A shack with an extension cord and hose providing power and water or a crawl space dug under a house with carpet over the dirt and an oven for heat.
These are some of the real life situations Williams Lake building inspector Gary Deane and his staff have seen as rental situations in the city and why he has been working on a new bylaw to deal with the problem.
On Tuesday, May 30, at the committee of the whole, Deane presented a report and draft of a standards of maintenance bylaw for rentals, something he has pursued for a decade.
City council unanimously gave the bylaw first three readings at the regular meeting Tuesday, June 6.
During the committee of the whole discussion, Deane said his office receives three to four complaints a month about living conditions and some of the conditions he has seen himself are very rough.
Another example he gave council was a 20x15-foot garage people were living in.
It also had a garden hose and extension cord running to it.
And, he added, the only way he learned about those places was because the city received a report that someone was building without a permit.
“We went to one place and found out somebody had ripped out half a house and was building a suite in there.”
Deane told council there are places in Williams Lake for rent that are truly dangerous and when he sees on the news someone has died because a window was jammed and they couldn’t get out during a fire or a smoke alarm did not have batteries, it brings him to tears.
“These things are preventable.”
Under the community charter, the city is only allowed to pursue the protection of humans from danger, but cannot enforce contractual law, Deane said.
To put together the standards of maintenance bylaw for the city staff consulted one issued by the province and fine-tuned it for Williams Lake.
Deane is expecting there will be some growing pains with it and in the future it may need to be revised a bit.
“In all honestly we have been working on this for a long time and I think we have a pretty decent document.”
Anybody who lives in or works with people living in substandard conditions can launch complaints, he added.
Coun. Joan Flaspohler said when she worked at the fire department she witnessed some unsafe structures that were being rented out as well.
“I think it is amazing that we will have something like this bylaw to assist our community,” she said.
She asked how many other communities have a similar bylaw to which Deane replied that Williams Lake is on the leading edge.
The bylaw is intended to minimize red tape, he added.
Many suites the city deals with are not legal and Deane said there are many reasons for that.
Only recently has the city allowed secondary suites to be constructed under a permit so there are many pre-existing illegal suites.
Sometimes landlords will voluntarily apply for a permit to get them legalized because they want to make sure their tenants are in a safe place and they don’t want to be on the receiving end of a lawsuit when somebody gets injured in an illegal suite, Deane said.
“We can retroactively issue a permit for a secondary suite that brings it up to compliance, but not for a five-plex or a six-plex or an apartment block or a rooming house. That would normally entail changing the zoning.”
The bylaw will pertain to long-term rentals, not short-stay housing of 28 days or less.
During Tuesday’s council meeting Coun. Michael Moses said he is very proud of the bylaw.
“It will provide health and safety for many who don’t have a voice and give the marginalized a better place to live,” Moses said.
In his report, Deane noted the intent of the bylaw is to provide minimum level of occupant life safety, regardless of the legality of the suite.
“While the intent of the Residential Tenancy Act is to protect both landlords and renters, the process can take months – and in some cases years – to conclude. The intent of the proposed standards of Maintenance Bylaw is to provide timely resolutions to life-safety problems within rental suites.”
The bylaw in not intended to replace the Rental Tenancy Act, but rather to work in conjunction with it, he added.
READ MORE: City of Williams Lake developing rental bylaw to keep residential tenants safe
READ MORE: B.C. doubling staffing of unit that resolves landlord-tenant disputes
monica.lamb-yorski@wltribune.com
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