Airbnb has grown exponentially since it began in 2009. In 2009, it had only 21,000 stays, in 2017 it is on track to have over 1 million ‘stays’. 25 per cent of all leisure travelers are expected to book a stay on Airbnb at least once in 2017. 

The growth of Airbnb has been helped by the fact that most of the costs of providing housing are borne by the homeowners and renters who use their platform and are externalized to communities in which they live. We, the community, see increasingly unaffordable housing, trashed apartments and other horror stories, as captured on the site Airbnbhell.com, and, due to the fact that Airbnb is not regulated, health concerns and unfair competiton. In cities across the world, communities are coming together to regulate homesharing.

Fairbnb.ca is a coalition effort that brings together groups from the regulated hotel and B&B industry with property owners, property renters and other concerned citizens.   Fairbnb.ca has been working in big cities with housing affordability issues like Toronto and Vancouver. Smaller towns which are attractive for vacationers are also seeing less affordable housing and having issues with the unregulated use of homesharing. The tools Fairbnb.ca is developing could help deepen the campaign for a robust, nationally-consistent policy framework to ensure homesharing complies with fair, safe and respectful legislation.

Please note, Fairbnb.ca is not trying to ban true “homesharing” they are trying to regulate the way in which investors and other corporate interests are manipulating homesharing and taking advantage of our communities.