City eyes legalizing rooming houses in North York, East York and Scarborough
Regulating rooming houses would give the city tools to address the problems caused by illegal operations.

TheStar.com
Oct. 1, 2016
Betsy Powell and Alicja Siekierska

The door appears to be opening to legal rooming houses across Toronto — including in North York and Scarborough, where many operate illegally despite local prohibitions.

“I would like to see a system that understands that these homes exist, not only in areas where they exist right now, but in areas all across the city,” said Councillor Ana Bailao, council’s housing advocate.

“They house a variety of residents, students, new Canadians, and others (for whom) that’s all they can afford. It’s an important part of the housing spectrum, and we need to make sure that we keep tenants safe.”

Rooming houses are currently permitted and regulated in Etobicoke and within the old city of Toronto. Owner-operators are charged a fee and must agree to annual inspections from licensing, building and fire department personnel.

In York, they can operate without a licence.

In total, there are 433 rooming houses operating legally.

City staff has identified hundreds more that operate illegally, including many in North York, East York and Scarborough.

Next month, a staff report will go before the city’s executive committee that will outline “issues and concerns” about the current regulatory system and “how we need to consider other areas of the city where it would be appropriate, perhaps, to have rooming houses,” said Mark Sraga, director of investigation services with the city’s municipal and licensing division.

“We need to legalize them to some extent, and then those illegal ones we can then tackle because people will have alternatives to where they can go and live.”

Staff will be looking for direction from councillors to have more public consultations before a final report is issued with recommendations on how to manage and inspect rooming houses.

Sraga expects to issue that report before this council’s term expires in 2018.

Council will have final say on whether rooming houses should be licensed city-wide.

On a recent drive through a residential area in his ward (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt), Councillor Jim Karygiannis pointed out several reported rooming houses.

He has registered many complaints about rooming houses to the city’s 311 line, citing building and fire code violations. They are then investigated by city inspectors.

“I’ve got a rooming house on every street. If a regulation goes through, there’s going to be an uproar,” Karygiannis says. “If we’re going to allow rooming houses, (Municipal and Licensing Standards) is going to have to have teeth and be able to go into houses and take a look and enforce strict penalties.”

Dennis Pfeffer, who lives near Steeles Ave. and Warden Ave. in Scarborough, called the city when he suspected his new neighbour was converting a recently renovated family home into a rooming house.

“It was quite obvious,” Pfeffer said. “They were building all sorts of separate rooms, bringing in extra bathrooms.” Pfeffer said the city investigated and came by the house.

“After they did that, the house went up for sale again.”

Currently, Scarborough homes can legally contain a separate rental apartment and rooms for just two boarders.

In 2014, the city launched a review to look at the regulation and enforcement of standards in rooming houses, following “an increasing number of complaints” to the city about illegal rooming houses that are “not suited for human occupancy.”

“In many wards across the city, issues are being raised about the impact of rooming houses within communities themselves, including: parking, litter and noise issues,” said the report, which followed city-wide public consultations.

Last year, the Toronto Rooming House Review report found wide acceptance for making rooming houses legal — except in Scarborough, where residents voiced concerns about threats to property values and safety.

Scarborough was the only area in an online survey where more respondents opposed broader licensing than supported it, the report said.

Bailao said she hopes Scarborough residents are willing to be “brought into the fold” and have a conversation, “because these are their neighbors.”

Denis Lanoue, head of a residents group in northwest Scarborough, said rooming houses with numerous occupants have a place, but not in residential neighborhoods.

“People should not buy a big single-family home and pile up a bunch of poor people and not think it will affect the community. It does affect the community. We are not living in a commercial area; we are living in a very nice residential area,” he said.

“There are acceptable standards … but we have seen people piled up like sardines. Think about the house that is about 3,000 square feet and you have 25 people in there. It’s like a hotel.”

A 2014 report by the Wellesley Institute said the stereotype of the rooming house as a downtown issue has overshadowed the fact that this as a form of affordable housing that exists across Toronto.

“As rooming houses have surfaced in suburban communities, their legal status has left them unregulated and has prevented them from being seen as an affordable housing option,” says the report, called Toronto’s Suburban Rooming House: Just Spin on a Downtown “Problem”?

The focus needs to shift from the “imagined geography of a 1970s skid row neighbourhood and into a contemporary vision of affordable housing options for all.”