New rules for rooming houses up for discussion at planning committee

thepeterboroughexaminer.com
March 21, 2015
By Joelle Kovach

A new set of rules governing the zoning and operation of rooming houses in Peterborough is going to be discussed at City Hall on Monday night.

Councillors are expected to look at a proposal from city staff outlining how the rules could be updated so the city can more easily oversee rooming houses.

The problem, says the staff report, is that big houses throughout the city are used as rental units "without municipal guidance" to ensure the houses meet safety standards.

The current zoning bylaw requires staff to try to build evidence on how rent is collected, who lives there and whether the occupants of the house live together and function much as a family does.

But figuring out whether the multiple tenants of a house interact with one another and function "as a single housekeeping unit" is a nearly impossible task for bylaw enforcement officers, the staff report says.

Instead, staff is suggesting that the city start counting the number of bedrooms being rented out.

Here's how it would work:

• If you have a four-bedroom house and are renting all the bedrooms, you need no special licence or zoning.
• But if you have a five-bedroom house, and you live there and rent out the other four bedrooms, you'd need a business licence (because you are deriving an income from the property).
• If you have a home with more than five bedrooms for rent - and you don't live there - you'd be required to zone the building as a lodging house. That means you'd need to meet special parking requirements as well as particular requirements of the Building Code and fire zone.

Sitting as the planning committee on Monday night, councillors are expected to discuss it.