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By NATHAN POORTING, Staff Writer
In coming months, the city of Welland will consider a bylaw enforcing dramatic changes to the current student-housing situation. College faculty, landlords and students from around the region are already seeing problems.
The proposed bylaw will force student-housing landlords to register
with the city and pay a licensing fee of $500 for each rental unit with
an annual cost of $350 in subsequent years. The bylaw would also
restrict rental housing to a maximum of four tenants.
"It's like
if General Motors increases the cost of its vehicles," explains Cindy
Shepherd, student-rental owner and Welland resident.
"It's not the
dealerships that are going to get hurt, it's the people who buy the
car."
Shepherd says that although the bylaw is designed to target
"absentee landlords" who don't take care of their rentals, it will
penalize every landlord in the area and those costs will then be passed
down to the students.
Shepherd says she is not against landlord
registration because "if something happens in a household right now,
nobody knows who to contact."
David Wismer, head of Welland's
largest student-rental company, Niagara Student Housing, says licensing
rentals will not fix the problems. Wismer and his wife, Jackie, own 13
homes in the Woodlawn Road - First Avenue area, with a total of 88
rental units between them.
Wismer says capping the houses with a
maximum of four tenants will displace about 42 per cent of his rental
business. He agrees the students will be the ones
losing out.
"The
average student with us pays $5,000 per economic year. If you take away
42 per cent of my income, each student will now have to pay $8,750."
Welland's
Bylaw Enforcement Manager David Ferguson says this law will give his
team the ability to take care of a number of issues, including garbage
and upkeep of lawns but also more serious matters like the safety of
rental units.
"Maybe the guy has created a bedroom in a cellar or
too close to the furnace."...We have nothing in place that controls how
many people live in there, or any safety items that may be required."
This
bylaw does not target student rentals specifically, says Ferguson.
Effectively it will be a "city-wide" law that applies to all rental
properties. However, Wismer says these proposed regulations will only
spread the students out across the city, spreading the issues out as
well.
Wismer blames absentee landlords for a majority of the
student-rental problems in Welland. He says he recalls the "terrible
reputation" First Avenue had in 2001 and explains that since starting
his company in 2003, seven of the 13 houses he has purchased have been
from absent student-housing owners.
"When I think back to 2001, I
remember lawns being two-feet high and every third driveway looking like
a garbage dump. We've come a long way since then."
Wismer believes
the city already has the tools it needs to address the problems the new
regulation outlines and disagrees with the city's claim they "don't have
enough teeth in their bylaw." He suggests this will be a "major blow"
to the students who depend upon the housing surrounding Niagara
College. Director of Student Services at Niagara College,
Brigitte Chiki, estimates there are 10,000 off-campus students in the
region between the college and Brock University, with a significant
portion living in Welland.
Chiki has been the "go-to" person for
resident complaints and other student housing problems since the 1990s.
She is part of a committee that monitors the student rental/behaviour
issues for all campuses.
"The problem is getting bigger because
colleges and universities are getting bigger," she explains. "This is
not something unique to Niagara. This is happening in many different
municipalities and being handled differently."
Chiki says the
college's residence is full and there are no plans to add more space in
the near future. With the completion of the new Applied Health
Institute scheduled for spring 2011, she wonders if the extra thousand
students will find places to live.
"The most important thing is to
have safe, affordable housing and to maintain it. If all the rooms are
safe according to fire code, why shouldn't a student be able to live
there?"
This is a theme echoed by Wismer, who is urging his tenants
and other students to become involved with what's happening around them
right now. "It's not just between the landlords and the city council
people. The students need to have a voice in this," says Wismer.
"This
is a big deal. Are they sleeping at the wheel?"
On April 13,
representatives of Niagara College, Welland Fire and Niagara Regional
Police departments, city bylaw enforcement, area landlords and residents
gathered for a two-hour meeting to discuss the college's year-end plan
to host a Student Administrative Council (SAC) event with live music and
an outdoor pig roast. These discussions quickly opened the door to
opinions and suggestions around the room about the city's proposed
bylaw.
Although no common ground was found, the tone of the
conversation suggested the city has a long way to go before a
student-rental bylaw will fly.
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