Mythbusters: Bylaw edition
Over the course of our reporting we found it was difficult to separate some of the facts from the urban legends about what exactly the controversial rental housing by-law entailed. We went to the best sources to sort out those pesky grey areas.
ONLY FOUR BEDROOMS ALLOWED
One of the most-widely reported aspects of the bylaw was that it would limit houses to four bedrooms. Which is true. But it also isn’t. “There are different classifications for houses,” Jeff Henry, City Councillor for Ward 6 tells us. A Class C license for lodging houses is specifically for five rooms or more, and properties already recognized as lodging houses have been grandfathered in to the program. As to whether you can get the classification depends on a whole host of other variables. “Zoning is the number one factor,” says Jim Barry, Director of By-Law Enforcement for the City of Waterloo, “and it requires higher building and fire codes.”
RENTS WILL GO UP BECAUSE OF INCREASED COSTS
We spoke to Gay Slinger, a staff lawyer at Waterloo Regional Community Legal Services, who assured us that a landlord cannot simply up and change the rent in the middle of a tenancy because of increased financial burden. “Any kind of increase to sitting tenancies has to comply with the Residential Tenancies Act.” That means it can only happen once a year, with 90 days notice and it has to be within the provincial guidelines. Right now the provincial government maxes out the rent increases at 2.5 per cent. That said, there’s nothing to stop a landlord from upping the rent in between tenancies to recover costs. It’s why the person living in your place before you could have paid $400 a month, while you’re paying $600.
THE CITY CAN SHUT DOWN THE LANDLORD’S BUSINESS
Section 13.6 of the bylaw states that if a landlord continues to carry on business without a license, the Court can shut them down. However, in this case the business is renting properties to tenants; and the only administrative body that can end a tenancy is the Landlord Tenant Board under the Residential Tenancies Act. As the bylaw only went into enforcement this spring, we still don’t know how this will play out, but it is definitely something to keep an eye on.
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