Anyone in Ottawa looking to host a unit on Airbnb or a similar short-term rental platform will now need a permit from the city and must follow a stricter set of guidelines after council approved a new bylaw regulating the industry in the nation’s capital on Wednesday.

Ottawa city councillors hoping to bring an end to the noise, garbage and even violence that short-term vacation rentals sometimes attract unanimously approved strict new rules Thursday.

A downtown Toronto condo owner says despite reporting banned short-term rentals operating in her building for months, the bookings continue — and include self-isolating international travellers who she alleges sometimes flout Canada’s mandatory quarantine order.

On December 12, shortly before the city officially launched its new short-term rental licencing rules, Airbnb had 18,553 listings in Toronto. By mid-January, new restrictions in place, that number still stood at 16,000.

The City of Toronto introduced new regulations at the end of last year that required all Airbnb hosts to only rent out their primary residence and register their property as a short-term vacation rental, but thousands are likely still violating the rules.

Christina Crooks and Juliana Pannunzio were left behind. No one called 911, no one took them to the hospital, no one bothered to comfort them in their anguish. All alone as their young lives ebbed away.

Between the health crisis and new restrictions introduced in Toronto last fall, the city’s short-term rental market has been absolutely rocked in recent months, to the delight of those who know how detrimental so many “ghost hotels” are to the housing supply and long-term renters.

It has been nearly a month since the city implemented new short-term rental regulations, requiring hosts to only rent out their primary residence and to be registered as a short-term rental property prior to the deadline of December 31, 2020.

A new year can be a time of renewal and resolution to change, and for 2021 Toronto is ringing in its long-awaited enforcement of regulations on short-term rental sites such as Airbnb.

In the dozen years since it was founded, Airbnb Inc. has moved into hundreds of U.S. cities,transforming many of them into vacation-rental meccas.