Stop the Degradation of East Barrie Neighbourhoods by Absentee Landlord Rental/Boarding Houses
Houses owned by absentee landlords are increasing in East Barrie and are impacting existing family homes in the East End. There are too many dilapidated properties, overcrowded rentals, and poorly managed boarding houses in this area resulting in noise issues, parking problems and a reduced quality of life for surrounding residents.
Quickly pass bylaws to regulate and license absentee landlords, prevent the further proliferation of boarding houses and to pro-actively enforce parking, zoning and property standard bylaws.
As an alternative to boarding houses, encourage the development of bona fide (student) residences in more suitable locations near Georgian College ie: Bell Farm Road, on the college campus etc....
Anonymous
shared this idea
The 2022 Budget was approved by Council on Monday, December 6. It includes funding for four additional by-law enforcement officers. This will allow for additional hours of service to respond to yard maintenance issues, public parking issues, nuisance matters etc. Response levels and the achievement of timely response will be improved, and hours of service will be increased.
As outlined in our previously posted update, consideration of this funding was undertaken in place of an amendment to the Business Licensing By-law 2006-266 re a pilot project that would require absentee landlords to obtain a business licence. Watch the related discussion that took place at the October 25 City Council meeting: https://youtu.be/emr_TE69FbA?t=1200
To report by-law violations please call (705) 739-4241 at the time of occurrence. You may need to leave a message—Enforcement Services staff retrieve messages from this number 7 days/week, 7:30am–11pm from April through November and 24/7 from December through March. (Outside of these hours, please call the Barrie Police non-emergency line to report infractions at time of occurrence: 705-725-7025.)
As this suggestion has been adopted in some capacity by the City, its status is now Completed. For more information on this forum, please refer to the FAQs: http://bit.ly/COB-forum-FAQs
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Jeff Garner commented
Absentee landlords need to be regulated. I'm sure there are some who maintain their properties well, however so many do not. One in my neighbourhood loves to collect the monthly rent cheque but makes no attempt to maintain the property. Owner doesn't live in Barrie so has no reason to care about the neighbourhood. Rental properties are businesses and should be regulated/licensed accordingly. We need action on this sooner than later. Thank you
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Jani Denny
commented
I agree with the issues --parking on lawns, lawns not cut, too many cars in lanes and litter on lawns. They seem simple enough to solve by the city checking on houses in areas where these things occur. Is there still a list of legal boarding houses online? And what is being done about illegal ones?
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Stephanie Harris commented
Who cares how many cars they have? Or how many people are staying? What are you doing to solve the situation? Did you even try to talk to them? Not many have the luxury of just renting for themselves? Do you even know how much rent is these days? Why haven’t you offered to help them?
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Leigh Archer
commented
I live next to an unlicensed boarding house with an absent landlord. I am in a detached but share a front lawn with them. We cut the lawn, we pick up their garbage that they throw out of their cars. This is an issue, I can assure you. There are poor tenants out there and the landlord needs to be held responsible.
8 cars for a 2 car driveway. 11 men living in the 1100 square foot house. They haven’t brought out garbage since they moved in. It’s piled in the back yard. They dump buckets of unknown content down the side of our houses.
The absent landlords are the issue and this needs to be addressed. We beg of council to deal with this!!!! -
Scott Harradine commented
Thanks Geoff. We’re all looking, at least ‘most’ of us are looking, for solutions to an issue that NEEDS to be addressed. Attempts to distract are not helpful and ‘distractors’ should move their ‘issue’ to their own ‘City Suggestion’ stream.
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Anonymous
commented
Thank you Geoff. We are certainly striving for civil discourse on this matter.
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Anonymous
commented
I signed up to this as I thought it was a way to stay abreast of the changes. but I'm tired of reading comments that have nothing to do with matter at hand. perhaps if we had more respect for each other, the issues wouldnt become so inflamed. a shame, but I'm unsubscribing and will look at other ways to keep abreast of EE issues.
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Stephanie Harris, who are you?
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Time for ‘business houses’ to be licensed like ALL other ‘businesses’!
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Not at all. In fact you just keep probing my point. You think buildings just sprout up in the middle of no where?
Like it or not there are no other buildings hence why they rent there and it’s not just students, it’s all over Barrie. Explain why south end also has hidden rentals. Trying to build even more buildings won’t solve this when the market itself is over valued. Instead of that why not just TALK to your neighbors like an adult?
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Anonymous
commented
You seem to be missing the point. It's all in the text. Please re-read, especially the last paragraph. Your concerns about housing scarcity, at least for students could be addressed in the manner suggested. More bona-fide residences could help relieve the housing pressure and reduce the proliferation of boarding houses. I don't think many people want a rowdy boarding house next to them. Would you?
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See. There are “illegal” dwellings all over the city. Why? Because rent is very high due to an over priced housing market. Yet you blame some international students...”. Instead of focusing on the actual problem. Nor did you answer any of my questions.
Thanks for proving my point though
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If by ‘specific group of people’ you mean absentee landlords/owners of unlicensed ‘business houses’ in residential zones, count me ‘in’. If by ‘specific group of people’ you mean the international student tenants of these illegal ‘business houses’ for the most part I consider them victims of which some of the 4 different groupings that have occupied the illegal and unsafe ‘business house’ next to me over the last 3 yrs have been very good neighbours and some have been extremely bad, nightmarish, neighbours.
Race has nothing to do with this. -
Anonymous
commented
Stephanie Harris, your recent argument is presumptive from the start. The follow-on once again contains ad hominem attacks.
Your posts might get some more regard if they are more relevant, appropriate and constructive to this forum.
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Mynameis Jeff
commented
I dont think anyone brought up any specific race Stephanie. It is talking about students. Whether they’re white, black, brown, red, blue, etc. And its not just what they do with their grass or where they park. Some students are just loud at night and not considerate.
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Anonymous
commented
Thank you City of Barrie, for removing the inappropriate comments from that one person.
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Comments have been flagged and removed from this thread due to their disrespectful nature and pejorative word use. Please be respectful. For more information please refer to the Terms of Service: https://barrie.uservoice.com/tos
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Sonja Franke
commented
I agree with Jessica this is about absentee landlord. As far as the parking is concerned, there is no parking on the front lawn or boulevard in the city of Barrie. Send complaints about this issue to Bylaw.
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Jessica Melo
commented
I want to say that as both a landlord and resident of the east end this petition does not seem to me (correct me if I am wrong) to be designed to increase rents or prevent people from renting in our area. What it is trying to do is (again as far as I see but I may be wrong) stop landlords that are not working in the best interests of their tenants and this community. Dirty, dangerous living conditions that bring down our property value and make it difficult to enjoy our beautiful end of town. My family has 2 houses near the college that rent exclusively to students. Yes occasionally the grass overgrows a bit, or the snow doesn't get shoveled one day, a racoon gets into the garbage and it isn't immediately cleaned however when we notice these things a quick friendly email is usually all that is required to get tenants to fix the issue. For landlords that pay no attention these issues often are left. More and more people from out of town are buying investment properties but not maintaining them. That is the issue as I see it.
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Paul
commented
100% agree. One home on my street across from me has 14 students living there. The grass is rarely cut. Snow isn’t cleared. Too many cars for the driveway.