Bylaw squad to target 720 vacant buildings, neglected rental units
The boots hit the ground this week for a new squad targeting the city’s slummiest vacant buildings and rental properties.
“We’ve created a whole team dedicated just to deal with the condition of buildings and the condition of properties,” where previously that job was done by building inspectors already busy with new home construction, the city ’s manager of inspections, Rob Vani, says of what’s informally known as the BBO team.
These building bylaw officers were hired following major campaigns in recent months. Core residents beset by drug dealing, arson, graffiti and other crimes wanted a vacant building registry to force regular inspections. And residents living mostly around the university, concerned about unsafe living conditions in houses converted to rental units, wanted a licensing system.
Both rental licensing and a vacant building registry would require owners to pay fees and undergo regular inspections. City officials argued such programs would require lots of resources. Instead, council opted to go after the bad actors by beefing up the existing enforcement system, which can be largely self-funded because the city charges property owners an inspection fee as high as $470 when they’re issued an order. The city’s building department has taken three existing building bylaw officers and hired two new ones for vacant buildings, two for rental housing inspections and a clerk to help with paperwork. They’ve compiled a list of 720 vacant buildings based on complaints from neighbours and what they’ve noticed driving around town. These are neighbourhood eyesores, with such glaring deficiencies as broken windows and doors, collapsed eavestroughs and downspouts, dirty yards, and failing roofs, stairs and railings. “This is a list we’re going to use as sort of our list going forward,” said Vani, who is also the city’s deputy chief building official.
“The building from the exterior should be kept in a condition that’s consistent with the rest of the area,” he said.
As well, it should not be allowed to deteriorate to the point where the building has to be demolished. Based on his calculations, the 720 buildings on the list should keep officers busy for the next year. “But as we work through this database, we’ll start doing some proactive enforcement as well,” fielding complaints from frustrated residents via the city’s 311
phone system, and on the lookout for neglected vacant buildings on main thoroughfares and in the city’s commercial areas. “Some of your core streets — the Wyandottes, the Universities, the Crawfords — but they’re all over the place. People would be surprised.”
Many are left to rot by largely absent owners and frequently used by squatters and drug users. Council budgeted $264,000 this year for the pilot project. Vani expects to recover all but between $50,000 and $70,000. He predicts the result of this campaign will be some owners demolishing dilapidated buildings, creating an unfortunate “missing tooth” look on streets, and others scrambling to make repairs.
“This is not going to be an easy task,” he warned. “It’s a very difficult process to get people to bring buildings up to standards.” The city knows who owns these offending buildings, based on the names on the tax rolls, but tracking them down is an “entirely different story,” he said.
When an order is issued, there’s a 19-day appeal period. If it’s not appealed it becomes legal and binding. The owners are given 30 days to do the work. If it isn’t done, a notice is sent. If there’s no action after a couple of weeks, the city begins the prosecution process. Fines can be quite substantial, Vani said. For an individual property owner a fine can be as high as $50,000 for a first offence and as high as $100,000 for subsequent offences. For corporations, the fine can be as high as $500,000 for a first offence and up to $1.5 million for subsequent offences.
The enhanced rental housing program will start at the same time, he said, focusing on areas where there’s a high concentration of rental stock.
“The longer the clock runs on getting to these investigations, the longer the building condition languishes without any kind of enforcement,” he said. “So these two individuals will help us close that gap and get to these much quicker.” In the case of rental housing, investigations are sparked by complaints, usually by tenants, to 311. And because the tenant is the occupant, he or she can invite the officer inside for an interior/exterior inspection.
Typical complaints include leaky roofs, windows that don’t open properly, broken plumbing, broken floors, roaches, mice, rates and basement units without proper egress or windows. The city deals with 1,200 to 1,400 building condition complaints each year.
It’s taken several months to hire and train these new officers. “We just want a quicker response to that,” Vani said, adding the BBO’s targeting rental housing will also be proactive when the list of complaints is pared down.