To the editor:
Re: 'Regulating rooming houses a priority to ensure safety,' Letters, Jan. 29.
I found the aforementioned letter both unrealistic and offensive.
It portrays once again those who would like to keep our residential communities free from mini hotel businesses, legal and illegal, as selfish, unreasonable people. Some have gone so far as to call us racists and classists.
This is not only unfair and incorrect, but also reflects badly on the social services the author represents.
I don't know why a community with rooming house businesses would be any safer than ones without them? They drive families away, schools close and our once vibrant family communities die as businesses move in. Why do we have planning guidelines that provide for residential communities in the first place if we don't intend to protect them?
Why are there so many illegal rooming houses in areas where they are legal?
The answer is that they are more profitable and they will continue to be.
The letter-writer stated people are required to get a licence to operate a rooming house. Are these the same people who are breaking the law with illegal rooming houses? It makes no sense.
If a rooming house goes from legal to illegal because of non compliance, then we are back to Square 1: no bylaw enforcement, no taxes paid and no respect or protection for the community.
Those who say there are laws in place to protect us have not had much experience with enforcement, or should I say the lack of enforcement.
When we started calling any group (not necessarily related) a family and legalized second suites, we gave licence to all kinds of misuse.
The new breed of second suites is not the one where the owner lives on site and supervises the property. They are seldom a problem. It is the businesses created by those who see
a financial opportunity to exploit our residential communities and vulnerable individuals that we must guard against.
There are no records kept of second suites and no effort has been made to regulate them, so we already have problems we ignore.
Many so-called second suite homes are already well established rooming house businesses. Why are these new second-suite businesses not registered, taxed and regulated if it is as easy as asking them to register?
There is another side to this coin and that is "reality."
Communities do have rights.
As a lawyer, letter-writer Skof has a focused agenda that fails to recognize those rights.
We, the communities, do not have funding as do those promoting rooming houses, but we do have our councillors and a vote. I hope that will be enough to stop this nonsense.
I think Scarborough-Agincourt Councillor Mike Del Grande deserves an apology.
Murray Hedges