The City of Surrey has endorsed a new bylaw to help protect the condition of rental properties in the city and provide a better dispute-resolution process to deal with unsafe accommodation.
The city has requested the provincial government provide sufficient funding to Surrey and other local governments to undertake the work associated with standards of maintenance bylaws.
Currently, such responsibility is the mandate of the Residential Tenancy Branch, but because of insufficient funding, local governments have been taking on the responsibility.
Surrey mayor Dianne Watts said, “Unfortunately, we have renters who are living in unhealthy and unsafe housing conditions because landlords are not properly maintaining their buildings, and that is completely unacceptable.
“The current dispute-resolution process is not effective, so we want to work with the Residential Tenancy Branch to better protect and maintain affordable housing in our city.”
The proposed bylaw will address issues relating to the provision of water, heat, light, basic utilities and elevator service, as well as provide the city with a tool for responding to tenant complaints.
Councillor Judy Villeneuve, chair of the social planning advisory committee, said, “The responsibility for ensuring rental housing stock is properly maintained lies with the province, but there are many cases where landlords are not doing repairs, or it’s taking an unreasonable amount of time to fix unsafe conditions.”
On May 10, the Lower Mainland Local Government Association unanimously passed the City of Surrey’s resolution calling on the province to amend the Residential Tenancy Act and enforce decisions related to the upkeep of rental tenancies within a reasonable timeframe. The resolution will now be forwarded to the Union of British Columbia Municipalities for consideration at the annual convention in September.
