In the past few years, I’ve written articles about the City of Burnaby having to crack down on what is termed “unsightly” properties.
The properties are eyesores in their neighbourhoods, with garbage piled up on their lawns and in back alleys. City bylaws officers end up spending hundreds of hours inspecting them and trying to track down property owners to get them to clean them up.
For some of them, the property owners don’t actually ever clean them up and so the city is forced to do it for them and then make the owner pay by adding it to their property tax bill.
It’s a long, exhausting process and that leaves everyone involved frustrated, including the neighbours who have to put up with these properties. They aren’t just ugly, they often lead to rat infestations and other issues like potential fire hazards and chemical spills.
A staff report about a property on Nithsdale said the city had received multiple complaints going back to 2008, with 12 inspections being conducted by city staff just since 2018.
“We’ve seen some jaw-dropping filth,” one neighbour told me last fall about this property. “We’ve complained over and over and it keeps happening. We shouldn’t have to put up with this. I appreciate that the city is taking action, but the process just takes so long. Our tax dollars shouldn’t have to pay staff to constantly inspect this place.”
So the problem is clear and the approach that cities take is long and difficult. Some of these properties are due to absentee landlords who own what neighbour call "ghost" homes that sit unoccupied and become magnets for trouble.
But others are due to hoarders and Burnaby is looking at a different way to deal with these situations.
As detailed in a fascinating story by NOW reporter Cornelia Naylor, (you can click here to read it), the city has formed a hoarding response team to deal with the problem through a mental health lens.
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, said City of Burnaby senior social planner Margaret Manifold.
“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,” reads our story. “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.”
Burnaby is showing some real leadership by taking this new approach. I applaud it.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
