There’s only so much the city can do when it comes to cracking down on overcrowded housing.
This is the key point some New Sudbury neighbourhood residents latched onto near the end of a public meeting the City of Greater Sudbury hosted on Wednesday night.
The meeting, held at Lasalle Secondary School’s cafeteria, centred mainly on area residents’ concerns in relation to overcrowded housing.
There are approximately 12 to 14 such buildings under investigation in New Sudbury alone.
“Our powers are within certain legislation,” city Building Services director Guido Mazza told Wednesday’s crowd, agreeing with a resident’s sentiment that city staff’s hands are somewhat bound when it comes to dealing with overcrowded residences.
Further, there’s no limit to the number of residents per unit, nor does the Ontario Building Code limit the number of bedrooms, as long as fire, life safety and structural adequacy standards are met.
Within each dwelling unit, the owner or primary renter can rent out up to two of its rooms to other people, city Planning Services director Kris Longston clarified, noting that although there’s a limit of two people per room for these two secondary rentals, there’s no person limit for the primary residence.
The province also doesn’t allow municipalities to “people zone,” which could include zoning specific to seniors, students, family members or any other variable of person.
A rooming house has the expressed purpose of renting out individual rooms to different tenants, and an illegal rooming house would include buildings used for this purpose and not zoned accordingly.
Illegal rooming houses, Longston said, are difficult to prove.
Who’s to say an alleged illegal rooming house isn’t occupied by five buddies who knew each other prior, Longston asked.
As for gaining entry to households to determine whether there are infractions, City of Greater Sudbury staff members who spoke at Wednesday's meeting said this, too, is difficult to do.
In the case of 10 alleged illegal rooming houses within single-family homes in New Sudbury his department is investigating, Mazza said that staff have been unable to gain access.
“It falls back to the old British law of ‘your house is your castle,’ and to gain entry to a house that is occupied is somewhat limited to all of us,” he said, noting that if the owner or resident doesn’t agree to an inspection, they don’t have to let them in, and in these circumstances, have not.
Mazza could clarify that the 10 houses in question are each four-bedroom, three-washroom buildings with unfinished basements.
Greater Sudbury Fire Services Deputy Chief Nathan Melin similarly said that when they receive a complaint about such things as a lack of smoke or carbon monoxide detectors, they’re reliant on owners or tenants letting them into the household to verify the claim.
Otherwise, he said, “There’s not a lot within a single-family dwelling that we can enforce.”
A warrant can be applied for, he later added, clarifying, “Unfortunately, a warrant is more difficult to obtain when you don’t have that physical evidence to be able to show for them to grant it.”
Near the close of Wednesday’s meeting, interim city CAO Kevin Fowke stood up to address the prevailing theme of staffing having their hands tied.
Advocacy with the provincial government to grant municipalities stronger teeth would be up to city council, Fowke said, but said the main focus now is increasing the city’s housing stock, which has been an oft-cited goal among the city’s elected officials in recent years.
The vacancy rate in Greater Sudbury has been hovering around one per cent, whereas a healthy vacancy rate is considered to be around three to five per cent.
“When you’re in a very, very tight market with respect to occupancies, some people get very desperate with respect to getting their accommodations,” Mazza said.
Although limited in their ability to control the number of people residing in residential units, Fowke clarified that the city has been active in addressing the symptoms of overcrowding, such as excess garbage, vehicles parked illegally and other property standards issues.
“If you can deal with parking standards, parking and noise, what the heck do you care how many people are in that house?” he asked.
Complaints in relation to these concerns can be reported to the city by phoning 311.
When property owners don’t comply with property standards in a timely manner, the city is able to contract out work for such things as grass cutting and cleanup. The bills for these services, which city Bylaw Services director Stefany Mussen said “are not cheap,” go on their tax roll.
“That’s going to cause a landlord who’s not living in these neighbourhoods, who lives in Toronto and is maybe renting out in an unsafe fashion, that’s going to cause disruption to their little business model they’ve got going,” Fowke said. “I’d go after the things that we can handle.”
The city’s means of tackling these symptoms of overcrowding are constantly evolving, Mussen said — even in cases where they might not currently be effective.
“We can always create bylaws or amend existing bylaws to assist us with enforcement that we think would make more of an impact on the problem,” she said.
An example of this she provided came in 2022, when city council voted to adopt a bylaw prohibiting front- and side-yard parking. Although these areas were already off limits for parking according to city zoning, the bylaw added teeth to enforcement by allowing officers to levy fines.
A video of Wednesday's meeting is slated to be posted to the city’s website on Thursday, a city spokesperson said, and a document answering unanswered questions from the meeting is expected to be posted to the city’s website by the end of the month.
Update: A video of the meeting was posted as scheduled, and is available by clicking here.
Ward 8 Coun. Al Sizer, who co-hosted the meeting and serves the neighbourhood on city council, told Sudbury.com that public feedback from the meeting will be factored into future staff and city council discussions.
One of his key takeaways for him was the limited number of bylaw enforcement officers charged with enforcing municipal rules, consisting of six full-time, three junior officers and four part-time officers who supplement the service.
“We don’t have enough,” Sizer said.
Meanwhile, city staff have been meeting with post-secondary students to inform them of their rights with respect to living arrangements.
Every floor must have such things as working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and every room must have exits to the outdoors, be it a door or window, so there’s a direct means of escaping a fire.
Area residents’ concerns regarding residential overcrowding has been an ongoing topic of discussion. In May 2022, Sizer and Ward 12 Joscelyne Landry-Altmann hosted a community meeting at Cedar Park Playground to address public concerns about unsightly properties in New Sudbury. Prior to that, a similar such meeting was held in 2018.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
