Secondary Suite Rules
On February 4 council approved amendments to the zoning bylaw allowing widespread secondary suites in a 9-to-2 decision. I was among the 9.
There was considerable debate about whether to require owner occupancy of a property as a condition of receiving a secondary suite development permit. A vote on requiring this initially passed 6 to 5 with my support but on reflection I could not support this blanket requirement and asked council to reconsider the motion and it was defeated 6 to 5.
The main reasons I could not support requiring owner occupancy as a condition of zoning were:
1) There were legitimate questions about our logistical and legal capacity to enforce an owner occupancy requirement as a condition of zoning: land use regulation in Alberta sees only the use itself (i.e. residential dwellings) not the user (tenant vs. owner — which is why we can’t zone for 55+ condos, for instance; we can only get as specific as ‘apartment’).
2) The issue of unscrupulous landlords is not limited to secondary suite situations. If we have properties in the city, owned or rented, with or without secondary suites, where the neighbourhood is negatively impacted then we need to deal with that through the Community Standards Bylaw.
3) Finally, thousands of the illegal suites already in place are not in an owner-occupied home, and I believe that if we aim to bring these into safe and legal compliance we must accept that they will not all be owner occupied and that requiring this will present a barrier to compliance for those landlords.
After the vote there was a motion of council to get information about restricting the grants offered by the city to develop secondary suites to homeowners who commit to occupy one of the suites in the house; the report on this came to Council’s Executive Committee this past week.
In my view the city has given significant incentives to commercial landlords by widely permitting the suites and by working with the province to make the safety codes more realistic for retrofit situations (albeit still safe).
The financial incentives ought to be targeted to homeowners who are developing the suites to supplement their income to help them buy or retain the family home, not commercial landlords.
After lively debate the committee recommended to council to restrict the grants to owner-occupancy. Council will debate the issue on Wednesday.
I’m glad you reconsidered your position on owner occupancy. Allowing the flexibility will ensure many residents who occupy sweets owned by commercial landlords to enjoy the same safety and security as those who live in an old lady’s basement.
I do question the utility of a grant program which has such terrible uptake. I read in one of the daily newspapers there was only 29 approved applications during the pilot. Any ideas on how to encourage uptake now that commercial landlords aren’t included? Residents could get quite a deal if they received both civic granting and the federal tax credit.
Finally, just walking through a lot of Edmonton’s older neighbourhoods makes it pretty clear better bylaw enforcement is needed. Has the city increased enforcement capacity to deal with violation of community standards bylaws?