A new bylaw is being developed to toughen the city’s stance on problem properties.
The Good Neighbour Bylaw would consolidate a number of nuisance, property maintenance, and noise bylaws while giving bylaw officers more power to go after owners and residents of problematic homes.
“Fines will be given out for any violation when there’s non-compliance,” explained Community Safety and Enforcement Manager John Ramsay. “The reason for the structure for the fees is because we’re going to start charging people for the time it takes for the police officers, the fire, Bylaws to attend to those locations, and hopefully that will impact them to become compliant with the bylaw.”
A committee of members from Bylaw Services, KFR, RCMP and the Development and Engineering Services Department will be responsible for determining when a home is considered a nuisance.
Bylaw officers will, however, work with landlords to try to gain compliance from tenants.
“It think it’s a good bylaw in that it really does address a big problem in the community,” Councillor Tina Lange said. “I’m hopeful that landlords will be able to work with the city staff, the RCMP, fire department, and resolve some issues that in the past have been very difficult to deal with. As a landlord you can have a very difficult tenant who is doing what you know is criminal activity, who is destroying your property, and as long as they keep paying the rent it is a very difficult, very expensive process to actually get them out of your property.”
