Toronto landlord found condo listed on AirBnb by someone who wasn't her tenant. She blames lax city rules
CBC
A Toronto condo owner is demanding changes to how the City of Toronto grants short-term rental licences after learning someone other than her approved tenant was able to obtain one for her unit.
Allison Rasquinha, a real estate agent, says the licence was used to rent out her downtown studio on Adelaide Street West to multiple guests on Airbnb.com over a period of several months without her knowledge or permission and in violation of the rules of her condo corporation.
After Rasquinha initiated eviction proceedings for violating the terms of the lease, the tenant offered to leave within a week, but only in exchange for thousands of dollars in compensation. CBC is not naming the tenants.
"She's in my condo just as an enterprise, not as a home," said Rasquinha. "You feel very violated."
Rasquinha, who is now incurring legal fees and fighting to regain control of her condo, says the situation highlights gaps in how city hall regulates short-term rentals.
"The city needs to take some responsibility and some action in order to protect condo owners," Rasquinha said.
"They have to do something to at least make sure that the Airbnbs that they are regulating are actually authorized and allowed to operate."
Rasquinha says the condo she bought in 2019 was her primary residence, but she decided to rent it out last year because she was getting married and moving in with her husband. Using the Realtor.ca website, she found a woman from B.C. who said she was interested in renting the unit.
The woman provided a rental application, ID, a credit check report, other documents and personal references.
"She was saying like, 'I'm a landlord, I know what it's like … I take very good care of the properties I'm in,' " said Rasquinha. "So that gave me a lot of comfort."
The two signed a one-year lease starting July 1, 2022, according to documents reviewed by CBC Toronto.
The unit was registered for short-term rental that same month, according to the city's Municipal Licensing and Standards department.
Rasquinha says she might never have found out about the situation, except that she received an incident report from her building's security team on Feb. 28.
"I just received an incident report from security in regards to someone looking for [unit number redacted] for an Air BnB," the building's property manager wrote to Rasquinha in an email that day.
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