Town of Gibsons council has given people in certain precarious rental situations some breathing room by ordering town staff to use their own discretion when dealing with zoning compliance issues that could result in evictions.
During a closed special council meeting held March 12, council passed a motion directing staff to “exercise their discretion not to proceed with immediate enforcement against zoning contraventions, if compliance would result in rental evictions.” The motion was later adopted at a March 16 regular council meeting.
Included in the motion is direction to conduct “a review of the situation” by the end of this year.
The motion’s preamble cites council’s concern over zoning bylaw enforcement that could cause rental evictions and the “severely compounding effect of the Sunshine Coast housing crisis and COVID-19 pandemic.”
However, it also cited council’s concern over ensuring zoning bylaw rules are followed in the cases “where public safety is deemed to be at risk,” and so staff were also asked to prioritize enforcement in those cases.
The motion comes following a March 9 letter from Sunshine Coast Homelessness Advisory Committee chair Silas White, sent to Gibsons and Sechelt councils as well as the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) that “strongly and urgently” asked the local governments to defer enforcement around zoning that would lead to evictions until 2022.
In the letter, White said his committee is “aware of a number of these situations, in multiple local governments, currently in progress,” adding, “this freeze still may apply to only a relative handful of situations, but every little bit will help.”
The letter was expected to be discussed by Sechelt council at its regular council meeting on March 17 and by SCRD directors at a March 18 committee meeting.
Following the Gibsons closed meeting, White told Coast Reporter in an emailed statement the committee has “the utmost appreciation for the Town’s prompt and responsive leadership.”
“We are aware of at least seven Town residents who were to be evicted at the end of this month, who will now be able to keep their homes at the worst time in community history to have to find a new place,” he said.
White added that the committee is also “aware of a similar situation in an SCRD electoral area, but to the SCRD’s credit, a new resolution has been proposed that will avoid evicting anyone.”
The committee called for the SCRD and Sechelt to join Gibsons “in a Coast-wide commitment to ordering no more evictions during the housing crisis, except in situations where there is a public safety risk.”
