Item 7.2 in the Council Agenda on July 13, is the Residential Rental Licensing Update. This was something that I talked a lot about during the by-election and I am glad it is coming back before the general election. The original pilot program was paused in 2025 following court rulings that required a scaling of the program City-Wide. This came with significant costs, administrative challenges and a need to redesign the program. The assumptions of this scaling saw dozens of new staff being required, costing millions of dollars in new fees that would directly be passed onto tenants while only getting potentially 50-60% compliance rate from landlords. What is coming back to council, is not yet a licensing regime but is a first step in what I hope to be a process to get there at a City-Wide scale.

Rather than recommending an immediate city-wide licensing, administration proposes a framework focused on education, data-building, targeted compliance, and building towards a future rental registry/licenses. The approach would leverage existing by-laws, 311 data, officer observations, fire prevention work, and interdepartmental coordination to identify problem properties and repeat-offender locations across all wards.

Having spoke with Administration on why their proposal is the way it is, I can share a few things that things shaping this proposed structure:

1. The merging of building by-law enforcement team with by-law enforcement team is going to help to create synergies moving forwards. In 2025, there were over 800 cases both building and by-law enforcement were dispatched to the same property, this included during the RRL program pilot. By merging these departments and cross training these staff, it enables one person to do multiple assessments and potentially issue multiple orders on a single site. This frees up slack in the system to take on new activities.
2. From the proactive “Walk in Ward” engagement that occurred through the summer/fall of 2025 where by-law enforcement proactively walked through wards and engaged/educated/enforced issues. They found that only about 10% of violations were called into 311. Based on this, they found that almost 70% of violations were resolved with a simple knock on the door and proactively informing residents/tenants of potential issues. Most were rectified in less than 48 hours and the proactive outreach helped solve many obvious issues.
3. There is a seasonality of issue within the rental portfolio and enforcement. Snow shoveling in winter, dumping of couches etc. in spring, lawn and alley issues in summer, garbage issues in fall after students move in. Although some properties have year-round issues, many have seasonal infraction history. Targeting education around the seasonality can help reduce specific frustration points.,
4. A challenge that emerged through the pilot is that by-law officials cannot require entry into a residence. Fire Prevention Officers can enter, but to deploy them at the scale we are talking about is a significant challenge. Some things that were learned:
   1. When speaking to tenants they often found they did not know what was or was not acceptable (or legal) often officers provided education and awareness building to the tenants.
   1. What was found from inspected properties were access was given, rentals that tended to be a cluster of infractions both internal and external.
   1. By proactively engaging these external infractions and using it to engage, educate and if the tenant is willing, to inspect internal properties we can progressively improve the hot spot properties.
   1. At the same time, we can enforce compliance to property owners for infractions that are discovered.
5. As we must scale up the program to City wide, leveraging a cross a cross administrative framework that pulls data from 311, parking, fire, building and planning to build an informal registry on the “back-end” allows the rapid scaling and targeting of hot spots across the city. Based on this data foundation, specified targeted education/enforcement can occur. Eventually a more formal registry/licensing can be emerge from this framework being more proactive around worst offender and bad-actors and giving good landlords opportunities to highlight their properties.
6. This program will not replace, 311 or direct service calls for enforcement or infractions on rental properties. It is rather designed to augment and support residents and tackle some of the highest issues areas systematically.

What is Proposed?

• The ongoing merger of Building Enforcement and By-law Enforcement as well as the cross training would continue through the rest of this year. The building infraction database and the by-law infraction data used to be separate, they are now combining them. When completed you will have officers who can enforce both by-law and building infractions in one visit and more centralized data repository.
• Administration proposes resuming a Licensing & Enforcement Working Group involving By-law Enforcement, Building, Public Works, Parks, Fire, Police, Environmental Services, and 311. The intent is to reduce siloed enforcement, coordinate responses, and help shape a centralized rental database.
• A repeat of “Ward Walks” will occur with by-law blitzes later this year with broader outreach and engagement in every ward. This will build on last year’s walks as well as create additional data to populate the database.
• From the data from the pilot program and other sources direct outreach will occur to known rental properties to educate tenants with a “Tenant Rights” document, while known landlords will also receive “Landlord’s responsibility”. Much of this outreach can also be handled admiratively without needing a by-law officer.
  • Letting tenants know: “Hey here is garbage day and here is when you should be putting out your containers to roadside.” This type of information will smooth out some of the frictions in the neighbourhoods where a simple reminder suffices. If not, follow up enforcement can occur.
  • For property owners by reaching out to them to inform them of there responsibilities not only helps to reduce the “I didn’t know” response, but through this standardized outreach that can help if enforcement action leads to court. By having a standard system for proactive outreach to landlords, the Courts tend to view infractions on these properties more positively as the City too steps to educate before enforcing.
• Initially, two existing officers will be shifted from 311 response to proactive by-law outreach and enforcement with a focus on rental properties. They will be proactively doing outreach, education and enforcement around these hotspots.
• Looking ahead there are some forthcoming changes coming to our by-law regime that will also impact this. In Q1 2027 the new council will review an updated set of by-laws – likely focusing on things like Dirty Yards, Noise and other “on the ground” issues. Not to presume the potential elements it could mean enforcement and compliance time could shift from say the current 7-day standards to a much shorter period (48 hours?) for common infractions like mowing a lawn or removing a dumped couch from the curb.
  • It potentially also allows for greater flexibility for officers. They could assess based on the size and complexity of the complaint an appropriate resolution window. This would dramatically reduce enforcement timelines and for residents who call things into 311 etc., you would hopefully see much faster action.
• In 2027, the Federal cap on international students is expected to expire. It isn’t clear what will happen but having processes in place for a potential surge in international students for the September would be prudent.

To Wrap Up

This is not a full-blown licensing regime, but even if it was, it wouldn’t be launching on Monday. The pilot took months to get off the ground, begin work and then it was obviously challenged in the Courts. At a City-wide scale, it would take until at least next year to get off the ground and after launch at least another year would be needed to assess the initial effectiveness of the license.

I do support some form of licencing regime/registry, ensuring there is safe housing for folks in Windsor should not be at the whim of the market. As some of the pressure has come off the rental market since the decline in international students it has given us some breathing room. By leveraging existing data to build a internal database and then leverage that information for proactive enforcement, we can tackle many of the problematic properties through existing enforcement mechanisms as we build towards a city-wide license or registry.