Kensington Market on a Friday afternoon in March.Īccording to research done for the City of Toronto, before the pandemic over 8,000 housing units in Toronto were dedicated short-term rentals. But experts say that owners of short-term rentals have found a loophole that is still keeping apartments off the market. It was meant to free up long-term rentals in downtown communities like Kensington Market, where a majority of Airbnbs are found. In 2021, the city of Toronto began enforcing new rules that limited how short-term rentals by companies like Airbnb operate. The rents for those that remained skyrocketed, leaving many former residents having to look elsewhere for homes.īut change was supposed to come. Many were owned by the same operators, often renting out entire multi-unit homes that could have been long-term rental apartments. By 2017, there were over 130 listings in the community. And the launch of Airbnb in 2008-an online platform that allows people to rent their apartments or houses-made it possible for many of them to stay in Kensington Market. Here’s the thing: tourists want to stay in cool areas. Cece Scriver, owner and operator of vintage store Courage My Love, says many of the homes in Kensington Market where her friends used to live are now Airbnbs. There were more vintage stores, more boutiques, and more restaurants. By the end of the 90s, Kensington was a cool area. But the neighbourhood around them began to change. Scriver and her brother bought homes nearby, and she raised her kids there. “Kensington was a place where you could do whatever you wanted as long as you didn’t poke your neighbour,” Scriver said. Their friends were predominantly children of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants who worked and lived in the same neighbourhood. Scriver and her siblings spent most of their time playing with their neighbours in Bellevue Square Park. She and her siblings lived upstairs from Courage My Love, a funky space that kept Torontonians outfitted in the latest counterculture styles. In the 1970s, while most of Toronto’s hippies were still firmly ensconced in Yorkville, Cece Scriver’s family opened a vintage store in Kensington Market.

Long term stays airbnb