City hasn’t got leverage vs Airbnb
The city hasn’t got enough tools to fight the proliferation of Airbnb and the mayor is hoping Quebec will help her out with some way of determining whether any given location is someone’s home address, a fundamental distinction that needs to be made clear.
Ephraim 22:42 on 2024-02-29 Permalink
All you need to do is find a few and hit them with the fine. I’d show up, based on the calendar of when the place isn’t for rent… at 7AM and leave an envelope on the door asking the occupant to call. Then you ask them to send a copy of their driver’s licence, their household insurance, their hydro bill, their phone bill, etc to prove that they live there. Make them really sweat it. Then after that maybe ask to see a travel schedule, tickets, hotel bills or even their AirBnB account to see where they travelled…. or face the fines. The fines are REALLY high… high enough to make you wish to show them anything to get them to go away.
mare 01:50 on 2024-03-01 Permalink
@Ephraim what are you talking about? You can’t fine users; there’s no way for them to know that the Airbnb they stay in is legal or not. Most of them don’t even know what the laws are.
The distinction is if the property is the *owner*’s primary residence. The tourism board apparently doesn’t check that when they issue the permit. And the city has no access to the information that was submitted. There are people on Airbnb with more than one, and sometimes even dozens of apartments. They can’t be all their primary residence, can they?
walkerp 09:18 on 2024-03-01 Permalink
Can’t you just go on to AirBnB, check all the places that are available in the disallowed zone and then cross-check them against the property tax database? I bet we could crowdsource it.
Ephraim 11:21 on 2024-03-01 Permalink
@mare – The owner. The person listed on the licence as living there. You are trying to see if the person licenced really lives there. 7AM is a great time on a Sunday to knock on the door to do a verification to see if they really live there. (The same way that CSIS shows up for a visit… 7AM in the morning.
There is a special licence for “Principal Residence Establishments”. One of the main conditions is that you regularly live there. And the fines start from $2500. But you need to actually live there. So you should have bills in your name that come to that address, like your bank credit card bill, your insurance, etc. You should also have clothing there… it’s your residence that you are renting out. These are the licences that are being abused.
When the government had the CITQ do inspections, part of the classifications had a requirement that someone lived there. (Still do, but they don’t do the inspections anymore) And they actually verified that you had a bedroom and checked closets, drawers and even the fridge to make sure you really did live there. The same can be done for these residences.
jeather 12:06 on 2024-03-01 Permalink
So who do you complain to about an illegal Airbnb? As far as I can tell there’s no way to verity the CITQ number on the website.
MarcG 12:15 on 2024-03-01 Permalink
Punch the number into the search on this site: https://www.bonjourquebec.com/fr-ca. When the information of the listing doesn’t match that of the AirBNB listing, write to info@citq.qc.ca telling them as much and then have them not respond to your email. True story.
Ephraim 20:39 on 2024-03-01 Permalink
Officially, all responsibility is supposed to lie in Revenu Quebec to inspect and verify. As I have said before, there is NO transparency. They should be required to publish the number of complaints received, the number of complaints verified, the number of complaints dismissed and the number of complaints that received action and what action. You don’t have to disclose WHO, that might violate privacy. But that you are doing your job as the authority… that you should be required to report.
Ian 21:02 on 2024-03-01 Permalink
To be fair using metal epoxy on the lockboxes is pretty effective too…