The teal front door of Serena Purdy’s white house leads the eye straight down one of Kensington Market’s quirky little laneways where pots of lavender and herbs adorn her stoop.It’s more of a graffiti-covered alley than residential street. But PhD student Purdy, who has lived there for 16 years, remembers it was alive with neighbours only a year ago, a close community that rallied in crisis and celebration.Last Tuesday afternoon, the only passerby is pulling a wheeled suitcase. Familiar friends and local artists who once occupied the buildings surrounding her house have been displaced by tourists and strangers occupying what are now short-term rentals. It’s the same story around the corner at Kensington Place, once the community’s artistic nerve centre.“To imagine how much of the community is lost is staggering,” she said.“As long as landlords can make more money off short-term rentals, we’ll keep losing artists and residents,” said Purdy, a director of Friends of Kensington Market, a group dedicated to preserving the area’s artistic, funky atmosphere that makes it such a draw for tourists.The fear is that authenticity will fade to oblivion as long-term tenants get pushed out by landlords wanting to make more money off short-stay visitors.Most of the changes have occurred in the last year even though the city’s regulations for short-term rentals advertised on platforms such as Airbnb, Kijiji, FlipKey, HomeAway and VRBO were supposed to take effect in June 2018.They have been sidelined by an appeal by short-term landlords that is set to begin Monday at the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT). It has scheduled seven days of hearings.Toronto’s rules were meant to address concerns that short-term accommodation is replacing what would otherwise be permanent homes in the city’s tight housing market. Estimates of how many permanent homes have been absorbed by short-term rentals range ...
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