Toronto convicts first Airbnb owner over zoning violation

https://www.thestar.com/business/real_estate/2016/11/23/city-of-toronto-gets-first-zoning-conviction-of-airbnb-era.html

by rhschan • 10 years ago

99 85 10 years ago

thestar.com

dominotw2• 10 years ago

Great news!!. Hope other cities like Chicago learn from this and start enforcing it.

josho5• 10 years ago

Great news!

Why is this great news? Am I missing something or are you simply against short term rentals in general?

enraged_camel• 10 years ago

Not the OP, but AirBnB has been turning into Uber lately with the way they are strongly lobbying (and filing lawsuits) against consumer/resident protection laws. It's the type of behavior that's guaranteed to erode the public's goodwill.

meddlepal• 10 years ago

I'm strongly opposed to short term rentals because it's just giving rise to alt-hotel property management landlords that reduce housing supply. I'm sort of OK with it on an ad-hoc this is my primary residence and I have a spare bedroom.

omouse2• 10 years ago

Awesome, excellent stuff.

jeromegv• 10 years ago

There was a shooting in a Airbnb house used for party in a quiet neighbourhood this year, so this issue has been gathering attention. https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2016/03/20/man-shot-in-th...

URSpider94• 10 years ago

This is the house where the shooting took place ...

icebraining3• 10 years ago

Without making any judgement on the issue, this will probably mean a general reduction of housing prices, and hence a bunch of people going underwater, no?

skylan_q3• 10 years ago

It does add to fears that people won't be able to rent out their places at those rates. Especially in Toronto where everyone's long-term plan is to own income properties. Everyone is looking to get out of careers and get rich on real estate. It's madness.

s0rce3• 10 years ago

Uh, I'm not sure who you hang out with but this is not my experience at all. Taking care of multiple properties will be a career and a lot of work. I grew up in Toronto and know many families that could easily afford income properties and probably be profitable but they don't. Nowhere near everyone's goal is to rent out properties.

pesfandiar• 10 years ago

If the housing prices are artificially higher because people could use it as an illegal hotel business, a correction would be better for the communities. Now someone who bought into the GTA housing frenzy with minimal downpayment as an investment can go underwater; so what? That's how investments work, no?

icebraining3• 10 years ago

Yes, yes it is. I was just trying to make sure I understood the situation as it stands.

criddell3• 10 years ago

I've always found the way people cheer on rising property values a little odd.

The basic things everybody needs are food clothing and shelter. How is it a good thing that something everybody needs should get more and more expensive? I think the relative amount I spend on food and clothing has dropped over the past 25 years, but my housing expenses have skyrocketed.

icebraining3• 10 years ago

I've always found the way people cheer on rising property values a little odd.

I totally agree, I'm just trying to understand the ramifications.

jdavis703• 10 years ago

You're totally right. Rising property values are a bad thing. As a society we shouldn't be spending resources on arbitrarily defined lines on land. We should be using that money to do things like funding scientific research, or rebuild infrastructure, not making some landlord rich.

arebop• 10 years ago

Rising real estate prices are not a good thing, but in this case they would be a sign of a good thing: the real estate has become more useful. We should distinguish between price increases due to building restrictions for example and price increases due to more efficient uses, better civic amenities, etc.

grogenaut3• 10 years ago

Article specifically states it is a vrbo listing not air bnb during the incident. However doesn't mean it wasn't also on Airbnb. Still a bit of headline attention grabbing.

dominotw2• 10 years ago

where does it say it was a vrbo listing?

grogenaut3• 10 years ago

Looks like I got an article treatment most people didn't see. Wtf. It was an explicit sentence that disappeared when I refreshed the article.

CapitalistCartr• 10 years ago

"This is the first conviction for the city’s municipal and licensing department in the booming area of short-term vacation rentals such as Airbnb and VRBO."

They mention them in general, not specifically this house.

grogenaut3• 10 years ago

Well wtf they completely swapped the article out. When I read it it was a "this quiet suburban neighborhood... The street time forgot" and now it's directly about the court case. In the previous version of the article it explicitly states that the rental period in question was under vrbo. Now that's gone. Rip hn karma.

skylan_q3• 10 years ago

I'm behind. What's the buzz about zoning violations here?

Kpourdeilami• 10 years ago

A short term rental for the span of fewer than 7 days is considered a zoning violation

skylan_q3• 10 years ago

Yes, it is. I want to understand the excitement over this ruling and I want to understand the purpose of the zoning violation.

josho5• 10 years ago

Under an old North York bylaw, ... short-term home rentals must be seven days or more.

Seems like an arbitrary law.

There's got to be a better way to structure laws for short term rentals in a sharing economy. Or is the sharing economy similar to the tragedy of the commons in that the end state is an end to sharing because of abuse and we all end up with commercial short term rental properties that are run more like a hotel than a spare room.

detaro3• 10 years ago

Given that they had created a company to rent out the house and are selling it now it sounds like this was a "commercial short term rental property", not a "spare room".

josho5• 10 years ago

Seems like I wasn't clear. By commercial I meant something more than an individual with a business license, something more along the lines of a hostel experience where there is a lobby and staff like a security guard.

GavinMcG• 10 years ago

Would you call a limit of, say, 5 days out of every 30 an "arbitrary" limit? That's what we're dealing with, here: limiting frequency or duration.

Many people simply don't want a constant stream of strangers coming through their living environment. That's not arbitrary, even if you happen to feel comfortable with it yourself.

josho5• 10 years ago

limiting frequency or duration.

Yes, that still seems arbitrary. The abuse seems to be related to people committing crimes or breaking noise bylaws, not how long they stay. So, legislation for the length of stay strikes me as addressing the wrong problem.

Really the solution to the problem is to ask the data questions. Do airbnb rentals have more noise complaints/crime, than similar non-airbnb residences. If the data suggests airbnb promotes bad things then ok, maybe that frequency limit isn't so arbitrary. I wonder by what means could a city demand airbnb's data to discovery which residences are being used for short term rentals.

JonFish852• 10 years ago

If this starts becoming a pattern, that's how a $25B valuation becomes a $1B acquisition, where common stock becomes worthless. I'm curious how quickly Airbnb is pushing for an exit.

refurb• 10 years ago

This is a great point to call out.

Cities don't like to be seen as anti-technology which is why you don't see a massive crackdown on AirBnB and Uber. But if one big city decides to do it, it can give other cities enough cover to do it as well.

As you said, suddenly AirBnB's growth goes positive to negative.

JumpCrisscross• 10 years ago

At least in New York, I can personally trace certain political activity to Airbnb behaving like asshats with their shareholders. Also, Airbnb are merging with a Chinese competitor [1].

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-23/airbnb-sai...

baybal23• 10 years ago

scrap zoning

JonFish852• 10 years ago

Cool. When a coal fired power plant moves in next door, you might think twice.

baybal23• 10 years ago

Countries with no zoning are living just fine

wfh• 10 years ago

Zoning isn't there to prevent the coal fired power plant from being built next to your house, it's to make it less bureaucratic to build in zoned areas - no need to get individual "planning permission" for any new permitted structure.

Countries that don't use zoning would still prevent the scenario you envisage.

chuinard• 10 years ago

Airbnb is a joke. Who the hell would actually rent their home out to a complete stranger for a $100 payday one weekend?

Not to mention you can just rent out a single room in your home. Like you want some stranger to temporarily live with you for a day or two and invade your privacy, all for just a few dollars.

The site was clearly meant to look one way yet allow people to run illegal hotels. The only people I've ever heard renting out on Airbnb are ones who buy homes specifically for Airbnb.

Airbnb is everything that is wrong with SV, so disconnected from the real world. I just don't understand who would let totally random strangers from the internet live amongst them or even just their possessions.

antisthenes• 10 years ago

Like you want some stranger to temporarily live with you for a day or two and invade your privacy, all for just a few dollars.

It's not just a few dollars. Some stays are easily in the $1000+ range, for less than a week's stay. Idk what salary bubble you're in as a software dev, but that's a lot of money to some people.

Who the hell would actually rent their home out to a complete stranger

Everyone on couchsurf disagrees with you. Oh and they usually do it for free. And as a short term landlord you do have some control over who stays at your place. In fact the more you charge, the higher end clientèle you will typically get.

Airbnb is everything that is wrong with SV, so disconnected from the real world. I just don't understand who would let totally random strangers from the internet live amongst them or even just their possessions.

There are many issues wrong with SV, but Airbnb is the least of its worries. This says more about you than SV or Airbnb. Not everyone is misanthropic to this degree.

The site was clearly meant to look one way yet allow people to run illegal hotels. The only people I've ever heard renting out on Airbnb are ones who buy homes specifically for Airbnb.

Maybe in the US, where credit is so easily available. This is definitely not the case for a lot of less fortunate places in Europe and 3rd world countries.

criddell3• 10 years ago

Do you know if European cities generally have zoning laws similar to American cities?

cazum• 10 years ago

Of the few times I or my grandparents have used arb'n'b, it's been a spare room in someone's personal home.

So it does happen.

enjo• 10 years ago

My wife and I enjoy traveling. Our jobs allow us to travel quite a bit. We rent our primary residence out on AirBnb.

It's been a fantastic way to provide extra income to allow us to travel as often as we'd like. It's been life changing really.

user59944613• 10 years ago

Airbnb is a joke. Who the hell would actually rent their home out to a complete stranger for a $100 payday one weekend?

About anyone.

AirBnB didn't invent vacation rentals. People have been doing that forever.

colmvp• 10 years ago

I love Airbnb when it was small and largely just people who wanted to share a spare bedroom. Now, it's just as commercial as any other listing website.

In Toronto, it's not uncommon to see tons of lockboxes outside some condos which are largely for short term rentals, as well as have tenants deal with experiences like this (copy and pasted from Toronto's subreddit):

"Have you ever wanted to live in a hotel, without the actual service of living in a hotel? You can at the Ice Condos! When walking through the lobby on any given day you're nearly guaranteed to see a few wide eyed, suitcase towing AirBNB guests standing around. Don't except to be able to speak with the concierge for anything - the AirBNB people will be arguing with them over the fact that the concierge won't just give out the keys to suites because people say they're supposed to be allowed in. Shout out to the guy last week who yelled 'This isn't a fuckking hotel!' to the woman doing just that last week."

It's particularly why I find their branding and messaging deceitful. They advertise in Toronto in a way that makes it seem like the company is merely a benign platform that helps citizens fund things on the side (one of their ads uses an Asian family with a kid, an appeal to emotion which I see through as an Asian Canadian). Except it's disconnected from a reality where people buy properties for the sole purpose of listing them on Airbnb as short-term rentals.

woofyman2• 10 years ago

Why doesn't the home owners association crack down on the short term rentals?

run4yourlives22• 10 years ago

Short answer: One of two scenarios...

1. Because the Strata (HOA in Canada) has no idea this is even an option. 2. Because most of them are in favour of it, (most likely).

A big issue with a lot of condos in major cities (particularly new construction) is that upwards of 50% of them (sometimes, even higher) are owned by investors not actually living in the building. It's only on site owners that care about the actual goings on of the space. Everyone else is just looking to make a buck.

mistermann• 10 years ago

Possibly for the same reason even the Canada Revenue Agency won't do it's job, fear of racism:

http://www.richmond-news.com/news/cra-ups-its-game-targeting...

aquadrop2• 10 years ago

Maybe it's unpopular opinion here, but why short term rentals are bad? I personally love short term rentals, hotels suck compare to them. I hopped over asia and europe with 4-10 days at one place at a time, using AirBnB and it was great. I want home-like experience when I travel, I don't want to stay in overpriced micro-rooms without kitchen where I can't even make a tea. Some people mentioned that condo inhabitants 'don't like living in a hotel', but what specifically is the problem? That many people are going in and out? I don't really know if it's the problem itself if those are decent people. And still most of the people would be full time If there are related issues, maybe it's best to address the issues (I don't know what they are though, nobody explained it)? Because AirBnb looks like a good platform to manage those issues, turn chaotic market into more sane and organized. I think best strategy would be for AirBnb and building-owners to work together, to keep asshollish visitors outside (they are the problem, not short term rentals itself), put more incentive for rent-givers to watch over who they rent appartment/house to, etc

P.S. I never was on another side of the fence (i.e. living in the building with many short term rental visitors), so maybe I don't understand/underestimate something.

Symbiote2• 10 years ago

The company that manages the building I live in, in Copenhagen, dealt very quickly when I reported an apartment on AirBnB.

I don't know what they did, but the regular noise at weekends didn't return.

Everyone who doesn't sublet their apartment year round should be against AirBnB in their building. It can only push the rent up.

richthegeek• 10 years ago

It's a similar problem in Europe, at least in some cities. My experiences, and anecdotes from friends:

Budapest: Prices are pretty good compared to hotels at all times. There are a few "professional" hosts but most are just letting out some spare capacity. Occasional bait-and-switch.

Copenhagen: Prices are equal with hotels, so it's really a lifestyle choice. Generally convivial hosts.

London: almost entirely professional, but the prices usually beat a hotel room by a large margin.

Barcelona: absolutely ruined. Completely professional, prices as high as hotels, and literally every room/flat in the city center has a Strict refund policy (i.e. lose half your money). Many instances of bait-and-switch (show you a nice flat, not available, take a look at this s*hole instead) and trying to screw you into cancelling (and keeping your money). Also had more than one friend have "break-ins" on the last day (often too late to sort with the police before your flight home).

AirBnB really need to crack down on professional hosts. Start with disallowing more than ~3 listings per host, and really punish bait-and-switch attempts.

cmurf• 10 years ago

Based on the stories I've heard from friends and colleagues about this in Barcelona, AirBnB is engaging in fraud. They should sooner pull out entirely that defile their customers in this manner - but then the real customer is apparently the landlord, not the renter, so I guess they are helping their customer defile the peasants. All of the stories involved AirBnB blaming the renter for not informing them immediately upon being redirected to a different apartment, while simultaneously being essentially impossible to get ahold of in a timely manner, you know after a 12 hour international flight and you've arrived at midnight. Getting a cot at this point has a very good chance of being accepted and AirBnB takes the side of the landlord that this is tacit acceptance of the entire bait and switch being valid.

omouse2• 10 years ago

That's the growth mindset for you. Airbnb would be better if it were not profit-driven imo.

toomuchtodo• 10 years ago

That's what couchsurfing.org used to be, and then they got into the game trying to compete against AirBnB.

Tempest1981• 10 years ago

Or maybe they could settle for 25% less profit, and work to maintain good will in the community. In the end, the lack of good will may cost them more. Or maybe they've already calculated this?

edblarney2• 10 years ago

I don't think that 'professional listings' are negative and I don't think there is misrepresentation.

I fact - I have absolutely no will or wanton to go and stay in someone's room, or even in a personal flat - I don't want to use someone else's stuff.

I actually much prefer a professionally managed space that just happens to not be a hotel.

As far as how it affects local markets - that's another question entirely.

It's probably a good idea that those markets decide for themselves how it should be regulated.

pasbesoin• 10 years ago

I've lived with crap neighbors. Not in an AirBNB setting. But I've read more than enough about rotating, crap AirBNB neighbors to have more than a bit of sympathy towards the anti-AirBNB side.

Zoning and regulations exist for good reasons, built up over decades.

AirBNB and its like "break" the paradigm by, in "crowdsourced" fashion, sort of "flash-mob" overwhelming the existing system.

Yeah, those existing systems may have some faults and inefficiencies. But I am not for throwing them out, wholesale.

Nor for neighbors shitting all over their neighbors for the sake of their own profit.

Like Uber with its discrimination and "dumping" via investor dollar subsidized rides. These "sharing" businesses have turned into parasites arbitraging the limited resources to enforce existing law and regulation.

Unfortunately, more and more people believe that "government is bad", so, instead of digging in to fix and improve what we have, it's left to the crooks to break the paradigm.

Again, as someone who's suffered under bad neighbors, repeatedly, I say... well, a pox on your house.

(Not to mention our return to piecework labor with no benefits and no insurance.)

yladiz• 10 years ago

I don't know Airbnb's demographics on travel (as in, who is hosting outside of USA and Canada, and who uses it outside of USA and Canada) but I wouldn't worry about this too much. Even if their usage is curtailed in the US, they can push for marketing and usage in other countries (they are eyeing the second largest home sharing company in China currently[1]).

However, I really wish Airbnb (and companies that use the same strategy, like Uber) would really try to work with cities rather than fight them. I mean, when you spend $8MM on tone deaf ads in San Francisco to fight some proposition rather than working with the city to come to a compromise, it's pretty bad. For example, the article mentions a specific bylaw for the area where the user in question in this article lives. I know things move slowly in law, but I feel it would be relatively simple to work with the city of Toronto (and the county(?) of North York) to get the bylaw removed or amended. I wouldn't be surprised if Airbnb demonizes the new SF law[2] once users get fined by the city, and to me this seems backwards. I think it would be smarter to try to work with the cities, and if you lose one, it sucks but that's life.

1: http://qz.com/845185/as-the-us-and-europe-crack-down-on-home...

2: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/overview-airbnb-law-s...

s0rce3• 10 years ago

This assumes the law is simply antiquated and most of the locals would be happy or otherwise wouldn't care if it was repealed. However, it is possible that many Toronto citizens could be against short term home rentals. See the numerous complaints about condos turning into hotels and prom parties in suburban homes. I'm not sure where I stand, I've used Airbnb a few times, mostly my more positive experiences were when I rented a room, the whole homes felt much more commercial.

ohwello2• 10 years ago

This is a good thing. But I'm not celebrating over Airbnb's corpse or whatever. The first order effects of Airbnb are great.

It's a good thing to increase the number of travel accommodations so more people can explore the world. I like Airbnb's mission better than that of a lot of Silicon Valley startups.

It's unfortunate that, at scale, Airbnb becomes part of a larger problem: there is not enough housing in many major cities. This is an unforced error we are making as a civilization, because we have the technology to easily provide enough housing in an affordable way (elevators, concrete).

Due to the limited supply of housing, the price will be bid up by the most economically efficient use - shoving a stream of daily renters through your condo building's lobby at the highest rate possible. A better outcome would be new facilities dedicated for this use case.

When the pie is not big enough, we are inevitably going to have a lot of tough fights over how to break it up. In this case, the poor locals who can't afford a place to rent and richer locals who are annoyed by the foreigners in their condo building lobby are going to win out over the people who want to explore the world.

trhway• 10 years ago

if mix of short and long term residents is such a problem why not build condo buildings which specifically permit (basically intended for) AirBNB short terms? Why such a hard binary choice - either long term condo or crappy hotel. Why there can't be option in between - normal condo building in normal location which explicitly allows short term from the start?.

wool_gather• 10 years ago

Maybe this will happen eventually, but you don't just call up your buddy on the weekend and decide to throw up a new building. Even if it's as small as three or four condos, you're talking about a large amount of money and a long process of design and review before you're allowed to break ground.

Plus, if this is your intention, then no matter how you spin "It's cool, these are _totally_ condos, just for short term rental!" you actually are building a hotel, and zoning plus public opinion might get in your way.

OrdaGarb• 10 years ago

I enjoyed this interview by NPR:

Airbnb: Joe Gebbia

A chance encounter with a stranger gave Joe Gebbia an idea to help pay his rent. That idea turned into Airbnb — a company that now has more rooms than the biggest hotel chain in the world.

http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this

edblarney2• 10 years ago

It's really odd that hotel prices have not changed that much.

Maybe hotels are really for corporate/business stays - and that AirBnB has simply expanded the personal travel market.

Like how airlines make 50% of their profit off of business travellers ... Hotels are 1st class, AirBnB is 'coach' (purely from economic perspective, I understand people might value things differently).

Or it could be that the extra safety/quality/taxation requirements of hotels make them uncompetitive vis-a-vis AirBnB.

Toronto convicts first Airbnb owner over zoning violation

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