The Waterloo Region Record reported that Kitchener City Council discussed at length the backround report on residential-licensing bylaw is probably on it's way.
A background report on a residential-licensing bylaw sparked a lot of discussion among councillors Monday, including whether it should be applied across the city or just in Lower Doon, which is near the community college.
Mike Fleming, a 20-year resident of that neighbourhood, urged councillors to act.
“I have witnessed several private residences converted to student housing, especially in the past five years,” Fleming said.
Single-family residences that are converted to student housing typically see several new bedrooms added and sometimes a second kitchen, and most of the time the owner does not get the proper permits and inspections, Fleming said.
“The example of Oshawa’s bylaw with regard to student housing surrounding Durham College is precisely what our city council should be closely examining,” Fleming said.
Not so fast, said Shayne Turner, the city’s director of bylaw enforcement and author of the background report.
Turner told councillors that only five cities in Ontario have adopted a rental-licensing bylaw since 2007 changes to provincial legislation allowed them — Oshawa, North Bay, London, Mississauga and Waterloo.
Turner said Oshawa was the first and its bylaw focused on the area around Durham College, but after the Ontario Human Rights Commission raised concerns about bylaws that target specific neighbourhoods, all the municipalities that followed enacted city-wide bylaws.
The landlord association in London took that city to court and lost. The landlords in London are now trying the Ontario Court of Appeal. The Durham bylaw has not been challenged in the courts.
Mayor Carl Zehr wants city staff to look at all alternatives, including the tightening of existing regulations, as a bylaw is prepared and public meetings held.
“We need to resolve the issue, particularly in Lower Doon, I want to make that absolutely clear,” Zehr said.
“But there are other options we have to look at as well,” he said. “What I am trying to do is avoid the legal quagmire that this is potentially going to get us into.”
Zehr’s call for a delay until January so councillors could get a closed-door briefing from city lawyers was lost in a tie vote.
“That’s a huge problem that’s been facing us for many years,” Gazzola said.
A report on a rental-licensing bylaw is expected sometime in the first half of next year. If the experience of other cities is repeated here it will be controversial. Landlords, realtors and others routinely oppose the move. Such bylaws call for significant fees to pay for the additional city staff needed to enforce them.
In June, councillors asked for the background information about what is allowed in such bylaws and the experience in other municipalities. They voted unanimously yesterday to proceed to the next step — the drafting of a suggested bylaw and alternatives — to make rental housing safer for occupants and neighbours.
Coun. Frank Etherington wanted to know if such a bylaw would help the city get rid of crack houses.
“Would this improve your opportunity to enforce standards in that type of rental housing where people are living in appalling conditions?” Etherington asked.
Turner said it would depend on what type of housing the bylaw was focused on, but it could be tweaked to help better regulate non-student rentals as well.
“My short answer is — I do believe there would be some applicability,” Turner said.
