Even in Toronto’s tight rental market, Zenobia Omarali agreed to lower the rent for her tenant — the son of a former employee — when he moved into her spacious downtown loft two years ago.And this past winter, when the tenant, Zeyadh Moosa, asked her to pay a pest control service to get rid of bed bugs — and replace his mattress — Omarali agreed.She said Moosa told her the bedbugs “came through the walls, and it’s my fault.”So she was shocked when she found out that Moosa, 26, had been subletting the unit on Airbnb for up to $200 a night.Moosa is currently paying $2,600 a month for the loft, Omarali said.“My heart’s just going ‘Oh my gosh, no wonder I had to buy a new mattress,’ ” she said of her suspicion that an Airbnb “guest” imported the bedbugs.“I trust all my tenants,” said Omarali, a high school guidance counsellor who owns several rental properties in Toronto. “When you have your own property and rent to someone else, that’s a bond. When you break that bond it’s heartbreaking. It’s not just a transaction; it’s more of a relationship.”Read more: Are short-term rental firms like Airbnb turning Toronto’s condos into hotels?Airbnb doesn’t play fair, say Toronto hotelsAirbnb fans, detractors meet to discuss potential regulation in TorontoWhen contacted by the Star recently and asked if he put the unit on Airbnb, Moosa said he did because he was using it to find long-term renters “to help her (Omarali) fill holes in units she wasn’t able to find tenants for, which I was successfully doing for her.”Moosa said he discovered the bedbugs “during that time I was living there,” adding “it’s an old building.”He said his family and Omarali have known each other for almost 20 years, and said he thinks there has been “a misunderstanding ...
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