Mayor’s executive committee to consider rooming house bylaw
Residents of Rexdale community say illegal rooming houses has disrupted their formerly peaceful neighbourhood.

thestar.com
Oct. 25, 2016
By Betsy Powell

When Wanda Wloch moved into her Rexdale home in 1983, it became her cozy refuge after a busy day working as a bank administrator.

At the time, the area, near Humber College Boulevard and Highway 27, was like other Toronto subdivisions filled with single-family homes lining a winding maze of streets.

But over the years, dozens of neighbouring homes were sold to profit-minded investors who divided them into multi-residential units and rented the rooms to students attending nearby Humber College’s North Campus, Wloch says.

With limited low-cost housing options, similar student enclaves close to other post-secondary institutions in the city are reshaping the suburban landscape, experts say.

In North Etobicoke, that has turned a once quiet community into one disrupted by “wild drunken parties,” drugs, loud music, vandalism, cars blocking street access and abusive language, says Wloch.

“City hall needs to take appropriate action to prevent these deplorable conditions from continuing,” says Wloch.

City staff say legal, licensed rooming houses are the answer.

“A licensing bylaw provides the city with additional tools to protect the health and safety of tenants in multi-tenant houses, as well as mitigate the impact on the surrounding community,” says a staff report that Mayor John Tory’s executive committee will consider Wednesday.

Staff is recommending public consultations on a proposed zoning and licensing regime for rooming houses across Toronto, including Wloch’s Etobicoke neighbourhood, and Scarborough where they haven’t been allowed.

Wloch and several neighbours - who didn’t want to be identified fearing reprisals - have a different solution.

“Do not legalize rooming houses,” they said loudly and in unison last Sunday sitting in Wloch’s living room, where she recapped her decade-long battle to shut the rooming houses down.

Wloch has circulated petitions, badgered city councillors and officers and taken photographs and videos of broken bottles, garbage, unkempt lawns and evidence of “peeing on my property.” She also provided licensing staff with a list of properties she believes are illegal rooming houses, but feels ignored.

Mark Sraga, the city’s director of investigation services in the licensing division, says that’s not the case. “We have in fact laid charges against one of those properties, and we’re continuing our investigations into other ones.”

He adds that sometimes residents mistakenly believe a dwelling is being used as an illegal rooming house. “A bunch of students living together and sharing a house does not make it necessarily a rooming house,” he says.

“That’s what we’re trying to do with this report. We’ve identified better and clearer definitions and descriptions of what is and what is not a rooming house and the enforcement regulations to go with it.”

Last spring, the 70-year-old Wloch says she could take it no more.

With her walls shaking and dog barking, due to the music pumping out of speakers set up in a parking lot at Humber, Wloch says she marched across the street and confronted a DJ - with a broken bottle in her hand. Police laid criminal charges.

“My nerves, I guess, got the better of me,” she says. “I’m usually pretty good at controlling stuff and I have for the past ten years.”

Councillor Vincent Crisanti, who represents the area in his Ward 1 (Etobicoke North), bristles at the suggestion that he has not responded to resident complaints, citing various public meetings and visits to constituents.

“It’s been an ongoing and growing frustration in that community, and I feel for them,” says Crisanti, one of four deputy mayors.

But he also feels the problem could be made better with regulation, even if it’s an unpopular position for some.

“The tools that we have right now just aren’t adequate for our municipal licensing people to go out there and do the enforcement that they need to do,” he says.

“They don’t have the right-of-entry. Anybody answering the door can just say sorry and close the door. It’s very difficult to control.”

He suggests rooming houses be regulated in a similar manner to restaurants, subject to random inspections. Crisanti would also like to see the number of renters limited to four or five.

“I see the light at the end of the tunnel here. I see that there will be solutions. Will everybody be happy with that? Absolutely not. How do you keep everyone happy in anything in government and in life? Will the majority be happy, absolutely.”