In The Breach

The Fairbnb Co-op, which began in Europe in 2014, soft-launched a Canadian platform on Wednesday. It doesn’t have any listings yet, but once a critical number of hosts have signed up, the platform will officially launch in South Georgian Bay, Ont.

In many ways, FairBnb serves an identical function to its namesake. But it will be different from Airbnb in two important ways.

First, hosts must prove that the property is their principal residence, cutting out the estimated 50 per cent of hosts on Airbnb who manage multiple listings. And 50 per cent of the platform’s service fees go into developing community land trusts (CLTs), which are non-profit corporations that own land and use it to benefit their communities.