In May 2010, city council heard emotional stories of neighbourhoods being turned upside down by too much student housing. One of the delegations was Daphne Wainman-Wood, president of the Old University Neighbourhood Residents’ Association. She said some areas of the city are turning into “student ghettos,” whose signs include “semi-abandoned streetscapes” in summer when university students aren’t around.
Another woman, her voice trembling, told of her daughters being present when her husband had to chase away a young male who was preparing to urinate on their lawn. The resident of Hales Crescent, near the university, said her street had “a decent demographic balance of residents” when she’d moved in 11 years earlier, but was now “in crisis.”
Council responded the following month by freezing creation of more accessory apartments and lodging houses in large areas of Wards 5 and 6.
Then, three months later, council passed a zoning bylaw amendment. Among other things, it set a new 100-metre separation distance for two-unit properties – residential dwellings with accessory apartments – that have a total of more than five bedrooms. The aim was to plug a loophole that absentee landlords were using to circumvent Guelph’s 100-metre separation rule for lodging houses – by putting four tenant units upstairs and then creating a couple of accessory apartments downstairs, and thus avoiding the property being classed as a lodging house.
Now the city’s zoning bylaw amendment of September 2010 has come crashing down, because of unexpected developments at an Ontario Municipal Board appeal. An end to the freeze on creating more accessory apartments and lodging houses in the areas of Guelph most affected by student housing will soon have to follow.
The city has been trying to balance the need for affordable shared-rental housing – for university students, and for others in the community as well – with “the need of neighbourhoods for peace and quiet,” as Mayor Karen Farbridge has put it. It’s a tough balance to achieve, even aside from the human rights implications of the city’s zoning bylaw amendment that have caused this tool to be invalidated. We wish city hall luck in trying to deal with the issue using the main tools left to it – licensing and bylaw enforcement. It’s going to need it.