'Sustainable' short-term rental co-op launches in Toronto in North American first
Downtown Toronto will be the first testing ground in North America for a short-term rental co-operative that hopes to put ‘sharing’ back in the sharing economy.
Fairbnb Co-op — launched by Toronto-based organizers who will expand a European site — says it will share revenue with community projects, limit tourism to rentals that don’t displace locals and try to beat big platforms like Airbnb at their own game.
“We will put booking fees and money back into the community where they operate,” Thorben Wieditz of Fairbnb Canada told CTV News Toronto on Thursday.
Fairbnb Co-op site
The site launched on Thursday in Kensington Market — a neighbourhood locals say has been hard hit by the displacement that short-term rental platforms can encourage, with some landlords preferring tourists to residents.
“Pre-pandemic, it was dramatic. There was a point at which I didn’t have any neighbours any more,” Dominique Russell, the co-chair of the Kensington Market Community Land Trust, said.
“I would easily say we’ve been very viscerally ground zero for many of these issues,” Serena Purdy, the chair of Friends of Kensington Market, said.
Both hope the launch of Fairbnb Co-op in Toronto will be an opportunity for travelling customers to enjoy the benefits of short-term rental accommodation, but know their dollars are going in part to support the land trust and the permanent affordable housing it supports in a building the trust recently acquired on Kensington Avenue.
“People who live there will be allowed to stay there and it will be affordable housing in perpetuity,” Russell said.
Wieditz said the site will restrict rentals to only those in primary residences, using spare rooms or while the residents are on holiday.
That’s roughly equivalent to the City of Toronto’s rules — though the city has, in some cases, struggled to enforce those rules.
“We know once we start an ethical alternative customers will move over to the co-operative and we will be playing by the city’s rules, which ironically we helped to set up,” Wieditz said.
Fairbnb Co-op’s site already shows listings for many European cities. Organizers in Toronto hope to get the first listings up in March 2022 — in time for what they hope will be a tourism renaissance.
Their plan is to scale up and do the same across Canada.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
MPP Sarah Jama asked to leave Ontario legislature for wearing keffiyeh
MPP Sarah Jama was asked to leave the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by House Speaker Ted Arnott on Thursday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment which has been banned at Queen’s Park.
Mountain guide dies after falling into a crevasse in Banff National Park
A man who fell into a crevasse while leading a backcountry ski group deep in the Canadian Rockies has died.
2 teens charged in Halifax homicide: police
Two teenagers have been charged with second-degree murder in connection to an alleged homicide near the Halifax Shopping Centre earlier this week.
'Deep ignorance': Calls for Manitoba trustee to resign sparked after comments about Indigenous people and reconciliation
A rural Manitoba school trustee is facing calls to resign over comments he made about Indigenous people and residential schools earlier this week.
ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in U.S. if legal options fail, Reuters sources say
TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer to shut down its loss-making app rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts all legal options to fight legislation to ban the platform from app stores in the U.S., four sources said.
12-year-old hippo in Japan raised as a male discovered to be a female
When Gen-chan arrived at a zoo in Japan in 2017, no one questioned whether the then-five-year-old hippopotamus was a boy. Seven years later, zoo staff made a surprising discovery: Gen-chan, now 12, was female.
Here's why Harvey Weinstein's New York rape conviction was tossed and what happens next
Here's what you need to know about why movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's rape conviction was thrown out and what happens next.
Improve balance and build core strength with this exercise
When it comes to cardiovascular fitness, you may tend to focus on activities that move you forward, such as walking, running and cycling.
Legendary hockey broadcaster Bob Cole dies at 90: CBC
Bob Cole, a welcome voice for Canadian hockey fans for a half-century, has died at the age of 90. Cole died Wednesday night in St. John's, N.L., surrounded by his family, his daughter, Megan Cole, told the CBC.