How Airbnb Hosts Flex Political Clout

Call it the Airbnb blowback. What started as a way to make some extra money by briefly renting out a bedroom or vacation property has increasingly become a full-time line of business — and people involved in such ventures wield increasing influence over civic politics.

In Calgary, a case in point is the vocal opposition of a host who operates multiple short-term rental units near Calgary’s lone supervised consumption site, or SCS, in the city’s Beltline neighbourhood, where roughly 14 per cent of short-term listings are located.

The pressure comes at a time when, across Canada’s major urban centres, the negative effects of short-term rentals on housing affordability are becoming increasingly evident.

And so are tensions between this relatively new category of real estate operator and populations they don’t exist to serve.

Short-term rentals tend to concentrate in areas close to amenities, services and public transit. So do people with lower incomes or needs for social services. Which sets a stage where business interests of short-term rental hosts can clash with those of vulnerable populations.

In June 2022, Geoff Allan wrote a post in the local host club — a private Facebook group for short-term rental operators sanctioned by Airbnb — noting the challenges the SCS has caused him.

“The City of Calgary proudly put in the Supervised Consumption site near my home. I was forced to move due to the utter chaos that is ongoing from that facility. The only way that I am able to rent out my property is through short-term rental. Every time we list it with long-term tenants they move because of the obscene amount of criminal activity in our neighbourhood.”

Researchers have poked holes in an Alberta government report that tied crime to the Safeworks-operated facility. And although Allan’s opinion of the safe consumption site isn’t necessarily shared by other hosts in the Beltline, his views echo those of the larger business community, whose members have called for the SCS’s relocation, citing increases in “crime and disorder.”

Allan — who didn’t respond to The Tyee’s multiple requests for comment — has become a central figure in efforts to organize short-term rental hosts in Calgary.

Since becoming a host in 2017, not only has Allan advocated against further red tape, but after Airbnb recruited him as an administrator of the Calgary host club, he has also indicated an interest in ensuring short-term rental operators have their priorities represented in boards and commissions at municipal and provincial levels.

In an update posted to the host club in April 2021, Allan noted that he and the club’s co-administrator, Neil Wagner, a Calgary host who operates 59 properties across the country, were in conversations with government and Airbnb administrators to “get short-term-rental hosts proper representation on boards such as Tourism Calgary, Explore Edmonton and Travel Alberta.”

Airbnbs and safe consumption sites have something in common. They both can be characterized as a “locally unwanted land use,” or LULU in city planning lingo, because they draw opposition from some citizens because of their perceived effects on city life.

But even though there is evidence that crime has risen in neighbourhoods after a significant rate of conversion to short-term rentals, business people are more likely to blame safe consumption facilities in the same zone.

Evidence of this is found in a controversial report produced by the provincial government three years ago, which prioritizes business interests over the lives of equity-deserving Albertans.

“People want to run a business; they want to attract customers; they don’t want to be disrupted — I get those things,” said Rebecca Haines-Saah, a public-health sociologist and associate professor at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine. “But you don’t realize you lose customers when you’re shown to be someone who doesn’t care about the community and is only interested in making money.”

Business improvement areas as ‘quasi-government’

Nevertheless, organized businesses have the leverage needed to legitimize their concerns — and to influence policy.

According to Kevin Walby, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg, business improvement areas, or BIAs, in Canada have the power and resources to participate in urban governance and operate as a “quasi-government.” But the mandate of these organizations often clashes with the interests of the community at large.

“BIAs create this kind of Wild West in their jurisdiction for what is suspicious, what should be targeted for displacement or policing,” he said. “People can project their stereotypes [and] biases however they want, and pretend that’s legitimate because it’s through these upstanding corporate entities.”

Having been a board member of the Victoria Park BIA since 2014, Allan shouldn’t be unfamiliar with the kind of power the business community wields in Calgary.

Since the creation of the organization in the mid-1990s, the BIA Allan now chairs has fought against the presence of sex workers, rooming houses, cash workers and drug users — all in the name of “improving, beautifying and maintaining property in the BIA.”

In 2021, when Calgary’s supervised consumption site was slated for closure, Allan expressed relief. “We’re tired of cleaning up urine, poop, having our cars broken into. We’re hoping to see the end line soon,” he told CityNews. “I don’t know what the answers are but thank God [the SCS] is moving.”

Although the facility continues to operate, further pressure from the business community, including short-term rental operators, could change this.

According to a city-funded report released in October, there are over 3,000 short-term rental hosts in Calgary, but while multi-unit operators remain a small minority, they control 13 per cent of the units and produce more than half of all the revenue.

Aware of the power organized business has over local policymakers, Airbnb has actively instigated the consolidation of short-term rental operators.

By creating host clubs, the platform is leveraging the power of businesses to lobby against regulation. In cities across Europe and North America, these groups have become a sanctioned tool hosts regularly use to organize, and Calgary is no exception.

Since the creation of Calgary’s host club in 2020, Allan and Wagner have sparked conversations with group members, sharing their views on proposed regulations vis-a-vis news, updates and insider tips provided directly by the platform. They’ve also organized networking events at the bar Allan manages for Calgary hosts to mix and mingle.

Recently, after Wagner shared an invitation to a meetup, a club member asked what the benefit of these events was. The answer was telling.

“I like meetups for networking, building a community and learning from other hosts,” Wagner wrote. “Also, when the city is considering regulations it is good to have a strong community that can nudge the city in a pro-str [sic] way.”

Earlier this week, Allan and Wagner hosted a holiday party where they discussed upcoming short-term rental regulations with special, undisclosed guests.

Researchers have characterized these efforts as “grassroots lobbying,” a tactic in which platforms mobilize their users to pressure public officials to support favourable regulations. In Alberta, this type of lobbying is legislated by the Lobbyists Act and requires lobbyists to register — but Airbnb isn’t currently active in the province’s lobbyist registry; neither is Allan or Wagner.

In October, the City of Calgary launched an engagement campaign to evaluate the effectiveness of the policies currently in place in collaboration with the University of Calgary. This process is expected to identify the challenges and opportunities members of the hospitality and tourism sector, tenant groups, real estate developers and short-term rental operators experience in relation to short-term rentals.

However, the power disparity among stakeholder groups remains unacknowledged, as does the covert influence Airbnb exerts on short-term rental operators.

Unless the findings of this project indicate a need to curb the concentration of short-term rentals in Calgary, limit the power a small number of operators have over the city’s short-term rental market and recognize Airbnb’s grassroots lobbying efforts, additional regulation is unlikely to address the influence 3,034 hosts could have on the neighbourhoods where their properties are located — especially in Calgary’s Beltline.

“People want to be downtown, but they want a sanitized urban experience,” Haines-Saah said. “[But] there’s a real difference between feeling uncomfortable and being at risk. In our daily lives, because of poverty and inequality, we feel and encounter things that make us uncomfortable. But that doesn’t mean we’re in any way at risk.”

“If you’re a local business and you don’t support supervised consumption,” Haines-Saah added, “you’re actually supporting more public overdoses.”

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