A plea to ban Airbnb
Taylor C. Noakes sets out an impassioned plea to ban Airbnb in Montreal.
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shawn 09:53 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
It’s a powerful piece but I kept waiting for him to offer examples of other major cities that have completely banned them.
shawn 10:07 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
BTW I live directly behind a legal multi-storey Airbnb, on Saint-Laurent above Saint-Joseph. It was a former bathhouse and so a commercial property that could be modified, as I understand. So it would make our lives here a bit easier if they all were banned! Just not sure it’s practical or even necessary. I’d personally settle for actual enforcement of current rules…
Ephraim 10:11 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
One of the reasons that I so much prefer the B&B to the AirBnB… a B&B must be residential, someone must live on the premises and therefore has an interest in keeping down the noise, taking care of garbage, keep the street clean, etc. The AirBnB (whole apartment rental) is the absentee owner. They aren’t there and they don’t care and dump most of the responsibilities on the neighbours because the temporary tenants don’t know how to deal with the garbage, the recycling, the noise, etc.
CE 10:51 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
To expand on Ephraim’s comment, the lack of service or presence of any actual human beings taking care of the space is a turn off for me. A big example, for me, of how this affects travel is the lack of place to leave your bags after you check out but still want to do a few things. I work as a tour guide in the city and I see a lot of people dragging big heavy bags around with them because their checkout was at 11 but their plane or train doesn’t leave until 6 that night.
shawn 11:18 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
Yes, FWIW at the Airbnb at 5018 St Laurent, they do have people to come in to clean and take out the garbage/recycling, but they don’t respect the collection schedule for Mile End and it has led to conflicts. Again, something that might not happen if it was a hotel or inn where there was someone there permanently, as you say.
DeWolf 11:24 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
As Taylor notes, 93% of Airbnbs in Montreal are illegal. Enforce the existing laws and you’ll solve the problem.
“Ban Airbnb” is a nice slogan but it’s also an empty one, because logistically, how do you ban an internet platform from operating in a city? The issue isn’t that Airbnb exists, it’s that it has allowed its users to evade the law, and the city/province have been negligent in enforcing that law.
Kate 11:24 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
Some train stations have lockers, but Central Station doesn’t, for historical reasons.
CE 16:07 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
Somehow, I had never heard about that bombing!
If you travel VIA, they’ll hold your bags for you for 6$ (which they usually don’t charge). But this means that you’d have to travel to the train station to store your bags and then go from there, which may or may not be convenient. If you’re flying, you’re out of luck.
I wish hotels would start offering affordable small rooms with multiple bedrooms and a little living room which is one of the appeals of Airbnb. I travelled to Quebec City with my mother and brother who are both light sleepers and my brother booked an Airbnb with bedrooms because getting two adjoining rooms in any hotel was going to cost a fortune.
Ephraim 16:23 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
@CE – The two bedroom suite doesn’t get as booked as it should 😉 Also, with a B&B, the nice host provides you with breakfast, so you get to talk to them and ask questions before you start your day. DIY is nice, but the right host can help you condense your stay or help you find things you didn’t even know exist, like the Tetris fun of going to Dante Hardware or the best Dan Dan Mian in town 🙂
Poutine Pundit 19:51 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
@Ephraim – Now I’m curious. Where’s the best Dan Dan Mian in town?
Kate 20:22 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
CE, to this day I don’t entirely believe that the elderly nutter was guilty. He didn’t sound anything like organized enough to have built and placed a bomb. But nobody could suggest anyone else with a motive, so he went down for it.
Blork 21:02 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
To each their own on the question of B&B vs. hotel vs. renting an apartment. I’ve done all, and have had good and bad experiences with B&Bs and hotels. I’ve only done apartment rentals maybe half a dozen times, and they were all good.
Neither my spouse nor I are what you’d call “morning people” (it gets worse as we get older) and sometimes — most times — the idea of getting up and enduring the Hell of other people before 10:00AM is enough to make me want to stay home. B&B owners usually pack up the breakfast well before then. They also (sometimes) don’t like it if you come and go too much or if you don’t wander back until 2:00AM or so.
B&B owners also generally don’t like it when you sit out in the garden drinking your own beer or whiskey at 5:00PM while you decide what to do about dinner. They also don’t like it when you yell at other people to STFU because you’re trying to read. (Obviously I’m being silly by now; but sometimes the misanthropy hits hard and you just need your own space, even if it’s only yours for a weekend.)
That’s just me of course. The B&B arrangement works very well for many people and that’s just fine. It even worked for me sometimes, when I was younger and hadn’t been exposed to Facebook and newspaper comment threads.
Ephraim 22:25 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
@Blork – Depends on the owner, but the point here was that apartment rentals are problematic because there is no one there. If so easy to abuse… which is how it’s become party central, leave the trash at any time, brothel, porn move studio, etc etc etc. It actually gets worse, because they have been used for drug mules, scams, etc. It’s the nature of it being complete absentee owners. It’s the absentee ownership and the fact that it’s a complete tax dodge that is the problem. Not to mention taking valuable residential real estate for commercial purposes.
@Poutine Pundit, if you ask me, Lan Zhou on St Lawrence has the best Dan Dan (ask them which noodle is usually suggested, I think it’s Xi, I usually ask for SanXi or ErXi to have a more substantial noodle.) Also the best Cantonese BBQ in town is Dobe and Andy, but if you want to take out, you better order early because they will run out. (Order extra, it’s just as great warmed up).
Blork 23:11 on 2023-03-27 Permalink
Oh, I know all about that stuff Ephraim. It does not help my growing misanthropy. It doesn’t have to be like that of course, but greed, lack of regulation, lack of certification, and human stupidity and thoughtlessness have all come together to turn it into that.
Ephraim 10:22 on 2023-03-28 Permalink
Hey, how else are they going to find a cheap apartment to film their porn in. Mom and Dad go away for the weekend, kids puts the place for rent and goes to stay with his friend for the weekend and voila… Monique does Montreal. 🙂
Blork 12:17 on 2023-03-28 Permalink
All this talk has reminded me about my first experiences with short-term apartment rentals, way back before Airbnb and almost before the internet. 1995: train rolls into Prague at 9:00PM. My (then) girlfriend and I have no reservations for accommodations because the folklore is you don’t have to look, they’ll find you. (Central Europe was still finding its way out of Communism so it was very “Wild West”). Sure enough, we step off the train and are immediately approached by a number of people saying “you need apartment?”
So we hear a few of them out and pick one. He drives us to one of those beautiful historic buildings a few hundred metres from the Charles Bridge on the Mala Strana side. Top floor walkup. Probably three or four bedrooms. $50 US (cash) per night, paid in advance. No receipts, no business cards. Just a guy’s name and phone number pencilled onto a piece of paper.
It was unclear if we had exclusive rights to the place during our stay or if he would show up with other people for the empty bedrooms. We treated it as exclusive until otherwise advised. We stayed five nights and nobody else ever showed up.
Similarly, in Budapest all you had to do was walk around with a backpack and cars would pull over offering you an apartment. Scored a nice little place in the Buda castle district that way (definitely exclusive in that case, but also US cash down, paid in advance, no receipts). He said it was his sister’s apartment and she was away studying in Italy. OK, sure.
That was long ago, in a time of youthful innocence (he says sarcastically). Long before Facebook and newspaper comment threads showed us the depths of human stupidity and depravity. It just seemed adventurous. What could possibly go wrong?