Piles of garbage irk resident of Caswell Hill neighbourhood
City’s property maintenance rules are not being enforced, woman complains
Shannon Vinish wants the City of Saskatoon to dedicate more resources to enforcing property maintenance bylaws.
The Caswell Hill resident says lack of enforcement has resulted in regular formation of garbage and junk piles in her neighbourhood, lowering property values and perceptions of safety while increasing stress for people who live there.
“It’s maddening,” Vinish said on Monday after speaking to city council about a report on the city’s property maintenance bylaw. It found the number of complaints that are not addressed increases annually, a situation that is unlikely to improve with current resources.
She distributed photos of junk piles, which she called “mini landfills,” in her neighbourhood and encouraged councillors to vote for additional funding for the fire department, which is responsible for enforcing the Property Maintenance and Nuisance Bylaw, during upcoming budget deliberations.
“We’ve got all these bylaws, but none of them are being enforced,” Vinish said after the meeting.
According to the report, 226 of the 4,052 property maintenance complaints the city received in 2015 were left unaddressed. That number rose to 793 out of the 4,592 complaints filed in 2016. As of Oct. 10, 1,721 of the 5,023 complaints filed this year had not been addressed.
Vinish said landlords who own more than one revenue property in the city should be required to get a business licence. That would allow city enforcement officers to target and impose fines on “repeat offenders” who let their properties fall into hazardous conditions, she said.
Ward 2 Coun. Hilary Gough submitted a recommendation to have the administration include property maintenance and nuisance bylaw complaints in future service level reports so that council can see the response levels.
The growing number of unaddressed complaints is “of great concern,” Gough said, adding she hopes the service level reports will help keep the issue on councillors’ minds.
“In this room it can sometimes look like numbers on a graph, but when it’s your neighbour and your neighbourhood and where your children pass by to go to the park, it’s much more than that.”