FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: “Chair girl” latest Airbnb-related event of endangering residents in this city?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AIRBNB’S UN-ADDRESSED COMMERCIAL OPERATOR PROBLEM KEEPS ENDANGERING TORONTO’S RESIDENTS
“Chair girl” latest Airbnb-related event of endangering residents in this city?
Toronto, ON – February 13, 2019 – Today, 19-year-old Marcella Zoia of Toronto has been charged with mischief endangering life. This charge follows an incident in one of Maple Leaf Square’s countless Airbnb units where Zoia was videotaped throwing a chair from a 45-storey high condo balcony.
The “chair girl” event seems to be the latest of a string of Airbnb-related incidences that pose threats to the health and safety of Toronto’s waterfront condo communities.
Recently, two chairs were reportedly thrown of the balcony of an Airbnbunit onto the Gardiner Expressway. The short-term rental in question was one of three entire homes advertised on Airbnb by host “Nicole.” Airbnb removed the involved listing on or around February 12, but two of “Nicole’s” other hotel suites are still up and running earlier today:
https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/24658282?locale=en&guests=1&adults=1
https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/28305017?locale=en&guests=1&adults=1
Fairbnb Canada’s research shows that aside from the well-documented impact that Airbnb has had on housing availability and affordability, multi-listing hosts of entire homes are at the heart of all most, if not all Airbnb-related problems.
“’Nicole’ is not your ordinary Airbnb host who occasionally rents out their own home to make ends meet,” says Fairbnb Canada’s spokesperson Thorben Wieditz. “’Nicole’ owns or has otherwise secured access to three entire condo units and uses these as hotel suites. In other words, “Nicole” is not desperately trying to make ends meet, an image that Airbnb likes sell to regulators as typical of its host community.”
“Zoia is not a world traveler, but a local Toronto resident. Many downtown Airbnb’s are rented by youth who like to party, but not in their parents’ homes,” says Teddy Ghalustians, a Fairbnb Canada supporter.
For Fairbnb Canada, this entire incident is yet another example of the commercialization of home-sharing. It is exemplary of thousands of waterfront condo units that are not being used as homes, but rather as hotel suites for short-term guests. Many of Toronto’s condo buildings are slowly transitioning into ghost hotel towers with declining permanent resident populations and an increasing numbers of transient hotel guests.
“In many cases, properties are being rented by one guest, but costs are shared among many other participating guests. That way, it becomes all but impossible to know who is actually staying in a particular place,” says Wieditz. “That’s why Airbnb peer-review system is unhelpful in these situations. To make things worse, security in ghost hotel towers is not what it would be in actual hotels, so permanent residents could find themselves unable to avoid crowds of weekend partiers.”
The “chair girl” case is just one more example of why Toronto’s City-approved regulations that limit Airbnb rentals to their principal resident make a lot of sense.
“Airbnb is fully in control here. If it wants, it could immediately eliminate multi-listing hosts of entire homes and return the company to its home-sharing roots.”
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For more information, contact: Thorben Wieditz at 647-409-8997 or fairbnb@fairbnb.ca
