Illegal rental units concern CBRM officials

SYDNEY — Affordable and livable rental units may be tough to find in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality but there’s no shortage of substandard or illegal ones.

“Every day we get complaints about illegal apartments, and we deal with them,” said Paul Burt, the CBRM’s manager of building, planning and licensing law, who said it’s a huge problem.

Burt said due to the large influx of students over the past few years, the municipality knows there are travel trailers and garages in people’s backyards accommodating tenants illegally.

“When we find them, we will deal with them under the act and the laws to meet compliance and keep up the neighbourhood standards and ensure people are in suitable housing.”

Burt said someone with an unused basement can create a makeshift basement apartment. If you convert your basement into an apartment without a permit, it’s not legal and you’re not allowed to rent it.

In a hot real estate market, property owners are listing large, older homes and they’re being purchased quickly to be converted into multiple apartment units — in many cases without the required permits, Burt said.

Even owners of multi-unit buildings — two or three apartments — sometimes further divide them to make seven or eight apartments. Without a permit and inspections, it’s not legal.

Although the municipality doesn’t have building inspectors patrolling the region for illegal apartments. Burt said they follow up on reports. When CBRM officials see construction activity, checks are conducted for unpermitted work.

“If we drive by a site and know there’s not a permit, we have a duty to stop and issue a stop-work order and make them come in and get their permits,” he said. “If they can’t, then we have to shut them down.”

While occasionally there are people who don’t know what they are doing, Burt said there are people who know exactly what they are doing.

“If they think they can buy it and renovate it without permits and then they are scot free, well, they are not,” he said. “If there’s ever a problem in that unit — if there’s ever an injury or fatality — litigation will be involved.”

ROOMING HOUSE EMPTIED

The CBRM recently issued an order against a rooming house in Glace Bay that resulted in the 15 to 17 tenants being displaced for a couple of weeks while the landlord went in and did some work to get it back up to code.

Burt said they can go into a building and issue a 30day order, but the Glace Bay rooming house was an example of one so bad, the fire inspector couldn’t walk away.

“If an inspector won’t walk away until it’s unoccupied that’s usually a pretty good indication of how bad it is,” he said.

In this case, there were no fire separations, no smoke detectors and people cooking on all floors.

“There was way too many people living in the building for the condition it was in at the time,” Burt said.

The owner took out a building permit, did the required work, it was inspected and then the tenants were allowed back in the building.

Burt said it’s a matter of someone who thought they had an investment property but needed a little bit of education. Although you don’t need qualifications to be a landlord, landlords don’t always realize there are rules to be followed.

In the meantime, Burt said when these types of buildings are found and emptied, it’s not the municipality’s job to find these people a place to live. It’s between them and their landlord.

However, the municipality does work with agencies such as Red Cross if they know in advance they will have to evacuate a building.

When it comes to concerns around public safety, an order will be issued for the building to remain unoccupied until it’s brought up to code.