and considerate of others, some not so much. This is such a hot topic of debate that at our AGM some people were proposing a cap on how many rentals are allowed at any given time which the board claimed they are not legally allowed to do. Apparently you can legally determine what the minimum rental stay is but not whether you can outright ban regular yearly rentals entirely.
Nobody
at 11:22 am
Opposition to Airbnb is mostly by hotel operators and hotel unions.
Just like how New York has (effectively) banned the construction of new hotels thanks to these two groups.
People who use hotels are predominantly from out of town. Which is why cities have restrictive rules to push up prices as well as high taxes on hotels. “It only hurts rich tourists and business travelers” is a great slogan.
Airbnb solves a huge problem for people moving who need something more than a hotel room for a night or two, for families with kids who could use a kitchen and to be close to their kids but with separate rooms for some quiet but not total isolation like in multiple hotel rooms. It’s fine for individual condos to restrict short term rentals but not for the city/province/feds.
Cities ban apartment buildings, hotels, their alternatives, new construction, and then people decry lack of housing and high prices. We need far, far more construction and to expropriate the property of NIMBYs and leftists like Josh Hryniak and the Leslievile/Riverside residents trying to block the Ontario Line, lakeshore residents trying to close Billy Bishop, and people trying to block construction within 600m of subway/underground LRT stations.
Chris
at 12:36 pm
You’re dead wrong. Try being a neighbor to an AirBNB. They ruin the neighborhood.
Bryan
at 11:59 am
There is a fundamental flaw in David’s argument here that (and forgive the simplification) “home owners have/had the freedom to do whatever they want with the homes they own(ed) and now/soon they don’t/wont because the government is passing off the responsibility to solve the housing affordability crisis to the private sector”. The flaw is, for as many decades as I can remember, this freedom has been limited by “zoning constraints”.
Zoning exists for a reason! Never has a property owner in/around Toronto had the right to put up a hotel or open a business (including a bed and breakfast!) on their residentially zoned property without permission from the city. Cities (theoretically) zone areas residential and commercial so that there is a balance of places to live, work, and play as the city grows. If everyone could ignore this zoning, master planned communities could collapse (though the expertise of those doing the planning could/should be questioned).
To me, the core question is not “does the right to housing trump the right to freedom of use of a property” (don’t want to touch that one with a 40 foot pole), but rather “when does a property become a business rather than a residence?”. I think we can all agree that renting your condo out long term means it is still a residence, and that operating a Marriott hotel is a business. What is an airbnb?? Does it represent a loophole where many properties that were zoned residential now effectively operate as businesses in support of the tourism industry? Or is it truly a case of a residence with changing tenants? If its the former, arbnbs should need to be zoned commercial, and if it is the latter, they should not. This should really be the discussion IMO.
David Fleming
at 3:56 pm
@ Bryan
You’re not wrong. However, if you stick to “zoning” so closely then you end up like the Leaside NIMBY’s who tout individual sections of years-old planning as the reason why no condos should be built in their areas.
If you take the example to the extreme (which I have a habit of doing), then is it a “right” for a property owner to build a 9-storey house amid 2-storey houses? Or to build a casino on Dunvegan Road in Forest Hill?
My issue is, and will remain, this nonsense idea that the government is “helping” us by providing limitations on short-term housing.
Bryan
at 10:29 am
Don’t even get me started on how most zoning in the city is currently nonsense. Why politicians who have no idea how city planning works have the biggest say in how it runs is beyond me. Some are in the pockets of developers, and most would rather do the wrong thing than offend some small group of NIMBY voters.
I don’t think that means we should throw the baby out with the bathwater though. Building a 20 story casino on your suburban cul-de-sac should absolutely be prevented…. as should people using zoning from 1972 to justify not putting a condo on top of a new subway station. Fund the folks who do the zoning so that they can keep up with our rapidly changing city, and keep them arms length from individual city councilors who don’t have the bigger picture best interests at heart. But also, stick to the zoning.
And that brings us back to airbnbs. I tend to agree that this probably shouldn’t constitute a “business” up to a certain point. Taking things to the extreme, if you buy every unit in a condo building and put them up on airbnb, should you not be required to regulate and license that as a hotel?
Chris
at 12:34 pm
I remember how dismayed I was when I moved into my house and discovered my neighbor was renting two units of her triplex out on AirBNB. Now I’m stuck next to a revolving door of strangers while my neighbor is paying off her mortgage earning double what she would get from long-term tenants. It is awful.
David Fleming
at 3:52 pm
@ Chris
I don’t like it either.
But I don’t believe the government should “ban” it as a measure to increase housing supply in the long-term rental pool.
Taking from Peter to pay Paul.
The government needs “real” solutions, as other readers have noted.
Libertarian
at 1:10 pm
I think people seem to forget the pecking order of how things work in our society and how they came to be.
Namely: (1) democracy, (2) rights/freedoms, (3)capitalism
I think the above order is correct and should be followed. Humans organized themselves as families, tribes, villages, cities, etc. As groups grew larger, the need for rules came about, which eventually led to government. Democracy is everyone has a voice on how their group should run. That led to the zoning that the other commenters have mentioned. We have residential areas, school areas, highways, etc. We require hotels to have certain features.
AirBnBers think it is the reverse.
As such, I am against AirBnB being run as ghost hotels. If someone wants to rent out a room or two in their primary residence, go ahead. But you can’t go out and buy numerous properties and think your desires take precedence over others who live in those areas. We as a society have spoken and don’t want ghost hotels all over the place.
This goes especially for condos. As Francesca says, condos have rules about everything, including no AirBnB. Condos are essentially cities, but on a much smaller scale. A group of people agree to live together under one roof and share expenses. They are allowed to govern themselves. So if they say no AirBnB, then some investor can’t buy a unit and complain that he/she can’t AirBnB it.
David Fleming
at 3:51 pm
@ Libertarian
I have no problem with the Condominium Corporation limiting short-term rentals within that particular condo.
I have a problem with the Federal government limiting short-term rentals within the country’s borders.
Dusty
at 3:26 pm
The houses on each side of mine have been divided into apartments and, oh, the hell I’ve seen and heard. Tenants pouring water between party walls, one pulling shingles off after being evicted. Never mind ex’s of tenants vandalizing properties after a bad breakup.
If I ever move, I’ll board mine up and pay the vacant tax until my eldest can move in. No way I’d ever be a landlord. So many entitled, bitter renters who can’t stand that someone else owns something they don’t. Seems like a generational millennial thing but maybe that’s just on my street.
Vancouver Keith
at 3:38 pm
Big problems require big solutions. Big crises require big and quick solutions. Government needs to be seen to be doing something. Once the housing crisis affects people who vote, or whose parents vote government has to take action. The solution is a massive building program of affordable non market supply, but no one wants to concede that it is the solution and no one wants to front the money, for some strange meaning. Far faster to ban or restrict Airbnb, which means action is being taken and the political cost of failure is minimal.
R
at 4:39 pm
I assume you are just pretending to be stupid to get comments, and don’t actually believe the argument you facetiously are making that people should be able to do anything they like just because they paid for something and that the government hates “freedom”.
You can’t drive your car like a Taxi. You catn’t turn your house into a club. You can’t shoot the squirrels on your lawn just because it’s your property.
The government’s job is to consider the bigger picture for the greater good.
AirBnb is bad for communities and neighbors. It’s bad for housing values around it. It’s bad for taxpayers that lose tax revenue that should comes from hotels, the drain on services from commercial use that aren’t billed to residential properties and the burden on enforcement and policing bad guests, parties and the shit that goes down in AirBnbs.
Live next to an Airbnb and see how you like your family kept up with parties and random people eyeing your kids as they come and go.
AirBnb vs. housing availability is an issue but it’s the symptom, not the problem.
S
at 8:07 pm
“Random people eyeing your kids.” Seriously? Do these ‘random people’ also set your car on fire and spray paint your front door ‘as they come and go’ in your imagination?
Dmitry
at 7:39 pm
There is no rights and freedoms. It’s an illusion. There neves was any right and freedoms.
George Carlin was 100% right.
I used to rent long term my condo. Recently I still rented long term, but to a corporation that rents my condo short term. Do not care what stupid government does. If they keep screwing me up, I’ll sell and invest in other countries that do not have stupid government. Wold is open – Bali, Dubai, Turkey, Philippines, Thailand and many more. Smart money do not like stupid government.
Anwar
at 8:38 am
Some of the readers are taking liberties here with David’s idea of a property owner’s freedom.
He’s talking about the freedom to lease short term OR long term.
Not slaughtering pigs and building castles.
Opponents resorting to those arguments instead of talking about the government’s lack of solutions in the housing market are clearly at a loss to defend the proposed ban on short term rentals.
Derek
at 9:01 am
I will go with what this guy says. He knows things:
Ron Butler
@ronmortgageguy
Oct 18
“Airbnb May Be In Big Trouble: About DAMN TIME
I have raised hell with Short Term Rentals for years for simple reasons:
90% of the time they are just illegal hotel rooms
They ABSOLUTELY reduce the numbers of vital Long Term Rentals which Canada so desperately needs now”
KK
at 12:48 pm
he also has a 6 minute You Tube video on the topic. I have no problem with AirBnB rented from primary residences, but when the houses in my neighborhood started to be gobbled up and rented out (including one 4 bedroom rented BY THE ROOM), the only winners I could see were the investors who are nameless – it’s no fun living next to one, let alone subsidizing them with MY property taxes.
I am so turned off by this article but I guess I should not be surprised – they are a realtor and no doubt benefit in some way from the short term rental scheme. Wonder if their attitude would change if they had to live next to one 24/7.
Ace Goodheart
at 11:48 am
I think you have to actually try living next to an Air bnb, either in a semi or in a condo or townhouse (or other attached type residence) and see for yourself how it is.
Each weekend, a new group of people show up. During the week too, every night someone else is sleeping there. The weekends are the worst. We woke up Saturday mornings to find people asleep on our porch (missed the house, wrong porch, man that was a rough night, just trying to get back to the hotel – oops, the house next to you is now an actual youth hostel and 20 young people tried to make it home from the bars there last night, one of them ended up on our porch – and we heard the other 19 until 5am when they finally passed out).
I mean, you have tolerance for your neighbours. Sure. I lived next to a guy who liked to rev his 1960s muscle car on the driveway on the weekends. Sure, whatever. You put up with it.
But the property owner is NOT actually living there. So you have to live with a massive hotel/youth hostel operating on the other side of the common wall, so that some dude can get rich making hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of dollars every weekend renting out his property to people who want to party there.
At some point people just get fed up with it. They pee on your flowers for cripes sake! I watched them do it, many times. Home they come at 4am, and they all urinate on the lawn and the fence, and then go inside and turn the music up and party until the sun comes up. I put up with this why? Because some guy is making money off of a ghost hotel/youth hostel in a residential neighbourhood.
What is the point of zoning, if people are allowed to do this? The neighbourhood is NOT zoned commercial. No one can open a bar next to my house. But this guy opened a youth hostel. And there were keg parties. So it’s like a bar, right (they charged people $20.00 a head to come in and drink there).
I think that Air bnb is a great idea, that has unfortunately turned Frankenstein on us.
The original idea was, if you are traveling, you don’t need your house. So why not share it while you are gone? And you can share other people’s houses, who are also traveling. It makes sense.
But to turn it into a commercial hotel/youth hostel service with no rules or regulations, and unlicensed hotels/youth hostels/bars popping up in residential neighbourhoods, with no notice to other residents and no control or regulation, is not really what Air bnb was intended to be.
It has gone off the rails. And unfortunately, has to be reigned in. It may be they have to be very strict with it. But it cannot continue the way it is. Entire condo buildings in Toronto have been rendered unliveable for the people who actually own/rent in them, because of Air bnb parties and behaviour of the guests.
Police, fire and emergency services are being recruited by Air bnb hosts to act as private security/medical/emergency services, at the cost to municipal taxpayers, to provide emergency services to their unlicensed ghost hotels/youth hostels.
Normally if you ran a hotel, you would need to pay a security company to provide those services.
Air bnb hosts just take them for free from the municipal tax payers, who fund the police/fire/ambulance services that they use to manage their ghost hotels.
Something has to be done.
KK
at 12:54 pm
Thank you. The same has happened to our neighbourhood – it is not just Toronto, I am in Kingston. Love the cars parked all over the street because the house was never meant for more than 2 cards, love the visiting dogs that roam free and pee all over our recycling bins on garbage day, love the noise in the backyard when a whole group has rented the house for the weekend, love never getting to know a new neighbour or possibly having more kids around for mine to play with. Really. I want every AirBnB investor or owner to have to live next to one and see how much they LOVE it. Your freedom has consequences for those of us who are trying to make a home and a neighborhood a community. In our case, no one has ever met the new owner, no one has ever come to us and said if there are problems, let us know. This is because they know what they are destroying (a community) and don’t care. It is so upsetting.
David Fleming
at 4:20 pm
@ Ace & KK
I fear my original point is being lost in all this, although via some very good accounts of the drawbacks to and consequences of AirBnB.
My issue is the government acting like taking from Peter to pay Paul is going to “fix” the housing crisis.
I don’t like AirBnB for exactly the reasons you two describe.
Derek
at 4:58 pm
STRs are a municipal government issue. Feds can talk and incentivize municipalities somehow, but not much else.
Nothing will “fix” the housing crises except a time machine to eliminate “emergency” rates after the “emergency” ended. Many things will contribute to helping improving the housing crises though. Eliminating whole home or whole unit STRs is an admirable goal even if it will not “fix” it. Is there any positive public policy rationale for allowing residential homes to be (or remain) converted into short term rental businesses, other than the idea that people with access to equity to buy investment properties make more money doing STRs than traditional landlord investors? Is the rationale that condos won’t get built unless a significant proportion can be STRs sufficient? The idea Investors won’t buy a second residence unless it can be used as an STR is a sufficient reason to be a permitted use? “Don’t tell me what to do” is sufficient reason to permit STRs? Now the government is taking STRs away!! What freedom will I lose next!! STRs are a sacred right going back to my grandfather’s grandfather’s days of 2009!!
Ace Goodheart
at 5:49 pm
Air bnb has literally destroyed entire Toronto neighbourhoods.
I don’t think regulation of air bnb is a good example of government over reach.
Again, you really have to live next to one to understand why people don’t like them.
Derek
at 5:10 pm
Interesting point from David here: “If it is, indeed, the responsibility of a government to provide its citizens with housing”…
What do people think the budget should be for the government(s) to govern into existence affordable (or some other adjective) housing? How much taxpayer money should go into providing other people (all of us commenters are obviously super loaded) cheaper housing than the evil rich people pay for their “shelter” costs.
Vancouver Keith
at 11:03 pm
The share of housing stock the taxpayer has paid for in Canada amounts to 4.7% of the total. That compares to an OECD average of 7%, New York City at 10%, Stockholm at 30% and Vienna at 60%. So whatever taxpayer money has gone into providing other people in this country cheaper housing it’s clearly way less than other western democracies, and goes a long way to explaining the housing affordability crisis that we currently face – longer than NIMBY’s, foreign capital and any other reason that gets trotted out in these debates.
Before the funding was pulled, thirty years ago, we were building 25,000 units per year of non market housing. Our society is paying a very heavy price for not taking care of working people in a core need. Most countries accept that provision of a basic level of shelter, with rent based on income isn’t a “right,” it’s a responsibility of society which benefits everyone when it’s done properly. It’s great to be a local business person when people making five figures a year have a lot of free cash flow after paying shelter costs to spend in the local economy.
Ace Goodheart
at 10:15 am
The problem is always “where does a person actually live?”
There are all these competing priorities. On one side, they want all of us to live 15 minutes from where we work.
However, try to do that downtown in Toronto. All I can say is that, for blue collar workers, there is a lot of commuting going on. Many people spend hours getting to work and back using various methods.
Toronto’s parks are full of homeless encampments. People say “get the homeless out of the park” and of course the question that immediately poses is “and put them…where?”. They aren’t camping in a park because they wanted to have an adventure. They are there because they literally cannot afford to pay the rent, anywhere.
Realistically, you have to have somewhere that your population can live.
I honestly think that Air bnb is causing higher rents and I don’t really buy the numbers that are being put out saying they do not.
Rent prices are just supply and demand. More supply = lower prices. We are already seeing this with condo sales. There has been a downward trend in condo prices because so many people are now listing their investment condos.
Rental rates would follow the same path. If there was no Air bnb, then someone owning an investment condo would have to rent it to a long term tenant, and there would be a whole new crop of rental listings coming online. The price pressure would be downwards.
Again, I understand that people own these condos and if they want to turn them into hotels or youth hostels, I understand the argument that “that is their right to do so”.
However, I simply do not agree. If you want to put a fourth floor on your three storey house, you don’t just grab your tool box. You need zoning approval, you need building permits, you need a soil engineer and a structural engineer reports, there is so much bureaucracy that it is actually more difficult to get the permit than it is to build the fourth floor once you are approved.
But what is the option? Unpermitted height additions to houses in Toronto have been collapsing onto neighbouring houses (and people) in Toronto for years. Google it and you will see. They fall over all the time. So the permitting process, while it does limit property rights, is very necessary.
So why do we allow people to run unlicensed hotels and youth hostels out of residential properties? New York, that bastion of freedom and individual human rights, with the Statue of Liberty beckoning all to come and be free there (if you can get a green card) does not allow Air bnbs. Americans have property rights. What is happening?
New York authorities know the dangers of allowing people to turn residential properties into hotels. They don’t permit it.
Why do we?
cyber
at 12:27 pm
This. Supply and demand applies.
How anyone can – with a straight face and earnestly – try to make the case that AirBnB does not impact long-term rental rates is beyond me. Taking long term supply “out” of available inventory by putting it into the quasi-hotel market means that the long-term lease prices are going up if long-term tenant demand stays the same.
FClark
at 10:49 am
I think this is a bit out of touch, sure it will affect the real estate market. But, the only reason people could acquire housing so easily is because government policy and the interest rates they set. You notice most people over 40 don’t care about housing costs, but the majority of people 20-40 have had to compete with paying a significant higher percentage of income to acquire housing for their family than the previous generation. It’s good to see they are finally doing something.
bob
at 1:06 pm
96,000 realtors in Ontario.. what’s up wth that ???
most just want to buy/flip, run airbnbs, write off expenses on “fancy” cars and other “business expenses” they think makes them look cool. that’s the problem..
Mike
at 1:38 am
This country is now a socialist fascist dystopia. There is no real economy when the government tells you how to act in every area of life. Heck, even in Russia you don’t need dog tags and housing is far less regulated. Coupled with the exit tax this country is a sink hole for capital.. anyone with capital should have an allergy to putting it in the ground here or anywhere else.
Lance
at 8:45 am
If you want to succeed on Airbnb, you should research the local market, maintain a well-kept property, provide unique amenities, offer excellent customer service, and ensure your property is safe and secure for your guests.
https://kubo.com.ph/running-an-airbnb-rental-business-in-the-philippines-your-kubo-qs-answered/