Kitchener could regulate rental properties
Posted Jun 30, 2011 05:39:49 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A Kitchener councillor is pushing for stricter rental property regulations despite a backlash to new rules in Waterloo.
Yvonne Fernandes, whose ward encompasses the Conestoga College area, insists her intentions are solely about health and safety. While Waterloo has stated the same goal, more than three dozen property owners in the student-saturated Northdale area of the city have threatened to sell their homes at public auction. They say the new bylaw in Waterloo is making it more expensive for them to be a landlord.
Fernandes is prepared for a backlash.
“I have (already) heard from some landlords and it’s not nice,” Fernandes admits during an interview with 570’s Gary Doyle.
But she’s determined to move ahead with her plans in order to avoid a potential tragedy, like a student dying in a fire at their rooming house.
“We have students living eight, 9, sometimes 10 in a house,” Fernandes notes. “We have some great landlords who have Direct Detect (a fire monitoring system that is directly connected to the local fire department), six students in their house, and a great common space.”
That’s the sort of living space Fernandes wants to see more of and she’s careful to point out that this is not an attack on students. She believes it’s a city-wide issue.
“I drive past areas where socio-economic situations and housing and rental properties don’t look to me — maybe from the outside — like they should,” Fernandes says. “They don’t look safe and they don’t look like a healthy environment.”
City staff is expected to report back in the fall with how rental properties may be more closely regulated in Kitchener.
