Ontario city cracking down on ‘slum’ landlords who ‘ruin neighbourhoods’
Global News
Early in the year, Brampton launched a program to make small landlords in some of the city's wards obtain business licences and agree to enhanced scrutiny.
The mayor of an Ontario city struggling with rental and renovation problems says the rollout of a strict new landlord licensing pilot scheme has been a “resounding success” in the parts of the city it has been applied, just under half a year after it was launched.
Early in the year, Brampton launched — and then after backlash, relaunched — a program to make small landlords in some of the city’s wards obtain business licences and agree to enhanced scrutiny.
The city’s Residential Rental Licensing pilot program makes landlords of between one and four units sign up for licences and submit to inspections.
As of Sept. 16, Brampton said 2,200 licences have been issued in the city and 4,700 inspections have taken place. Those inspections have been 611 penalties handed out, with fines totalling $83,500.
Coun. Rowena Santos, who has been a key champion of the program, said it was targeted at bad actors.
“This work we have been doing on the RRL to deal with slum landlords in particular has been going on for a while but it is only one tool that we are using,” she said at city council on Wednesday, recounting a story she said a resident shared of a home with eight refrigerators because there were “like 20 people living in it.”
Though it is early in the program — with barely 25 per cent of the city’s secondary units registered into the new scheme — Mayor Patrick Brown said he was pleased with the progress being made on the crackdown.
“It’s going to take some time,” Brown cautioned, praising “the fact we’ve been able to deal with 43 of those slum lords.”
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