Montreal creates task force to crack down on illegal Airbnbs, short-term rentals

The city of Montreal has created a task force to help crack down on illegal Airbnbs and other types of short-term rental units.

The task force is a part of a pilot project that began on Monday, and will be focused on three boroughs that make up the bulk of the city's Airbnb listings: Ville-Marie, which includes the downtown core, the Plateau-Mont-Royal, and the Sud-Ouest, which includes Griffintown.

There are several reasons a short-term rental unit can be deemed illegal. Many of them are not registered with the Quebec government, others are located in a zone where they're prohibited by municipal bylaws, and in other cases, they're being operated by a host who does not use the unit as a primary residence.

The city's team will be made up of a co-ordinator and three inspectors who will be able to visit homes without prior notice and issue fines between $1,000 and $4,000.

The inspectors could also flag properties to Revenu Québec, which has the power to issue even heftier fines. 

"We are facing a housing crisis," said Luc Rabouin, the borough mayor for the Plateau-Mont-Royal. "We want to tackle them and be sure that all housing units are at the service of Montrealers who are looking for housing."

A deadly fire that killed seven people in Old Montreal earlier this year put a spotlight on the abundance of illegal short-term rentals. Six of the victims were staying in illegal Airbnbs in the building.

Following the fire, Airbnb said it would pull listings in Quebec that didn't have a permit from the provincial government. In June, Quebec passed a law that will force Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms to crack down on unauthorized listings or face hefty fines. It will come into force in September.

However, a recently analysis by Radio-Canada found that the number of illegal Quebec listings on Airbnb is on the rise, and hosts have been using increasingly creative ways to list their units.

Snapping photos, knocking on doors

On Thursday, CBC News caught up with a team of inspectors in the downtown area.

They were visiting different properties, trying to compare housing units to photos listed online.

"We're trying to see if the curtains matched, if the tree we saw through the windows in the pictures matched," said Nicolas Castillo-Caron, an inspector with the city.

"Ultimately, the goal would be to go inside to take the pictures in order to compare."

So far, he has mostly spent time gathering information through photos, he said, but teams would reach out to either the owners or the hosts to gain access inside if they felt it was necessary.

"We did get inside some of the buildings, one basically through pure luck," he said, adding that they bumped into someone who was leaving a unit and admitted to being a short-term tenant.

"Nothing indicated to us that they were doing it correctly, so this is like something we would [follow up on]."