The City of Ottawa continues to consult with residents, developers, and apartment seekers and refine its zoning by-law.

On reviewing our lodging home by-law and ways to improve it to capture more rental properties in our community and allow for better opportunities to enforce property standards.

Under Business Licensing By-law 395-2004,

“Lodging House” shall mean and include any house or other building or portion thereof in which more than three persons are harboured, received or lodged for hire, with or without meals but does not include a hotel, hospital, nursing home, home for the young or the aged or institution if the hotel, hospital or institution is licensed, approved or supervised under any general or special Act.

What has been traditionally licensed as a “lodging home” in Windsor – residences that rent individual bedrooms to individual tenants with a common living space and kitchen, some with personal care and some without – are not the types of residences of primary concern to residents in near-campus neighbourhoods. Currently, lodging houses are categorized as follows:

• Class 1, where the operator provides no assistance to the resident in caring for their health or personal needs, including washing, dressing or eating; or

• Class 2, where the operator provides assistance to the resident in caring for their health and personal needs, including washing, dressing or eating.

There are currently 18 licensed lodging houses in the City of Windsor: 7 Class 1 lodging homes and 11 Class 2 lodging homes.

Resident concerns around student housing focus on low-rise, high-density single unit dwellings which may or may not be occupied by the owner and which are rented out to one or more tenants. The Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 permits tenants to invite other occupants to reside in the unit with them – i.e. “roommates.” Occupants residing as roommates of a tenant may or may not have any form of written tenancy agreement and has no contractual relationship with the property owner, only the tenant. Dwellings occupied in this manner f all outside of the City’s Licensing By -law when most (sometimes all but one) of the occupants do not have an actual contractual relationship with the property owner. Occupants living in the dwelling with the permission of the tenant but without a rental agreement with the property owner cannot be counted towards the “more than three persons harboured” defined in the City’s Licensing By -law.

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