Council okays interim policy on boarding houses

Leamington votes unanimously

By Mark Ribble

LEAMINGTON — There was plenty of discussion at the August 25 meeting of Leamington council regarding a proposed policy to allow changes of use permits in boarding houses within the municipality.

In the end, council voted unanimously to support the temporary interim policy, which in effect brings all of the boarding houses with multiple migrant workers into compliance with previously existing zoning bylaws.

Leamington’s Director of Legal and Legislative Services, Ruth Orton, brought the matter to council regarding the dilemma faced by the building department.

Recent fire inspections of these homes have revealed that more people are living in them than the bylaws allow and safety is a real concern for the Fire Inspector.

“Boarding houses are operated as separate tenancies within a home,” said Orton. “These are not single tenancies.”

The municipality’s current zoning bylaws prevent the use of single dwellings as boarding houses, but the need for additional temporary worker housing has created a safety issue by multiple workers being housed in one home throughout the municipality.

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit normally carries out the yearly inspections of farm-owned boarding houses and they recommend no more than four workers per home.

The Municipality’s fire inspector has recently been issuing work orders requiring the reduction of the number of workers being housed in the homes, or for the homes to be renovated to provide firewalls, self-closing doors, alarm systems and separate exits, among other things.

Meanwhile, because of existing bylaws, the Chief Building Officer cannot issue building permits to bring those homes up to safety standards.

“Building permits cannot be issued to make improvements due to boarding houses not being permitted,” said Orton.

The proposed policy would provide relief from the the bylaw on a temporary basis and allow owners to bring their properties up to safety standards within a certain amount of time.

It would also allow council to revisit the issue and develop a plan to either amend the existing bylaw or come up with a new bylaw concerning boarding houses.

The policy would only cover homes housing temporary foreign workers and would only apply to those homes who had multiple workers prior to August 25.

The building department can then issue a permit for the owners to bring the home up to standards.

It does not apply to temporary isolation due to COVID-19.

Councillor Bill Dunn expressed his concern that owners will spend thousands to bring the home up to standards and then could be denied later if the bylaw isn’t changed.

Councillor John Hammond was concerned about liability in the meantime, until all of the homes get their upgrades.

Deputy Mayor Larry Verbeke asked why this issue is coming to forefront now.

“I was always under the assumption that we already did fire inspections of these properties,” he said. “We also don’t know where all of these boarding houses are.”

Mayor Hilda MacDonald questioned whether an already taxed building department could handle the extra load.

“How are we possibly going to make this work?,” she asked.

In the end, after much discussion, council voted unanimously to pass the policy and revisit the bylaw later in the fall.