Stories following from Old Montreal fire
Besides shots being fired, CBC finds that tenants in the same building as Old Montreal Airbnbs face bad living conditions and constantly rising rents.
In France, La Presse interviewed the husband of the deceased Léonor Geraudie and father of their daughter Vérane.
Investigators suspect extortion in the case of the fire last week. They may be right, but this theory makes Emile B*namor a victim, and he doesn’t strike me as suitable casting for a victim.
Ephraim 09:17 on 2024-10-09 Permalink
I’m going to put myself on repeat. We need a registry of apartments and buildings. A list of who owns what building, the individual apartments, and a copy of the lease, to see the usage. And the best way to do this is to change the city tax system to pre-supposed that a building is commercial unless a copy of registered leases are on file, to get the residential rate. You aren’t renting it out, but live there, a copy of your tax form (with amounts and SIN blacked out) to show you live there.
And then, from then on, the TAL can see the leases, the jumps in price, the changes. And the city gets to collect higher taxes if you aren’t renting residentially. (Since commercial rates are 5X residential rates). And the city can ask questions, like why is it not renting, who’s using it and why, from the landlord.
Kate 09:19 on 2024-10-09 Permalink
We still have far too much reverence for ownership of property for anything like that to be proposed.
thomas 13:48 on 2024-10-09 Permalink
Why are no politicians advocating a straight out ban of Airbnb in Montreal?
MarcG 14:11 on 2024-10-09 Permalink
It seems like the problem isn’t with regulations but with communication and enforcement. For example, in Verdun, short-term rentals are only allowed if it’s your principal residence (e.g. you rent your place when you go on vacation). Does anyone know this? If you do run an Airbnb out of an apartment building that you own, are you penalized?
Meezly 14:12 on 2024-10-09 Permalink
@Ephraim, I think the QC govt has access to all that info, but the city does not have the means to access that data in order to enforce regulations at the ground level. There’s still a disconnect between province and city that sketchy Airbnb proprietors are able to exploit. I believe the QC govt is reluctant to relinquish more power to the city, yet they’re too busy pushing divisive laws than really tackling this issue.
bob 15:36 on 2024-10-09 Permalink
Who owns what property in Montreal is available online, but you can only search one at a time by address.
https://servicesenligne2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/sel/evalweb/index
Ephraim 17:09 on 2024-10-09 Permalink
Meezly – They have a registry of who owns the buildings because that has to be registered. But they don’t have full information on who’s living in that apartment unless they file taxes. And neither does the city. So by changing the property tax to require registration of main domicile and secondary home, we could possibly increase city taxes. A fully occupied home should be residential. But if you are using it as pied-du-terre, should it be 100% residential? When you are taking the space of two families? And if you have no one living there, is it empty or is it being rented as AirBnB illegally and if it is, should you be paying commercial tax on it, rather than residential.
So if we TIE residential tax on 100% residential use, then landlords who decide to not registered their tenants and their leases can just pay commercial taxes. Hence, you have incentivized them to make the leases on the record by lowering their taxes 😀
Joey 17:27 on 2024-10-09 Permalink
Airbnb bans and tenant registries are good ideas, but they won’t do much if OC and gangs are willing to burn down residential buildings as part of their turf wars. The La Presse story about the Eclipse squad (read with a grain of salt) was eye-opening about how the gang scene is increasingly out of control, bound by no sense of a code, and driven by younger and younger people.
Ian 18:08 on 2024-10-09 Permalink
Defintiely read that with a grain of salt, it’s manufacturing consent for inflated police budgets.
The protection racket is nothing new, arson is nothing new, and it’s always been the smaller gangs made up of younger kids looking to establish themselves with the bigger outfits doing the dirty work.