Anti-Airbnb rage boils over in a once working-class area of Montreal

The building is splattered with different shades of paint. Its doors and windows are covered with posters. The message is as clear as the graffiti sprayed across its walls: the crowd who gathered around the building on Wednesday doesn’t want Airbnbs in their neighbourhood and to them, it is a brick-and-glass symbol of housing crisis.

Carrying banners and flags, demonstrators demanded municipal and provincial leaders enforce a bylaw against short-term rentals — a bylaw the borough of Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve says it doesn’t have the power to fully implement.

Last spring, the borough banned new commercial tourist accommodations to, in its words, help protect tenants and preserve the city’s