The City of Burnaby is taking a new approach to deal with a proliferation of so-called “unsightly premises” that eat up mass numbers of staff hours.
The problem is that either the owners of the properties, or someone who is renting it, often don’t want to clean them up.
One Burnaby landlord struggled with this situation, according to a decision by the B.C. Residential Tenancy Branch.
The landlord had to go to the RTB to get a hoarder evicted because the state of the property was so bad that the City of Burnaby had been called in multiple times due to neighbour complaints. This led to the landlord receiving several warnings from the city.
“The landlord has provided a significant amount of evidence that shows that this rental property is in extremely poor condition with extensive damages,” reads the ruling.
The landlord also testified that when he visited the property, he had to be accompanied by the RCMP “as the tenants are very aggressive and threatening.”
The landlord was granted an eviction, but the aggression shown by the tenant reveals the difficulty of trying to get someone to clean up when they are a hoarder.
The tenant claimed that the reason the place looked messy was because they were trying to clean it up, but the RTB didn’t buy that.
Now the City of Burnaby is looking at a new way to help get these properties cleaned up.
A pilot project was launched in January by the city, with a team now managing between 12 and 15 cases involving hoarders and unsightly properties.
“It bubbles up all over the place in the city in terms of our properties coordinators, bylaw officers and the fire department and whatnot,” city social planner Margaret Manifold says of hoarding.
Over time, stacks of accumulated items can pose a fire hazard, attract pests or collapse on top of people inside homes.
The health and safety risk can also spill over into adjoining properties, and Manifold says complaints come in from neighbours, strata councils, rental property managers and the like.
In the past, she says the city has taken a somewhat “blunt” approach, with various departments simply trying to get the person involved into compliance with bylaws and regulations as soon as possible.
But that approach doesn’t work, according to Manifold, because it doesn’t get down to the underlying reason for the hoarding.
She says the city is working to create a “more collaborative, more compassionate” approach.
The team is small so far, consisting of one Burnaby Fire Department fire prevention officer and one member of the RCMP’s mental health team.
While the new Burnaby hoarding response team responds to cases, Manifold says the city is developing a process for tracking those situations and looking at the staff time involved in order to gauge whether further resources are needed.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
