I have written previously about by-law issues that Izzy and I have reported through the 311 app, as well as some of the changes coming in 2027 through the City’s new Residential Rental Enforcement program and potential updates to our by-laws. While there may be a need to increase by-law staffing, there are significant costs that have to be considered. I believe there are opportunities to improve service and address neighbourhood issues at a relatively modest cost that can come sooner.
Proactive Education To Free Up Enforcement
During some testing in 2025, City by-law staff walked neighbourhoods, documented visible property standards issues and compared their findings against the City’s complaint database. What they discovered was interesting:
- Only 20–30% of visible issues had actually been reported to the City through 311 or other channels.
- Approximately 70–80% of identified issues were resolved simply by providing an educational notice to the property owner/tenant.
In other words, most issues aren’t being reported, and many can be resolved through basic education without the need for formal enforcement. That presents an opportunity.
As I understand it, the City’s By-law Enforcement division does not currently utilize summer students. I think we should explore changing that. Summer students wouldn’t be issuing tickets or replacing trained by-law officers. Instead, they could proactively identify common neighbourhood issues, provide educational materials and document properties requiring follow-up by enforcement staff.
For example, students could walk a block and identify properties where residents aren’t maintaining their section of the alleyway resulting in it being overgrown and unpassable. They could distribute education materials explaining property owners’ maintenance responsibilities and flag unresolved issues for follow-up by a by-law officer. If even half of properties clean it up their alley section, sudden we reduce the call volume and let Officers focus on the truly problematic properties. The same approach could be applied to overgrown lawns, bulk items dumped near the road, poorly maintained garbage containers and other common property standards concerns.
We know the summer months are among the busiest for by-law enforcement. We also know youth unemployment is hovering around 18%. Why not bring these two challenges together?
Hiring a handful of summer students as a pilot would provide valuable employment opportunities for young people while extending the reach of our existing by-law staff during their busiest season. A summer student costs approximately $15,000 – for 35 hours per week from early May to Labour Day. Following a couple of weeks of training and job shadowing of by-law officers, establishing some clear procedures and educational materials available in multiple languages being developed. These students could proactively engage residents, help create awareness and educate minor issues before they escalate and free up enforcement officers to focus on more complex cases. This wouldn’t replace the need for additional enforcement capacity or stronger by-laws. But at a relatively modest cost of a few students, it could proactively mitigate hundreds of by-law calls per year, speed up response time by flagging issues that aren’t being submitted, and enable by-law officers to focus on the most problematic properties.
Following the pilot we would evaluate the outcomes and determine if scaling or alterations should be considered.
A full second plank of this plan is in the full platform check back this weekend.
That is an excellent idea, address neighborhood issues and offer employment to our students. I fully support this suggestion and this is exactly why you are tte BEST candidate fir Ward 2 Frazier.
Yes … Yes … Yes
Having had to report garbage and lack of yard maintenance at the single home rental (by rooms) next door using 311, your proposed proactive pilot would be a godsend to our neighbourhood.
This is a great idea! In our immediate area in Bridgeview messy yards are a concern. Some of the worst yards on our specific street are not lived in by students and yet they typically get blamed, so it’s an even better idea if they are involved in monitoring and helping to educate people, particularly regarding garbage pick up.
Well Frazier you know how I feel about this issue! !
Would this not increase enforcement times by adding an additional 20% proactive calls (remaining calls non compliant to education) and not increasing number of officers?
To be honest I don’t know. Just because calls weren’t in the system when the tests were done, doesn’t mean they didn’t eventually get into the system. Part of it is about timing, when does a call enter the system if at all. We know currently there are 1000+ call backlogs occurring every summer. If 50% of call get prevented, but an extra 20% end up in the system, we are still ahead in many cases. Additionally as the students will (I assume) collect initial evidence – photos of overgrown alleyway or dumped item etc.. Although an inspection would be needed, it would just have to verify the original state, not retake or reassess the whole location. Because an initial education notice was dropped, prior to inspection, it can give the officer more latitude to jump right to enforcement and hopefully speed up the paperwork process and eventual solutions to the case. This coupled with the forthcoming changes to our by-laws that hopefully will shorten enforcement timelines and two officers shifting to proactive rental enforcement create an opportunity to test this and see what happens.
Do we need more by-law officers overall, I think so! That is a bigger and more costly conversation that this pilot will help build a case for.