‘We have a real problem’: Taking rental licensing pilot city-wide could cost $4.3 million

The residential rental license pilot study is out, and will be presented to council on Monday.

A report heading to city council shows Windsor’s Residential Rental Licensing (RRL) pilot program achieved the aims of improving safety conditions of rental units but expanding it city-wide may be prohibitively expensive.

On Monday, council will discuss the options to move forward or kill the RRL program administration, pegged at a $4.3 million cost should it be rolled out across Windsor in its current format.

“I don’t think that the proposal or the modeling that administration put forward in the report on the city-wide program is the only way to do this,” said Fabio Costante, the Ward 2 city councillor, in an interview with CTV News.

Costante argues the report vindicates the thrust behind the study and shows the need for rental licensing and safety inspections is great.

The pilot focused on Wards 1 and 2. Within those areas, the report shows only roughly a third of the units belonging to landlords who volunteered complied with safety standards on their first inspections.

“If the entire sample size and Wards 1 and 2 were part of this project, that number of 29 per cent, as low as it is and shocking as it is, would probably be even lower,” said Costante. “And so, we have a real problem.”

The report highlights the “essentially voluntary” nature of the program may have impacted results and participation. Hiring staff to carry out the program became a struggle because of its innate short-term scope.

The two-year pilot ended on February 13.

Taking it city-wide, as outlined in the city report, would require annual licensing fees to jump 34 per cent to $625 at a minimum to cover the costs of carrying out the program based on 7,000 applications a year, which is an estimated 50 per cent of the rental licence pool.

Costante calls that the “Cadillac” model and believes it will take many more years to grow the licencing registry to that point.

Instead, the councillor suggests a tiered approach to sort out good and bad actors may help to drill down on the problem more efficiently and more cheaply.

“Why do we have to inspect them every year as an example? Right? Why don’t we inspect them every two to three years, or four years? And have classes of landlords so that we’re surgically narrowing in on the bad actors in our city,” Costante suggested.

Path Forward

Administration recommends the bylaw be put in abeyance to allow more time to revise the program to be more cost effective.

That could keep the law on the books without necessarily enforcing it.

Repealing the bylaw could open up the city to litigation again should council decide to launch a new rental licensing scheme.

While Ontario’s highest court struck down a challenge from a group of landlords and sided with the city in upholding the bylaw, Costante — a lawyer himself — is wary of further legal disruptions.

“If they want to spend all that money on lawyers and radio ads as opposed to simply investing in this program that ensures that the people that are providing services for are living in safe conditions. That’s their prerogative,” said Costante. “We’re going to continue doing what we have to do.”

**Disclaimer: The author of this report is a landlord, but the property falls outside the scope of the RRL study and did not participate in any legal action against the City of Windsor. **