By James Jackson
Chronicle Staff
The president of the Waterloo Region Apartment Management Association is glad the city has resolved its ongoing rental housing bylaw issue with the Ontario Human Rights Commission — but he’s upset with how the city is planning to pay for a review of the bylaw.
Mike Milovick, who represents about 500 landlords and thousands of tenants in Waterloo Region, said the city should not be paying for a planned 2016 review with funds in the rental housing bylaw reserve.
“I’m extremely disappointed,” he said, noting OHRC commissioner Barbara Hall had warned the city prior to the passage of the bylaw that it may have been discriminatory. Landlords will be directly funding the consultant and the review, said Milovick.
“I believe it was a somewhat reckless approach by council,” he said. Milovick is also a member of the group Protecting Rental Options Waterloo that originally opposed the bylaw.
“I’m happy they’ve responded, but I don’t feel the cost should be borne by the landlords.”
According to the city, the reserve was established in order to keep the program revenue neutral for the city. Any money collected through the license program that isn’t used to cover staff costs goes into the reserve and can be used to fund legal challenges to the bylaw or to pay consulting fees.
“Whatever goes above and beyond the budget for the year,” said Jim Barry, director of bylaw enforcement with the city. Last year the reserve was about $120,000, but the city doesn’t know what it will cost to pay a consultant to help review the bylaw in two years.
No money was spent from the reserve as part of the latest revisal of the bylaw, Barry said.
Last May, OHRC commissioner Barbara Hall released the results of a yearlong inquiry into the city’s new rental housing bylaw and found two components of the bylaw were potentially discriminatory: per-person floor area restrictions and minimum separation distances for lodging houses.
Late last month the city announced it had resolved the issue related to the floor area restriction, and the OHRC said it would not proceed with a formal human rights complaint at the at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. The lodging house separation issue is still under review by the city.
As of the end of 2013, the city was about halfway to its goal of licensing every rental property in the city. Barry estimates about 3,100 licenses have been issued or are going through the process.
“We estimated about 6,000 (total landlords) but that’s a bit of a moving target,” he said. Prior to the implementation of the bylaw in 2012 the city had never done a comprehensive assessment of just how many rental properties there were.
Staff reached that estimate through property assessment rolls and other information at their disposal.
Since the city had never done a comprehensive count of its landlords, Barry said the city can’t know for sure if any have left Waterloo in response to the bylaw.
Milovick, who is also a realtor, said housing capital has fled Waterloo for neighbouring communities ever since the bylaw came into effect in April 2012.
The number of applicants for licenses has slowed considerably over the year as well. Six months after the bylaw was introduced about 2,000 licenses had been issued, compared to 3,100 now. By the end of 2013 the city estimated it would have about 1,800, and by the end of this year they are projected to reach 3,600.
Barry said some landlords might have waited before registering with the city while the OHRC was investigating the bylaw, but he hopes now that the issue has been resolved, more landlords will come forward to be licensed.
“I’m sure it had some impact, absolutely,” Barry said. “There’s no doubt people probably looked at that and held the ‘wait-and-see’ attitude.”
Back in November 2012, the city also found about 80 per cent of properties failed the required electrical safety inspection. The city is waiting on updated statistics from the Electrical Safety Authority, but Barry hopes those numbers have gone down as well.
Of the roughly 3,100 licenses issued, 90 per cent had some form of compliance problem — ranging from zoning and bylaw infractions to more serious safety violations.
