My Neighbourhood — CityPlace: The Ticking Bomb of AirBnB

Transcript:

Hey welcome to my neighborhood! This is CityPlace. It is bordered by front street to the north , Bathurst street to the west, Lakeshore Boulevard to the south, and Bluejays Way and Rogers center to the east.

Cityplace is the largest master-planned community in downtown Toronto with 30 residential towers, an 8 acre park, library, schools, and a community centre. It is in proximity to the Fort York National Historic Site, Waterfront, and Billy Bishop Airport.

It is a great community as all the basic living amenities are within walking distance, such as banks, grocery stores, restaurants, cafes, and clinics. I have everything I need at my doorstep.

However, among the dense high-rise condos are where the hidden dangers lie. Cityplace used to be notorious for Airbnb and short-term rentals. I often noticed people dragging suitcases coming in and out, but that didn’t bother me much. Yet, I had no idea it was a ticking time bomb until the night of Jan 31st, 2020.

*News report*

“Let’s stop with these ghost hotels and these party suites … It’s not appropriate, it’s not safe and far too often it’s resulting in tragedies like this,” Ward 10 Councillor Joe Cressy (Spadina-Fort York) told reporters on the next day of the shooting

In cities including Toronto, regulators such as Mr. Cressy have tried to put in place bylaws around the use of Airbnb.

Toronto’s city council voted more than two years ago to only allow short-term rentals in a principal residence. It’s a bylaw that would have banned the city’s estimated 6,500 “ghost hotels” (properties being used primarily as short-term rentals).

But those efforts came to a halt after a series of appeals, first at Ontario’s Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT) by a loose coalition of short-term rental landlords.

However, soon after the shooting, the building’s condo board decided to put in place its own ban on short-term rentals that are less than three months. The condo board was able to do that because housing is a provincial jurisdiction, and they get power from Ontario’s Condominium Act 1998.

Up till today, many buildings in CityPlace still do not permit Airbnb and short-term rentals.

However, landlords have started putting lock boxes some distance away from the building in order to hide them from the condo supervisors. Residents reported seeing lock boxes attached to trees, bike racks and even streetlights.

Who should be responsible for the next Airbnb incidence, and do we need more restrictions? The problem remains unsolved.