Residents in the city’s east end are banding together in an effort to bring back their neighbourhood.
Clint Tyler, who has lived on Rosenfeld Drive in Barrie for nearly 30 years, told BarrieToday, he and his neighbours are fed up with what they say are absentee landlords who are renting their properties — mostly two- or three-bedroom homes — as rooming houses to upwards of eight people at a time.
Tyler and his neighbours have created the Ward 1 Residents Association in hopes of bringing as many voices to the issue as possible. The goal, he noted, is to get Barrie city council to create a bylaw to regulate these types of rentals and to hold landlords accountable.
“It’s not about home ownership, it's about being a good citizen," he said. "There are many good people who are renting here and who are great citizens and are part of the community. The problem is the absentee landlords who will not respond to any request for help.
“These absentee landlords have zero involvement in wanting to take care of the homes," added Tyler, a retired clinical social worker. "I can’t tell you how many times my neighbours and I have had to call the city and ask them to have someone cut the lawn, deal with all the garbage and there are seven or eight cars in the driveway. And that’s not right.”
These issues, he added, are affecting the quality of life for residents.
“When people aren’t viewing themselves as being part of a community, they don’t take care of things and the landlords don’t cut the grass. It may sound silly, but it’s the little things that make a community," Tyler said.
The concerns are not only for the lack of maintenance and the sheer number of these types of properties in the neighbourhood, but also for the safety of the tenants who are crowded into these homes, said Tyler.
“We want a peaceful neighbourhood and we want people who want to live a normal life, but the overcrowding is unsafe for people living there,” he said.
A city bylaw, Tyler says, also states these types of rentals are not to be closer than 70 metres from each other.
“We have some that are three in a row. It’s really blockbusting," he said. "We’ve already had one family who told us they moved for that reason and I know a few of my neighbours are considering selling if this continues.”
Ken and Barbie Irving moved to Rosenfeld Drive 20 years ago because they were drawn to what was then a quiet, family-orientated neighbourhood. Unfortunately, in the last couple of years, that sense of community has started to wane, they say.
The Irvings now plan to leave Barrie altogether.
“A few years ago my neighbour… moved to Horseshoe Valley and that is when all the problems began,” said Ken Irving, adding the new owners purchased the home as an investment and began to rent it out. “The first year was brutal: cars racing around, loud parties (and) illegal activities to the point where Barrie police raided the house and removed most of the tenants.”
During that time, houses in the area started going up for sale quite frequently, he added, noting most were sold to investors.
“Since then the houses have become overwhelmed with tenants who are very disrespectful of the neighbourhood and the people in the neighbourhood," Irving added. "There are starting to be a lot of families with children moving into the neighbourhood (and) it's frightening to watch them ride a bicycle on the street especially at the corner where most of the want-to-be race-car drivers live.
“This is not the only area of Barrie that is under siege. My wife (has been) talking with co-workers (and) found the same problems occurring all over Ward 1 as well as other parts of the city," he said. "I will be actively helping the people in our neighbourhood with this problem until we find a suitable area to relocate to.”
Franca and Phil Marinelli say they have also reached the point where they are seriously considering moving.
“We are being chased out by people who don’t even live here: the absent landlords. We live right next door to a house that has an average of eight cars that park there and at least eight young men that reside in that house. It is obviously being used as a rooming house, but legally it isn’t registered as one,” the couple said in a response to questions from BarrieToday. “There is grave concern for their safety should a fire break out because there is no way someone who is sleeping downstairs can get out of those windows.”
Landlords, they added, need to be held accountable for the safety of their tenants as well as the state of their property.
“It looks like we’re living in a slum. These tenants do not respect the property as it is not uncommon to see garbage strewn everywhere," said the Marinellis. "They don’t put garbage out on pickup days and they don’t know how to recycle as the bins aren’t picked up because they’re just full of whatever gets thrown in.”
The Marinellis says they have even made repeated attempts to reach to the landlord about the state of the property and have been rebuffed.
“We have wonderful people living here and we want to continue to live in this end (of the city, but) we can’t turn a blind eye on what’s happening here," they said.
Coun. Clare Riepma, who represents Ward 1, told BarrieToday oftentimes these rentals are owned by people who don’t live in the city, or even the country.
“They rent them out and many of them are just fine and I don’t receive complaints, but there are always a number of them that cause a problem," he said. "Often there are up to eight people who are unrelated to each other living in a house."
There has even been one property that had up to 18 people in one house, Riepma noted.
“First of all, there’s a lot of traffic in and out of the house. Secondly, if you’ve got six people living there chances are you’ve got six cars as well," he said. "They are parked in the driveway, on the grass, all over the street.”
A lack of property maintenance and garbage disposal issues are also often a concern, the councillor said.
“These are things that never happen when the owner actually lives in a house and rents out a room or two or three," he added. "It only happens when the owner is an absentee landlord.”
Riepma has attempted to have the issue addressed by the city in the past, but was unsuccessful at the time. He’s not giving up, however, and plans to try again.
“There’s been a petition before council, but there’s a movement afoot to ask council to pass a bylaw requiring an absentee landlord to get an annual licence similar to a business licence," he said. "Hopefully, that would bring around the bad operators and give the city some control in getting agreements as to where the garbage would be, and where people would park, how many bedrooms were going to use.
"It’s unfortunate that we have to go this route," Riepma added. "A few bad apples spoil the barrel, but as it turns out on this piece of street, we have a number of bad operators all in a row. That’s what has the neighbourhood concerned.
"It’s completely unfair to the people who have lived there for years and are raising their families there to see their neighbourhood turn into an investors' jungle.”
