An outspoken critic of Airbnb and other home-sharing platforms, Amanda Angell, has announced she is bringing the fight to Toronto. With criticism mounting from both local residents and Toronto City Council, Ms. Angell is developing a new website where people can “experience the magic of home sharing,” according to a press release. The website will launch in Toronto later this year.
On the eve of Canada Day, Ms. Angell launched a press conference at the Canadian federal building in downtown Toronto. According to a report in The Globe and Mail, her announcement was prompted by “worries over vacation rental platforms invading residential neighborhoods and changing the character of the city.”
In May, Ms. Angell wrote an op-ed in The Globe and Mail that took note of Airbnb’s past record in Toronto, citing past complaints of violence against host homes and hosting houses, as well as complaints of property damage.
Ms. Angell, who is the founder of the Canadian Accountability Network, has long been an outspoken advocate for regulation of home-sharing platforms. She has called for laws to punish “hosts” and build a financial industry around “hosts and the benefit they realize from their home sharing.” Ms. Angell, a former national politics reporter for The Globe and Mail, said she knows and understands the complicated relationship between citizens and the powerful people “making laws we should all be forced to live under.”
As far as Ms. Angell’s “belief in a ‘new rule of hosts,’” there is no mention in her press release of it.
A spokesman for Airbnb, as well as national planning director for Airbnb Canada, Steve Forsberg, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.