Montreal City Weblog

Kate 21:48 on 2019-02-07 Permalink Reply  

• david100 02:56 on 2019-02-08 Permalink

  Airbnb should be straight up banned outside of Ville Marie and buildings under 10 years old. There’s absolutely no public policy defense to inviting speculators to take rental units in established neighborhoods off the rental market, thereby raising the cost of housing for everyone, so that they can let them on a (very) short term basis to tourists, effectively acting as illegal hotel rooms for profits to be captured by (1) the speculator; (2) whatever lender he has; and (3) Airbnb in San Francisco.

  There is, however, a good reason to move investment dollars into new construction that investors will fund with Airbnb (and others) in mind, but that will end up being here for the next 50-100 years, ergo eventually converted to rental stock. So, we should allow this sort of short term rental down in Ville Marie where it will mean more construction of towers that will eventually become rental units. And we should cap it at 10 years so that (1) investors can know the value of their investment; (2) there’s a constant flow of capital into new units; (3) we force units into the regular rental market after 10 years; and (4) along the way we keep construction and redevelop steaming along.

  The time to act on this is now. In Vancouver, so many people are so far gone with real estate investments, that it’s difficult to act without impoverishing people, literally, not figuratively. You want to shift people into productive investments instead of incentivizing parking money in a property and relying on scarcity and immigration to fund the retirement. In central Montreal, so many of the owners don’t even live in the city, and they’re not numerous enough that a city administration could lose an election by crossing them. But if you let it continue, it’ll get to be a problem like in Vancouver, where everyone is so invested in the real estate industry that it becomes politically difficult to wind it down. And that’s at the expense of Quebec more broadly, where investment in productive enterprises (as opposed to real estate) has always been higher than in Canada.

• Ephraim 08:44 on 2019-02-08 Permalink

  @david100 Faster solution. Revenu Quebec can require AirBnB to issue Releve for the income. At that point, they will receive forms and have to actually pay 100% of the taxes. And since RQ is also the licencing bureau and the fines start at $2500 per day, getting a list of who has income will allow them to also send out the fines for not being registered. My guess is that a few days after hearing that RQ is getting their name, their address, their SIN number and all the income, you will see most of this dry up. (And then they can go for the missing GST, QST and property tax.) It’s all underground tax evasion.

• John B 12:54 on 2019-02-08 Permalink

  I don’t think we should restrict geographically. When family visits they often stay in an AirBnB, because: I live in a crowded apartment with animals some people are allergic to, and there are no hotels in Verdun. I used to live in NDG, where there are also no hotels.

  AirBnB gives me the freedom live in a smaller apartment with no guest room, and still have people be close by when they visit. That’s great!

  If there is so much demand for AirBnBs that they’re able to suck up rental space, (and apparently they are), then maybe we should find ways to make it easier for Hotels to compete. Part of that is requiring AirBnBs to charge & report taxes, and be properly insured, as Ephraim suggests. Part of that is probably to let hotels exist in neighbourhoods where people live.

• Bill Binns 19:46 on 2019-02-08 Permalink

  I think a better solution than banning is to simply limit each individual address to X days of short term rental per year. Each rental requires a permit that costs something (but is quick and easy to get online) and renting without a permit has a very steep fine. This allows AirBnB to be what it was supposed to be (short term apartment swapping) without neighborhoods being turned into hotel districts. Landlords should be able to ban tenants from subbing their apartments out as well.

• Tee Owe 12:56 on 2019-02-09 Permalink

  With John B and Bill on this one, as well as TC on another thread – we should not throw out useful innovations just because at first use they are abused – work with them, take advantage, get it right.