A Burnaby renter who received an apology from the City of Burnaby has still filed a complaint with the BC Human Rights Tribunal after a recent visit by five inspectors to an illegal rental suite.
The tenant, who the NOW previously agreed to not name due to concerns about her search for a rental home in the future, supplied a copy of the complaint she filed.
In the complaint, the tenant outlined that she lives in an illegal basement suite that the city wanted to inspect. In January, the city sent five people who entered the unit and told the NOW she felt “ambushed” by the group. She also said she had previously warned the city that she and her mother were immunocompromised.
“City of Burnaby staff disregarded my health concerns relating to COVID-19 despite them being aware of said concerns,” the tenant says in the complaint.
The NOW reviewed documentation, including emails to and from the city, as well as video footage of the actual inspection taken from a kitchen surveillance camera that verify her story.
In the video, five masked city inspectors are shown entering the tiny suite as the woman and her mother watch them look at appliances and other items.
This would appear to violate the typical city inspection response, according to a Dec. 8, 2021 letter the woman received from Burnaby’s chief licence inspector in response to a previous complaint about city staff visiting her home.
“Normally, we would approach a residence with no more than two, and preferable only a single staff member,” the letter says.
The city looked into the complaint and issued an apology to the tenant.
“We would like to start by expressing our sincere apologies for this distressing experience for yourself and your mother,” reads the letter from the city. “Your health and safety is important to us, and so is the stability of your housing situation. It appears as though the city was not as responsive to you as we should have been. We do our best to respond in a timely manner and in this case it seems we did not. We fell short of our response time standards and for that we also apologize.”
The letter says that the city had received a complaint about illegal suites in the home and had notified the homeowner that there would be an inspection. The landlord, however, did not give the proper notice to the tenant about the inspection.
The letter says the city inspectors, at the time, did not expect to be granted access to all of the suites and that they were not aware of the concerns of the tenant about people entering the suite.
The city also admitted the inspection team was “larger than usual” but there were concerns about additional trades work having been done in the suite and so inspectors with plumbing and electrical expertise were added.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
