Residents can access some of these educational materials online via Windsor Fire Services’ website. By - law enforcement also maintains a page on the City’s website on neighbourly behaviour with links and videos on property standards by-laws.

When on-campus classes return, staff from Building and Fire can resume student outreach efforts. By-law Enforcement Officers also attended these event as workloads allow, but increased call volumes have required labour hours to be focused on enforcement activities. To improve coordination between departments and show students the full range of City departments available to keep neighbourhoods safe, By-law Enforcement Officers could join Building and Fire at these events. However, their participation may be limited by workload demands.

To assist residents in the interim, online educational materials could be improved. Those currently available online could be reviewed and those not currently online could be created in a digital form.

Any strategies should be developed in collaboration with post-secondary institutions through the Town and Gown Committee.

On options for a residential rental license that includes a pilot in Ward 2 with the intent of being rolled out city-wide if successful after a definite time period to be decided by council;

The Ontario Human Rights Code prohibits discrimination in housing based on age, with student status being analogous to age. Should a residential rental licensing program be limited to only Ward 2, it will likely be successfully challenged on human rights grounds.

Past court interpretations have struck down initiatives in other municipalities to implement residential rental licensing in areas based on their presumed occupants. When the City of London launched a licensing regime targeting student areas near their post-secondary institutions, a human rights concern was raised and resolved by ensuring the by-law was applied city-wide. Any rental licensing program pursued in Windsor should be piloted city-wide in order to ensure compliance with the Ontario Human Rights Code.

It should also be noted that residential rental licensing has not been shown to improve housing affordability. Rather, such by-laws have the ability to arbitrarily limit access to low-cost rental housing for all residents, not just students, by reducing the number of available units overall.

On strategies and legislative options used by other municipalities in Ontario and elsewhere regarding student housing

City of Oshawa

A review of Ontario municipalities found only the City of Oshawa with a specific strategy for addressing student housing needs. Oshawa approved its Student Accommodation Strategy on April 27, 2010. This strategy was prepared within the framework for land use planning in Ontario and relies on several previous studies and extensive public