Report on unregistered secondary suites shows Brampton making headway against illegal units

Things took a fiery turn when Yvonne Squires reached the podium at Wednesday’s committee of council meeting at Brampton City Hall. Sparks flew as the long-time resident expressed her displeasure with the sheer number of secondary suites in the city.  

“We have to pay taxes, and most of these renters pay by cash, and most of them are students coming from out of our country. They are not even Canadian citizens, and they are terrified by these landlords,” Squires passionately told council. She said she knew of a few homes with second units on her street, and said she doesn’t like predatory landlords taking advantage of their often vulnerable tenants.

She was thrilled to hear that the city had completed a comprehensive report on secondary suites in Brampton, which showed the city making some progress on reining in unregistered suites. “I am very impressed with this session right here and exactly what I came here for… I commend you guys and I thank you for my safety and for our neighbour’s safety. We need more people [bylaw enforcement officers] in our neighbourhoods.”

Brampton resident Yvonne Squires

The report, presented by Paul Morrison, who heads bylaw enforcement, and Brampton Fire Division Chief Andrew von Holt, painted a picture of the current situation that suggested the city is benefiting from increased enforcement. A highlight was a horrifying slideshow presenting some of the worst offenders in the city. It showed exit doors taped shut that when opened led nowhere, heaps of garbage piled up outside and inside the house, mould, and dangerously fire-prone wiring — just some of the conditions found in unregistered suites that were not built to code or properly maintained.

Morrison and von Holt attributed a 770 percent increase in registration to an effort by the city to educate the public about secondary suites and how to register them. “The number of charges laid since January [2018] was 4,625,” Morrison told council. “We want to gain compliance from the community, and when we don’t gain compliance from the community through education, we want to do it through enforcement.”

“We are making headway, and through those numbers you can see that we’re being effective. More people are registering, more people are making their places safer,” Morrison told The Pointer after his presentation to council. 

Paul Morrison, head of Brampton's bylaw enforcement

Some estimates suggest there are 30,000 to 50,000 illegal suites in the city, but it’s impossible to know exactly how many. “I can tell you that our [enforcement] officers don’t have a spare moment,” Morrison said. “They are busy 100 percent of the time.”

Secondary suites, or basement apartments, as they are sometimes known, not only create an issue for city tax collectors and service providers — single-family houses containing secondary suites pay only one tax bill while putting a multi-household burden on city services and schools — they also make the job of firefighters more difficult.

When a fire breaks out in such a house, “the difficulty the firefighter would face is, if there is an illegal basement apartment, they’re not aware of it [and] don’t know how it’s designed,” von Holt told The Pointer. “Where the exits are, if there are any exits. How many rooms, how many tenants — this is all unknown to them. So they basically have no idea of the layout and what they’re facing.”

Trip hazards, loose electrical wiring, blocked exit doors and the like all present safety hazards to firefighters as well. In an effort to ensure the safety of people who live in second units, enforcement officers have fined homeowners some $1.8 million for non-compliance between 2016 and June of this year. The number of fines has been on the rise since 2016, the year after the city introduced its new secondary unit bylaws. Fines levied dropped from $71,149 in 2016 to $59,325, but then rose dramatically in 2018, to $748,850. The city had gathered a total of $910,130 in fines by June 30 of this year, meaning it’s on pace to far exceed last year’s total in 2019. The number of complaints has also jumped dramatically since 2016. That year, only 132 charges were filed against the owners of illegal suites; that increased to 427 in 2017; to 1,936 in 2018; and to 2,689 by the midpoint of 2019.

Trip and fall hazards observed by Brampton bylaw enforcement.

Morrison attributes the jumps to the city getting ahead of the enforcement learning curve.  “Working with prosecutions, we get better at what we do when we take our cases to court; we are better investigators, and we are better at the prosecution end of this.”

Councillor Jeff Bowman, perhaps the most vocal politician on the secondary suites issue, was one of the first to praise the completed report. “We get a lot of complaints; we get complaints about the illegal second units, we get complaints about the garbage, but we also get complaints that the city doesn’t do anything about it,” Bowman said in council. “I think today we have demonstrated that the city is doing something about it.” 

The data in the presentation was the result of work done by the Second Unit Task Force, which was created in 2018 and brought together fire, building and enforcement officials, along with prosecutors. Bowman was instrumental in getting the task force created. However, he still feels that some of the violators are getting off easy. “The one thing I can say is … we’re still getting $2,000 fines set out by the government. And what you heard here today is, a landlord will make $2,000 back in one month.”

Fellow Wards 3 and 4 Councillor Martin Medeiros, though he does not disagree with Bowman, offered some sober second thought. While the city, and at least one councillor, are praising the hammer coming down on illegal suites, Medeiros reminded all present that the process of registration can be complicated and intimidating. “We’ve looked at ways to make it easier for people to register basement apartments. But what seems to be the issue … is how can we make this affordable and still keep the safety? ... I keep hearing from the community, it’s jumping through hoops and its expensive.”

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @mansoortanweer