8 mo. ago • 95%

Airbnb’s Devastating Effect on Canadian Housing | The Walrus

thewalrus.ca Airbnb’s Devastating Effect on Canadian Housing | The Walrus

How Montreal priced out long-term renters as thousands of homes became vacation suites

10 comments

Could it be that the mounting evidence is demonstrating that the commodification of housing and its increasing use as an investment vehicle is driving the housing crisis?

Nah, must be those damn immigants and red tape thats not letting us build on protected environments!

33
- By protected environments, do you mean zoning that only allows single family homes? Because that is part of the problem.
  
  Edit: and two staircase rules, and parking minimums, and floor area ratios, and other "red tape"
  
  13
  
  <blank stare> Higher density homes? No, no, no, we want to build our single family mini-mansions on wetlands and nature conserves. Get out of here with your logic and sensibility.
  
  8
  
  This is pretty specific to Toronto though. Isn't it?
  
  2
- Why not both?
  
  There is a multitude of factors fueling the crisis, but for whatever reason, people arguing for or against cannot fanthom that there is more than one reason.
  
  The solution has multiple facets :
  
  stop corporate ownership of single family home (that includes condos, plexes with owner occupant).
  
  stop short term rental without proper permits (AirBnB and such). Make it hard to get the permit.
  
  Change zoning laws
  
  Build more housing
  
  Reduces immigration until we sort out this mess.
  
  2
Here's a thought, ban these pirate gig-jobs that exploit local economies.

14
Situation is horrible in Montréal and elsewhere in the province. There is something like 13'000 airbnb in Montreal, most of them illegal, and a lot of people are struggling to find a place to rent, price double/triple for some of them. When you had an appt at $685, are evicted, and the equiv appt is now for rent at $1600, what are you going to do?

14
- Yeah. And you have shit like this happening in historically poor working class neighborhoods.
  
  Thankfully people in Hochelaga are pretty vocal about this kind of shit.
  
  3
- I sure hope this doesn't happen but if things get bad enough? We could see people do something like burn Air BNB's to the ground. If enough of them go up in smoke, insurance companies will start putting in anti-short term rental conditions in their policies and that will largely be the end of it. Doesn't really take much to not insure a property used for commercial use, with a residential insurance plan.
  
  The end result of that would be making it non-profitable to run an air bnb.
  
  And if you need a lesson: Go look at the brutality that happened between Union Busters, and Unions back in the day that lead to actual labour laws. Those people weren't messing around - they got armed, and they dished out the pain to those they suspected were trying to do the same to the point that it basically brought local economies to a complete halt. The reality is? Properly applied violence tends to get results when nothing else is working.
  
  Like I said: I hope this doesn't happen, but things are getting pretty bad and heading to worse.
  
  2

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