A mother who lives above an apartment rented on Airbnb would like to move, but is discouraged by the price of rent and the housing crisis in Montreal.
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“Everything is so expensive. It’s hard to find something affordable and the kids go to school in the neighborhood,” sighs Tara Cook.
The mother of three children aged 11 to 15 has lived on the top floor of a triplex in southwest Montreal for five years.
She explains that two or three years ago, the new owners renovated it to rent it to tourists on Airbnb.
“We endured the noise of the work for a month. […] Afterwards, the doorbell kept ringing, sometimes in the early hours of the morning,” says M.me Cook.
“Too much noise”
She claims that ironically, her landlady texted her several times because tourists complained about noise upstairs.
“She wants me to leave. She keeps telling me my kids are making too much noise. She keeps telling me to leave if I can’t be left alone,” she said.
“That’s not the main reason,” interrupts his son, Daniel. According to his younger sister and him, the owners want to turn their apartment into another Airbnb instead.
The apartment below is rented on the platform. Four rooms with a “primary residence” registration number at this address were listed in mid-June, was able to confirm The newspaper.
There are four rooms listed on Airbnb with a permit number linked to the address below Tara Cook’s home.
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In a main residence, renting rooms that can be booked separately is prohibited, the Ministry of Tourism confirmed by email.
Our Investigation Bureau discovered that this case was far from isolated. Hundreds of people claim to rent out their main residence on Airbnb, even though they do not live there.
A false main residence
In the case of the building where M livesme Cook, the permit for the establishment of principal residence is in the name of the owners, Quan Liang Yu and Jiang Wei.
We instead found Mme Wei on a Friday night at the address where the couple receives their property tax bill. It’s a three-storey house worth more than $1.3 million on the slopes of Mount Royal.
Mme Wei did not return our calls and would not answer our questions when we met at his residence. Reached by phone, Quan Liang Yu declined our interview request.
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