Landlords call for face-to-face meeting as council set to restart rental licensing in Brampton
Published March 22, 2024 at 2:51 pm
A group of Brampton landlords say they want a sit-down with Mayor Patrick Brown and city councillors before restarting the city’s controversial rental licensing program.
“This program won’t do anything for the non-compliant units,” said Azad Goyat, one of several Brampton landlords who made their concerns about parts of the now-frozen pilot program known with a protest in front of Brampton City Hall on Wednesday.
The protests followed a council meeting where Goyat and others urged the mayor and other councillors to reboot the program, which is set to come back online by the end of April after only being active for a few weeks in January.
Goyat says he’s a compliant landlord and that the protestors aren’t against the city taking steps against non-compliant landlords, illegal rentals or unsafe living conditions. But he says the protesters feel the Residential Rental Licensing Pilot project (RRL) is targeting the wrong landlords and “won’t do anything for the non-compliant units.”
“We are not strangers to the city of Brampton…so why is the city afraid of talking to us?” Goyat told Insauga.com.
Goyat says landlords want a face-to-face meeting with the city and council to address their concerns, including limiting the two-year pilot project to specific areas of the city. Some property owners have said limiting the program to specific areas unfairly targets some landlords and may even go against human rights codes.
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“Talk to the residents,” Goyat told Insauga.com. “If you’re implementing it, implement (it in) the entire city. And organize an in person town hall with residents so they can give feedback.”
He also says the city already has enough tools to deal with property standards concerns like parking and lawn maintenance, and doesn’t see how added enforcement options and increased fines would lead to non-compliant landlords registering under the program.
Despite the pushback, the city has said it has no intention of letting the RRL pilot die on the vine.
A report to council on Wednesday says online applications for the RLL pilot will resume “for the end of March 2024 and no later than April 19” and require any rental property with four or fewer units to register with the city.
But the restart will see some tweaks to the program, which was paused following an earlier protest by Goyat and other landlords, as well as a petition calling on the city to scrap the pilot.
The city is removing proof of ownership, corporate ownership, criminal record check, and electrical and gas inspection requirements for landlords under the rejigged program, but will still require all applicants of registered additional residential units (ARUs) and single house-keeping units to obtain a business licence.
When the program does restart it will only be active in Wards 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 and apply to rentals with four units or less.
Licensing under the program was supposed to cost $300 annually, but fees for landlords are being waived for the two years the pilot if property owners register by June 30.
Goyat says a recent teletown hall meeting didn’t address landlord concerns as questions weren’t geared towards registered units but rather non-compliant ones. A poll at the meeting found 84 per cent of over 7,000 respondents said the city needs to do more to cut down on illegal units.
He and other landlords involved in the protests have also said they were referred to as “slum lords” or “slum landlords” by Brown and Coun. Rowena Santos – comments they said were not directed at specific individuals.
Santos addressed the comment at Wednesday’s council meeting and read the Merriam-Webster definition of a slum landlord, which is “a landlord who receives unusually large profits from substandard, poorly maintained properties.”
“If that is not you, then you don’t have much to worry about,” she said.
The city says RRL was introduced as a way to cut down on an estimated 16,000 unregistered rentals in Brampton.
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