Secondary suites in Westside opposed by home owner

Open letter to Mayor Rosalind Neis and Westside Council:

Bravo Mayor Neis for voting against a secondary suite in a recent application by the home owner (Capital News Westside section, July 13, “Westside council absolves suite of sins from the past”). When someone purchases a home, a primary consideration is the zoning.

All kinds of arguments can and will be made by those wishing to turn a dollar, to suggest change is essential “in order to afford the mortgage.”

If you buy into an area that you cannot afford, it is not right to ask other residents in the community to support you by downgrading the value of their own properties.

Frankly, the argument used in this case is suspect.

I would wager that the individual was paying a higher mortgage rate when they purchased the property nine years ago than they are today.

In fact, it would seem they are lucky to have received nine years of income for a secondary suite they were not entitled to maintain.

Any decision should not be based on whether the current owner supervises their property well, because it is a fact municipalities cannot properly monitor and control if the property owners don’t act responsibly.

It would seem a case in point is the fact the suite in question has been operating nine years without authority, notwithstanding residents in the area have complained.

Most often a non-resident/absentee owner’s only interest is in generating income, with little or no thought to contributing to the community’s welfare. This scenario is played out all to often in municipalities where neighbours have complained hundreds of times about properties being misused crack houses, flop houses, poorly maintained, etc. and no adequate action can be taken until months or years later and eventually the place burns down or succumbs to some similar fate.

Once the door is opened to secondary suites, how can you then prevent a further spread to other residential areas? I am only too familiar with the many problems of absentee ownership and strata properties. If you have ever lived in an area with high-density rental properties and non-resident owners you know all to well the negative effects on residents.

All you have to do is drive down a street and take note of the cars parked on the street, trailers and broken down vehicles along the way and you know immediately, non-resident owners and rental properties are the predominant feature of the area.

It is the first time in my life that I have been able to afford a home in a quiet residential area. While there may be a social need for affordable housing, I object strongly to that need being addressed at the expense of home owners who have relied upon current zoning. We are building a new community, so lets not get too tied up in affordable housing before we have addressed the many other problems a new municipality faces.

If we can’t depend on current zoning then there is little hope for long-term investment in our new municipality with the pressures that will be coming from developers and those interested in nothing more than making a fast buck.

And a big thank-you to Jason Luciw for bringing us this article in the Capital News.

G. Allen,Westbank