The city’s new regulations for short-term rentals bring some hope that relief is on the way for residents under siege from party houses, but a lot will hinge on the details of how they will be enforced.

On Monday, a provincial planning tribunal rejected an appeal from Airbnb landlords, paving the way for the new city regime.

The regulations don’t explicitly ban party rentals in homes or condos. But people can only rent out their principal residences for up to 180 nights a year.

That will make it harder for owners to operate the kind of places most often rented out repeatedly for parties, said Thorben Wieditz of Fairbnb, a coalition of tenant advocates, community groups, academics and hoteliers that advocated for regulation during the appeal process.

“One thing about the party homes is that these tend to be run by absentee landlords,” he said.

These tend to be investment properties, he said, so called “ghost hotels” that are regularly used for short-term rentals.

“Those folks don’t have relationships with their neighbours and often these people are literally in it for the money,” he said

Someone is far less likely to rent out their own home to partiers who might trash the place and aggravate the neighbours, Wieditz added.

Under the new regulations, homeowners can also rent up to three bedrooms year round on a short-term basis — a term defined as less than 28 days.

Homeowners also wouldn’t be allowed to use basement apartments as short-term rentals. Only the full-time resident of those suites could rent those units for less than 28 days at a time.

Carleton Grant, the executive director of the city’s municipal licensing and standards division, said Tuesday the city would have more information in December on when the regulations would be implemented, but said the city will be putting in place a registration system.

“All operators of short-term rentals within the city of Toronto will be required to register and provide information on their short-term rental. In the event that we receive complaints regarding ‘party houses,’ the city will use the registry and complaint information, to investigate and work with operators for compliance,” he said in an email.

“Short term rental companies will be required to develop procedures to mitigate neighbourhood nuisances and address short-term rentals that contravened any laws and/or are associated with criminal activity. If the city cancels an operator's registration, the company would also be required to remove the operator from their website.”

Party rentals have caused problems in both suburban residential neighbourhoods and downtown condo towers, with residents complaining of noise, garbage, and even people urinating in the bushes.

Lisa Sabato said she’s been struggling with them in her sleepy residential neighbourhood near Bathurst Street and St. Clair Avenue West for about three years.

Sabato is firmly “not anti-Airbnb” but she’s sick of parties, whether they’re from groups of teens, or drunken bachelorettes waking her up at 2.a.m.

“I do not want any longer to be picking up garbage from houses of people with Ohio plates,” she said.

“They’re not homes, they’re venues.”

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Sabato, who raised two kids in the neighbourhood she has lived in for 24 years, said she doesn’t know her neighbours anymore because “they don’t exist.”

She’s most concerned with how the city will enforce the new rules, and thinks they should make examples of people, and make guests aware they’re staying somewhere illegal.

“I don’t know if the City of Toronto has the manpower or the financial resources to pull this off,” she said.

There have also been reports of crime. Just this August there was a shooting at an Airbnb rental in the upscale Bridle Path neighbourhood that the company confirmed at the time went for more than $1,000 a night. One man suffered life-threatening injuries but survived. The company suspended bookings after the shooting.

After five people in California were killed in a Halloween shooting at an Airbnb rental, the company announced it would be banning party rentals. The ban extends to Canada, according to a statement on Airbnb’s website. The company plans to introduce a hotline that anyone can use to reach a real person at any time, to be rolled out globally over next year.

The company is also taking measures to verify listings on the site, and expand manual screening of high-risk reservations flagged by its own “risk detection models.”

Although Airbnb is Toronto’s biggest short-term rental platform, there are several others, such as VRBO, Expedia and FlipKey, that operate in the city.

Toronto police spokesperson Connie Osborne said the police would only attend party rentals if there was a criminal or public safety element.

Asked about enforcement, city spokesperson Ellen Leesti said the city would have more information on that in December.

The original plan, before the appeal to the province was to enforce the rules by making landlords register rentals with the city and pay $50.

Rental platforms like Airbnb would also have to pay a one-time fee of $5,000 plus $1 for each night booked through the company. Landlords would pay a 4 per cent Municipal Accommodation Tax on rentals that are less than 28 consecutive days.

The cost of enforcement is supposed to be covered by these fees. A November 2017 report to the city’s licensing and standards committee put that cost at $1.18 million for five full-time staff and a one-time expense of $905,000 for three city workers to implement the bylaw.