Landlords are bending the rules to continue renting their homes illegally following Airbnb was forced to remove thousands of listings.
• Read also – Windowless Airbnb visited by Journal: Listing removed, but more are shown
• Read also: Nearly 80% of Airbnb listings in Quebec are illegal
“It is possible to register anything as a registration number and it is something that we see, there are false numbers. There is no verification that is done on the registration numbers that are listed in the advertisements. People even use the numbers of certain hotels, ”denounces Cédric Dussault, co-spokesperson for the Regroupement des Comités Logements et des Associations de Tenants du Québec (RCLALQ).
Yesterday, the American platform specializing in short-term accommodation rental began to remove thousands of illegal ads from its site. She had promised a few days earlier to comply with this obligation following a fire that killed seven people in a building ravaged by flames with several accommodations offered illegally on Airbnb.
Screenshot provided by RCLA
In a report released by the RCLALQ yesterday, more than 79% of listings in Quebec — or 23,245 of its 29,482 listings — were considered illegal, lacking a registration number from the Tourism Industry Corporation. of Quebec (CITQ). This is mandatory for renting accommodation for tourist purposes.
So since yesterday, thousands of owners have had their accounts suspended.
According to the RCLALQ, data published by the Inside Airbnb website today, 58% of the accommodation offered for rent in Montréal however, are not certified. AT Québec28% of rentals offered are not either, contrary to what the law requires.
fake numbers
However, it was possible to see if most of the illegal ads had been removed, some that had managed to remain on the site had irregularities.
In effect, The newspaper notably saw an advertisement for a dwelling in Laval with the registration number “123456”. It was possible to verify that no establishment is officially registered under this number.
Screenshot taken from Airbnb
On Facebook, an owner even asked if there were “universal codes like a ‘group’ that can be formed to register a single CITQ”.
Users have also noticed that some owners use the same numbers for several rentals at different addresses.
“When we look at certain ads, we see that several apartments in different buildings now display the same numbers,” noted David Balme, a user who monitors the platform.
However, according to the Ministry of Tourism, each establishment must have its own registration number.
The Airbnb platform also now encourages its rental users to modify the conditions of their rental by renting for the long term. Because when an owner rents for more than 31 days, he does not need to have a CITQ number.
“People can very well circumvent this rule by contacting the owner directly to rent for only a few days rather than a month,” says Mr. Dussault.
Other platforms
And to circumvent the obligations, some owners quickly turned to other platforms that were not targeted by the Ministry of Tourism.
“When I looked, I was able to see that one of the apartments I had rented in Old Montreal was no longer available on Airbnb, but on the other hand, it was on Marketplace and VRBO,” says Mr. Balme.
For the RCLALQ co-spokesperson, this technique is obviously not surprising.
“Of course there are ways to circumvent regulations and the law with Marketplace in particular and this should be more verified, but the main problem is still platforms like Airbnb and VRBO which allow commercial users to automate their operations and the circumvention of laws and regulations,” he argues.
At the time of writing these lines, neither the Ministry of Tourism nor Airbnb had answered the questions of the Journal.
