Housing group wants Airbnb completely banned in Quebec

A Montreal tenants’ rights association is asking for an outright ban on Airbnb in Quebec.

The Coalition of Housing Committees and Tenants Associations of Quebec says Airbnb is having a major impact on the province’s housing shortage.

The group issued a report last week suggesting 79 per cent of the roughly 30,000 Airbnb units available for rent in Quebec in February were not certified by the province.

Airbnb has said the data in the report is inaccurate.

“The most reasonable thing would be to ban completely these types of platforms because of the enormous impact that they have on health and shortage,” said Cedric Dussault, a co-spokesperson for the tenants group. “That being said, there are other things that can be done in order to prevent those impacts to be so severe.

“For example, it’s way too easy in Quebec to evict tenants in order to convert a long-term rental dwelling into short-term rental.”

Housing advocates have stepped up their criticism of the short-term rental platform after seven people were killed in a fire in Old Montreal in mid-March – six were staying in unlicensed short-term rentals.

The father of one of the victims filed a request Friday for a $22 million class-action lawsuit against the owner of the building and Airbnb.

A community organizer with the Comité d’action des citoyennes et citoyens de Verdun (CACV) says governments need to take strong measures given it’s a “crisis” – but she says they rarely do.

“Airbnb overtly suggested to people renting units on their website that if (their listing) was taken down that they should change their listings to long term,” said Lyndsay O’Donnell. “And that’s extremely problematic because in Verdun we already have so much housing taken off the market for Airbnb listings. This makes it so much worse because when you’re putting up rentals for 31 days and over, well, there goes renters’ rights.”

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JJ Fueser, a spokesperson for Fairbnb, agrees that’s a loophole that some building owners are exploiting.

“This becomes a way to have long-term tenants without having to abide by long-term tenancy laws,” said Fueser. “And it’s one thing to have a law protecting tenants on paper and another thing to make sure it’s respected in real life. So that’s a real concern.”

Another problem exacerbating the housing situation, according to Dussault, is that oftentimes people are not renting out their homes, but rather units purchased specifically for Airbnb.

“It is probably over 90 per cent of the users on the platform that are not people who are renting their main residence,” he said. “It’s probably 90 per cent that are doing commercial activities with Airbnb. So that’s the problem.”

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RELATED:

• Calls for crackdown on illegal Airbnb rentals after deadly fire in Old Montreal
• Québec solidaire wants to make it illegal to evict a tenant in favour of an Airbnb
• Housing crisis increasing homelessness in Montreal

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In Verdun, for instance, a bylaw forbids Airbnbs but a quick search for stays in the area showed two dozen listings on Saturday afternoon.

O’Donnell says the consequences go well beyond what people might expect at first glance.

“We see people die because of the housing crisis, like the amount of suicide just in Verdun alone that we’ve seen because of the housing crisis, because of people losing their long-term homes,” said O’Donnell. “The consequences of the housing crisis… people really do lose their life. You know, it’s more than just having to move.”

Airbnb made a commitment to remove illegal listings in Quebec. As of Saturday it was still hosting several short-term rentals that advocates suspected were likely not legally registered with the Corporation de l’industrie touristique du Québec (CITQ).

WATCH: Airbnb to remove unauthorized listings in Quebec after fatal fire

The group Inside Airbnb believes several hosts are finding a way to get around restrictions

“‘Inside Airbnb’ has found cases where 55 listings use, for example, the same registration number,” said Fueser. “So probably when all of those things are factored out, we’re still only looking at a 20 per cent compliance rate even today. So there’s definitely more work to be done.”

According to Inside Airbnb, 57.7 per cent of Airbnbs in Montreal are unlicensed, 40 per cent are short-term rentals and 71.3 per cent of hosts have multiple listings.

Airbnb told CityNews in a statement that scraped data websites like Inside Airbnb are inaccurate because they do not have access to Airbnb data.

Airbnb also specified the province issues the CITQ number directly to hosts, not Airbnb.

“We have offered the city portal to the province as a tool to help support the province’s enforcement efforts.”