Vaughan's proposed basement apartment policy rankles some residents

Yorkregion.com
April 3, 2014
By Adam Martin-Robbins

City representatives unveiled proposed policies for regulating basement apartments in Vaughan at a public meeting Wednesday night - and not everybody was happy with what they heard.

“We already have a serious parking problem around a lot of townhouse projects,” Frank Greco, a Kleinburg resident and local developer, told several city staffers, members of the secondary suites task force and more than 40 residents assembled at city hall for the meeting.

“You see people parking on the boulevards, you see people parking on their lawns, on the street every which way, blocking the roads where fire trucks can’t get by. With all due respect, adding secondary suites to townhouses makes absolutely no sense.”

The city’s proposed regulations, if approved, would allow so-called secondary suites in detached, semi-detached and street-level townhouses, as opposed to stacked town homes, provided they meet a number of provisions including:

- There can only be one secondary suite per dwelling;
- There must be parking for at least three vehicles;
- The home must have more than a nine-metre wide frontage;
- The apartment must have a separate entrance at the side or back of the house;
- The basement apartment must not take up more than 45 per cent of the home’s total floor space;
- Basement apartments will not be allowed in homes with boarders, a home business, a daycare or private tutoring and;
-The basement apartment must comply with the building code, fire code and all city bylaws.

Another man, who declined to give his name, asked if city staff gave any consideration to preserving the “suburban lifestyle” that many people moved to Vaughan to enjoy.

“If you’re not some young family starting out, or terribly old, and you just want to raise a family in a home, not housing stock, I don’t see that being addressed here,” he said.

“Say you’re lucky enough that you’ve got a bunch of single families on a quite little street and someone wants to come in and make a ton of money and buys the house next door and every other year puts in new tenants. That changes what, to me, the concept of the suburbs were and still are. ... What can I do if I don’t want to see new faces every year next door?”

“To be plain, nothing,” shot back Gus Michaels, Vaughan’s director of bylaw and compliance. “The city can only regulate what’s within its powers.”

“Vaughan is no longer a suburb,” added Leo Grellette, the city’s director of building standards.” Vaughan is now growing into its own city. I understand your values and wanting to maintain how you live. ... But, I think, we’re evolving and it’s always at the expense of something.”

A few people said it seems unfair that landlords will make money by renting out their basements, while those who choose not to rent out their basements ultimately end up paying higher taxes to help cover the additional strain the tenants will put on city infrastructure and services.

City officials said there is little that can be done about that given the current system bases property taxes on a home’s market value, not the number of people living there, thus resulting in a basement apartment only generating a nominal tax increase for homes that have them.

It was noted that the city is exploring options for recouping some costs created by legalizing basement apartments - such as licensing or inspection fees, but city officials said it’s important to strike a balance between costs and ensuring it's not so expensive that people have illegal apartments.

One of the other major concerns raised at the meeting was how the city intends to get people who currently have basement apartments in their homes, illegally, to bring them into compliance once the new regulations are in place.

“We haven’t developed how we’re going to approach that yet. Our interest is compliance, not penalty,” bylaw director Mr. Michaels said. "A lot of landlords that have secondary suites are responsible landlords. ...Our focus is going to be on encouraging landlords to do the right thing. My experience in enforcement, which goes back a number of years, is most people do want to do the right thing when they know what they’re supposed to do. So we’re going to bank on that in order to improve our communities.”

And, of course, several people raised concerns about putting more vehicles on the city’s already congested roads.

“Traffic is an issue that we all deal with on a daily basis and it’s something that the city is looking at,” Armine Hassakourians, policy planner at the city, said. “We know that there are traffic concerns in the city and that comes with a growing city.”

Vaughan’s new regulations are expected to come into force in 2015.