NEWS RELEASE
CITY OF ORILLIA
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At its meeting on Dec. 11, 2017, City Council directed staff to initiate an amendment to the City’s Zoning By-law that will help bring illegal dwelling units into compliance that are located east of Highway 11.
In order for a dwelling unit to be legal in the City of Orillia, it must be zoned to permit the use, it must have received a building permit (unless the unit existed prior to 1975), and it must be maintained in accordance with the Ontario Fire Code.
If approved, the amendment will recognize most properties east of Highway 11 with existing illegal dwelling units and consider them a permitted use allowing most property owners to apply for building permits to legalize the dwelling units. If the Zoning By-law is not changed, then illegal dwelling units that are not permitted in the current Zoning By-law will need to be removed and tenants displaced.
“It’s very common in cities like Orillia for single homes to be converted without building permits. The issue with this is that tenants may be living in an unsafe space and not even know it,” said Mayor Steve Clarke. “The goal of this amendment is to help property owners bring their building into compliance and create safe and legal units without having to remove tenants.”
In many cases, these properties are sold and the new property owner is not aware the dwelling units may have been created without building permits. This places the property owner at risk in terms of liability, insurance coverage, and prosecution from the municipality. The removal of illegal units also results in evictions for the tenants, which may place these citizens in a housing crisis.
Staff will begin to work on the necessary public planning process to amend the City’s Zoning By-law. Property owners in residential areas that will be potentially impacted by the change will receive a Notice of Public Meeting in their mail to notify of them of the upcoming Council meeting to discuss the proposed changes. It is anticipated that this planning process will occur in 2018.
“Since 2016, we’ve had a team of staff in Planning, Building, Fire, and Legislative Services working together to develop potential solutions to help the City achieve increased compliance with respect the legalization of dwelling units,” said Kelly Smith, Chief Building Official. “It is critically important that we ensure all units in the City are legal to ensure that tenants are living in safe, legal housing.”
In order to facilitate an expedited process, staff will also be putting forward a request in the 2019 budget process for additional resources to assist with the backlog of illegal dwelling units which require building permits.
The City of Orillia is a city of 31,000 people in the heart of Ontario’s Lake Country on the shores of Lake Couchiching and Lake Simcoe. Visit our website at orillia.ca.
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