Listening on Rental Housing Licensing

I am growing increasingly concerned that despite having read the proposed amendments to the Rental Housing Licensing bylaw, I have no clue as to what problem it addresses. There seems to be a large number of possible candidate problems, but I don’t see how the proposed by-law resolves any of them. I’d welcome clarification here.

Do we wish to reduce the number of licensed lodging houses? On High Street where I have lived since 1981 (http://wms.waterloo.ca/Lodging/GISAddress.asp) one in three houses is licensed, and the same is true on the North side of Columbia. I had no idea that the density was this high, until I saw the above map, because with rare exceptions High Street is not plagued with “problems”. If these lodging houses are denied renewal of licences it is unlikely anyone would want to buy them for “family” accomodation. Most families don’t need 8-10 bedrooms, and student accomodation, often (though not always) can be pretty beat up. Eliminating almost all of this licenced accomodation on High Street and Columbia would involve at best a pretty ugly transition for the students living here and the long term residents of this area, and as was pointed out yesterday to city council; the concern is even greater for the remaining few residents of Northdale where density of licenced accomodation is much higher. It is easy to imagine that the change might be gradual, but this will not be the case if banks start refusing to renew morgages on properties (or even entire streets) that the city turns into liabilities.

Do we wish to protect residential neighbourhoods from “student” encrouchment? I am well aware that this is a concern for some, either because they fear the behaviour, or they fear the devaluation of their own property values, but eliminating those licensed lodging houses which when sold (or foreclosed on) are too close to other lodging houses, will push students further from areas close to the universities with existing high densities of lodging houses (such as High St) into lodging houses in areas such as Beechwood. It will actually create a market for new lodging houses that can be discovered to lie the requisite distance from all other such houses. Students coerced into living in these more distant lodging houses because of limited availability of rental accomodation won’t appreciate the extra travel, the city won’t appreciate the transportation problems, and those areas that find themselves now hosting more licensed lodging houses, won’t appreciate this change either. As pointed out at yesterdays meeting, all that traffic is still going to be daily travelling through the areas close to the university, and being just as (if not more) disruptive to those areas as consequence.

Do we wish to enforce standards through licensing? I’m all in favour of that. But the licensing proposals seem to be designed to discourage people from choosing to get into the rental business, and reducing competion is hardly the way to improve quality. I personally would like to see fewer absentee landlords, so would like to see it made easier for people in Waterloo to rent accomodation close to them. There will be yearly fee’s which seem pretty steep, requirements for yearly police checks on all who rent, unannounced inspections of rental properties, and generally at least the perception that the city sees renters as the problem to be addressed, and dumped on. There is even the suggestion that landlords be held accountable for their tenants behaviour, even though a landlord is just as inconvenienced by “problem” tenants as anyone. The landlord tenant act doesn’t even permit landlords to refuse to renew accomodation to existing problem renters once these renters have lived in the accomodation one year.

Do we wish to offer students an improved lifestyle here in Waterloo? I work with students, and their interests are high on my own list of priorities, so I’d be pleased to see any policy that did this. Since most students rent, it is hard to see how policies likely to increase rents, while forcing them to live further from the university, or in large student five bedroom unit apartment complexes such as those now available on the south side of Columbia is improving their lifestyle. Most students move out of university residencies, precisely because they don’t want the types of disruption that occurs when you put large numbers of students in such complexes. And for those parents who wish to purchase accomodation for their children while at university; are they going to be sending their children to Waterloo if they can only put their own children in the house, or be faced with hefty fee’s, somewhat insulting requirements for yearly police checks, and inspections without prior notification.

Do the proposals seek to reduce the need for bylaw enforcement, and so save the city money? The total number of students attending university here is unlikely to be impacted by the proposals. Students remain just as likely to gather in large groups, because most can exploit available transportation, and so remain just as likely to be disruptive if that is there intention. The best way to discourage such intentions is to back up the existing by-laws with fines. I have in the 30 years I’ve lived on High Street seen (and upon occasion even complained about) completely unacceptable behaviour. The rock band with electrical amplification in the garden two doors up from me at 2am, which could easily be enjoyed anywhere within two blocks of this concert, comes immediately to mind. However, I have never heard of any case where those who behaved in such antisocial ways, ever received more than a caution from police when police finally arrived. Is there some rule that says that permanent residents of Waterloo can be fined for doing things like parking there car on the street over night, or parking their car facing in the wrong direction, but that students are exempt from ever being held accountable for their by-law infractions? Much of the bad behaviour I am led to believe results from the belief that the city will endlessly caution but never actually punish bad behaviour. It would be useful to actually know the statistics on how much city money was spent on discipling students, and how much of the offenders money was spent on the being disciplined. Speaking from experience students are very price conscious, and if the price was too high, they’d not be commiting by-law infractions.

Do the proposals seek to increase the quality and quantity of rental accomodation available to students? That hardly seems likely so long as the city remains wedded to a policy that states that licenses are predicated on minimum separation rules and not on the quality of the accomodation which might be rented. This gives a monopoly to those who have licenses irrespective of the quality of accomodation offered.. and forces those who would like to rent large houses (when they go on sabattical) or buy as an investment the house next to them, to rent to at most three.

In summary, this proposed change seems to be trying to solve a problem as yet not grasped by me. If the proposals go through I personally will almost certainly profit from them, since those such as I who rent unlicensed properties adjacent to where I live and thus close to the university, can reasonably expect to see the demand for such properties and thus their value soar, if you eliminate our competition. But I don’t rent for profit; I like others in Waterloo rent because if I am going to have students living in every house around me, I want to be the landlord of those students. This serves my interest well and it serves the interests of the other neighbours in my community well, because students likely to commit by-law infractions are unlikely to want their immediate neighbour to also be their landlord. However, and this point is worth stressing, were I wishing to rent for profit, I could not reasonably hope to compete with those whom the city has licensed. This is because the city has created a very unfair discriminatory playing field, which penalises those that live here who are trying to protect the environment that they live in, while profiting people in Mississaga and Woodstock, who are only in the business of owning rental properties here for the money.

[An earlier version of these comments, posted prior to grasping that I might post at your web site can be found at:
http://kscian.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/rental-house-licencing-bylaw-in-waterloo/