Rental bylaw better received
Posted Apr 11, 2011 10:07:17 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
There was a more co-operative tone in Waterloo as city staff presented a revised bylaw for rental housing.
The city was blasted with criticism from several stakeholders when the new bylaw was first brought forward in January. Landlords, tenants and students took issue with the proposed bylaw for a number of reasons when it was first presented.
“The initial bylaw would have negatively impacted the students for sure,” insists Heather Galt, spokesperson for Protecting Rental Options in Waterloo (PROW). “Rents would have gone up enormously from where they are today, regardless of anybody’s thoughts in other directions.”
Galt also believes landlords would have been negatively impacted and the supply of rental options in Waterloo would have diminished substantially.
The reaction was not entirely unexpected by the city and its Director of Bylaw Enforcement, Jim Barry, who says the criticism was taken to heart.
“The strength of this process is the feedback,” Barry notes in an interview with 570 News. “We’ve talked to hundreds of people.”
Those hundreds of conversations over the past three months led to the revised bylaw that was presented in council chambers last night. Barry says the key element in the revision is the grandfathering of existing lodging house licenses so that they can be maintained.
Galt agrees.
“Their intent to grandfather existing licensed houses and recognized units in the city is extremely important,” she says. “There are still a lot of details that need to be worked out and a lot of specifics that need to be provided before I think the bylaw is in a condition to be passed.”
And given the co-operative nature of this meeting, Barry was quick to concur with Galt.
“We’re going to meet with everybody some more,” he points out. “I’m sure we won’t come to an agreement with everybody but we want to make it (the bylaw) as good as possible.”
Barry says the consultation sessions moving forward will be conducted with smaller individual groups in order to gather more specific feedback.
Council is expected to make a decision on the bylaw on May 9th.
570’s Mike Farwell was at the meeting.
