Kingston city council set to vote on landlord licensing motion

Sydenham district city councillor Conny Glenn hopes her motion set to go to council will improve the housing landscape in Kingston.

“It’s just about providing housing but it’s also about good housing,” said Glenn.

The first term councillor says the idea for the motion came to her while campaigning in the fall municipal election.

“I was hearing reports of infestations and black mould, there were steps that were unsafe to go up,” said Glenn.

The motion, if passed by council, is intended to make it easier for the municipality to inspect rental properties.

“It allows us as a city to get in and do an inspection beforehand,” said Glenn. “Right now, in order to inspect, it’s complaint-based.”

Details are still being discussed, but it would require landlords to be licensed in order to operate rental properties.

Robert Melo is the president of the Kingston Residential Rental Property Owners Association and questions how effective the licensing proposal would be.

“Licensing is just another hurdle that we have to deal with as landlords,” said Melo. “Based on all the studies that we’ve done it doesn’t work, it doesn’t accomplish what they want.”

Melo says he would rather landlords work with the city to address housing standards issues.

“That cooperative effort will save the taxpayer a lot of money, and actually get done what they are looking for,” said Melo.

Glenn says if her motion gets the nod of approval from the rest of council, staff will be directed to look at the feasibility of rental licensing and report back to council in about a year.