Renters deserve more info on utility costs
By Medicine Hat News Opinon on November 14, 2019.
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@collingallant
The call to arms for municipal government is to help the plight of home owners in the arenas of property taxes, planning, the general cost of living and all manner of mundane day-to-day life, from garbage collection to where a bus stop is placed.
Perhaps its time to expand that fight to include renters, who comprise about one-quarter of Medicine Hat’s 31,000 households.
It’s thin ice, considering another cause celeb of City Halls is a campaign against so-called red tape regulations that hamper business owners, in this case landlords.
It would take a brave politician to suggest an expanded role for government in today’s climate, especially in Alberta.
But in the spirit of protecting public safety and reasonable rules in a free market, other municipalities in North America are finding ways to balance the needs of both.
In Medicine Hat, a council blowup last year over whether to raise utility fees or property taxes was laced with subtext about renters and property owners. Though each pays the tax one way or another on their dwelling, some do or don’t pay their utilities due to the scope of rental agreements.
It’s an entrenched argument, though one that has been flanked by New York and other major cities, which gives potential renters access to a registry of recent utility bills for specific properties.
It gives tenants a more complete picture of their living expenses and also better supports policies that incentivize property owners into improve their units
As it is, its hard for landlords to see a benefit of investing in better insulation and windows or more efficient furnace if the renter is paying the bill.
Vice versa, the tenant almost certainly can’t go ahead with projects on their own. They have no avenue to lower their own bills beyond putting on a sweater.
If a unit has a lower utility costs, then it becomes more attractive to potential renters. Rents can also be adjusted to pay for the upgrades as the utility costs are lower. The same happens behind the scenes for the owner if utilities are included.
Similar logic is behind the Medicine Hat Fire Service’s recently created database of approved and inspected secondary suites.
For 10 years, some landlords have lived under the false impression that window size, smoke detectors and other fire requirements in the building code somehow include a grandfather clause. They don’t and anyone renting such delinquent basement suites is in contravention of the Alberta Firecode.
In a similar vein, it was revealed last week that at least 50 residences in the city had lead-pipe service connections to city street mains.
Those were discovered over the years and street mains were replaced and crews began reconnecting privately owned connections to homes. Most home owners will likely be aware that everything after the connection point is the owner’s property, and the city’s water department says they’ve been informed.
Yet, four dozen houses in Medicine Hat are still at risk – and knowingly for as long as decades – of corrosion that leaches toxic heavy metal into household drinking water.
In Canada, where Freedom of Information rules have morphed beyond reasonable interpretation, there’s no way for reporters, the public or potential renters to determine these addresses.
This is also hardly a case of government adding hoops for landlords to jump through. Anyone selling a house has a duty to declare their knowledge of such a liability to the buyer.
Anyone renting a house should have reasonable route to find out what their potential utility payments will be and whether the unit is safe.
And unless the landlord is somehow at some fault, it wouldn’t cost them a dime.
(Collin Gallant is a News reporter. You can contact him by email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com)
