Toronto council passes strict AirBnB rules…

Toronto City Council has passed new rules to crack down on short-term rental services such as Airbnb that will restrict listings to principal residences and ban homeowners from listing secondary suites such as basement apartments.

The basement-apartment issue dominated what snowballed into a daylong debate at city hall. Banning them from short-term rentals was meant to preserve scarce affordable units for Toronto’s ultratight long-term rental market, which has a vacancy rate of less than 1 percent.

“I think the city has acknowledged that short-term rentals have a place in this city, but we have balanced that out with the housing situation that we currently have,” said deputy mayor Ana Bailao, the west-end city councillor who acts as the city’s housing advocate and who championed the move to ban listing secondary suites.