Despite the drop in tourism in the context of the pandemic, dozens of decisions concerning repossessions in connection with short-term rentals on the Airbnb platform have been rendered in the past year by the Administrative Housing Tribunal (TAL). Sign of a phenomenon that persists and affects both tenants and owners.
The duty reviewed the 45 decisions of the TAL which include the terms “recovery” and “Airbnb” having been posted on the site of the Société québécoise d’information juridique between the end of March 2021 and the end of March 2022. Their number is elsewhere continued to increase in recent years, despite the health crisis. The TAL associates this situation, among other things, with its “increased awareness activities” among the population.
“The better citizens are informed of their rights, the more they are able to exercise them,” said Tribunal spokesperson Denis Miron by email. Housing lawyer Manuel Johnson notes, however, that these decisions represent only “the tip of the iceberg”, since many housing repossessions never make it to court.
The judgments we have consulted relate in particular to tenants who have been evicted from their accommodation so that it can be found on Airbnb, while others have been punished by the TAL for having sublet their apartment without authorization on this short-term rental platform.
Of the lot, there is Christian. The Montrealer, who asked the To have to to withhold his last name to protect his privacy, obtained more than $25,000 from the Court last February after exposing a fraudulent eviction.
The tenant had first agreed in August 2019 to leave his apartment on rue Saint-Jacques, in Old Montreal, at the request of the owner who claimed to want to move there. “He was quick to realize, however, that once the accommodation was vacated, it was renovated, as he expected, then re-rented for short stays on the Airbnb tourist accommodation platform”, mentions the ten-page decision.
The tenant thus succeeded in convincing the Court that he was the victim of an eviction obtained in bad faith, which allowed him to obtain generous financial compensation. However, this sum remains negligible in comparison to the increase in the rental profits of the owner, who now offers this accommodation to passing tourists at a daily rate of several hundred dollars, notes the tenant’s lawyer, Daniel Crespo-Villarreal.
The amounts granted in this case therefore do not fulfill “their deterrent function”, evokes the lawyer, who believes that the TAL should “reimburse all the profits that have been made” by the owner thanks to this eviction. Another possible avenue would be to award a percentage of the value of the property to the evicted tenant, he adds. “It seems to me an objective criterion. »
The tenant, for his part, now pays $1,500 more per month for a unit slightly larger than his previous apartment, whose monthly rent was $1,750. “I found a similar apartment, but all the same much more expensive,” says Christian, who retains “a bitter taste” from this legal battle.
Deterrence
In a similar decision rendered on October 25, a Montreal tenant was awarded $13,600 in compensation after being evicted in 2019 under a false pretense. The owner then said he wanted to recover this accommodation to house his mother and father. However, he rather “took advantage of the departure of the tenant” by renting this apartment on the Airbnb platform, where it was still displayed at the time this decision was made.
In recent years, the Quebec government has reviewed the framework for tourist accommodation. You must now obtain a registration number in order to be able to rent your main residence for short stays on platforms such as Airbnb. A certificate from the Corporation de l’industrie touristique du Québec is also required in the case of a secondary residence. In Montreal, several boroughs have also limited the areas where Airbnb-type housing is permitted.
However, the inspectors deployed in the field are few in number, estimates Mand Johnson. “Even with the new rules they have put in place to oversee Airbnb, I think they still don’t have enough staff to check that,” notes the lawyer, who compares this situation to the lack of agents. to ensure the safety of housing in the metropolis.
Joined by The duty, the Ministry of Tourism pointed out that the new Law on Tourist Accommodation, whose official entry into force is expected “in the coming months”, provides for “higher fines than those currently in force as well as increased powers to municipalities with respect to applications for the suspension and cancellation of the registration of a tourist accommodation establishment”. Cities already have sufficient powers to “limit” or even “prohibit” this type of short-term accommodation on their territory, notes the ministry.
Tenants at fault
Several of the judgments rendered in the one-year period analyzed by The duty on the other hand, concerned tenants who had sublet their accommodation on Airbnb without having obtained the authorization of their landlord, which is illegal. Several of them were thus evicted following proceedings initiated before the TAL by the owners.
“When tenants do that, it causes great inconvenience for the owners”, who risk ending up with unsanitary housing and noise pollution, recalls the director general of the Corporation of real estate owners of Quebec, Benoit Ste-Marie. “It should be taken much more seriously,” insists Mr. Ste-Marie.
“Tenants who sublet accommodation without holding a classification certificate are carrying out illegal tourist accommodation, and efforts to counter the problem are supported”, assures the Ministry of Tourism, which recalls that offenders expose themselves to fines of up to $25,000 for an individual and $50,000 for a business.
With Isabelle Porter