Clayton Heights homeowners believe city targeting them on secondary suites
Some Surrey homeowners who have been ordered to shut down their illegal secondary suites believe they are being targeted because they registered their suites with the city.
The homeowners live in the Clayton Heights neighbourhood, which has chronic issues with illegal secondary suites and a parking shortage, and they are skeptical of the city’s claim that it is simply responding to complaints because they have not been notified of complaints and can’t find any registered with the city.
“Essentially, the city is misleading the public on why they’re doing this,” said Clayton Heights resident Greg Garner.
Surrey’s bylaws allow for one secondary suite in conjunction with a single-family home in each zone that has a single-family dwelling as a permitted use. Multiple suites are not permitted.
Last month the city sent letters to 175 property owners in Clayton Heights who have illegal suites, asking them to remove them by Jan. 31, 2018, or face fines and legal action. The enforcement is now on hold while the city looks into other options.
Jas Rehal, the city’s manager of public safety operations, said enforcement of the secondary suite bylaw is done on the basis of complaints. He said Clayton Heights has generated 400 complaints in recent years related to illegal suites, and more than 7,600 parking complaints and violations.
“We tried our initiatives, and we’re kind of at that point right now where we’ve said we can’t deal with the complaints. We need to do something, and this is why we had to move forward (with removing illegal suites),” Rehal said.
Garner, who has a basement suite and a detached coach house, filed a freedom of information request asking the city for a list of properties in Surrey that have two or more registered suites.
He was told that there are 2,332 properties with two registered suites, 57 properties with three registered suites, and six properties with four or more registered suites.
Rehal said, on average, those with suites pay $600 to $700 per year in fees, plus water and sewer. That means the city collects more than $1.6 million each year from property owners for their registered extra suites.
Garner disagrees with Rehal’s assertion that enforcement is complaint driven.
He said some property owners who received letters about their suites have filed freedom of information requests to see if they have been the subjects of complaints.
Garner is awaiting the result of his request, but says at least two people have received responses and had no complaints on file.
Rehal said the city released information related to three requests from the area last week. He said parking violations were not included in the information released because the requests did not specify parking violations, which are categorized differently than bylaw-related complaints.
Rehal said the property owners who have been issued letters have all had bylaw or parking complaints at some point, though they may not have been acted on until now.
He said the city will follow up with those who received responses to their information requests.
He said the city does not have a blanket enforcement program for illegal suites because it wants to avoid displacing people whenever possible. They try to resolve issues without shutting down suites, but in Clayton Heights that hasn’t worked, he said.