Now instead of furtively trying to get into you side door basement suite apartment, you can enter your home like any full fledged member of society. Well soon anyway.
Edmonton is finally moving ahead with making basement suites legal in most residential areas of the city. Although illegal, many many people had them and just tried to hide the fact that people were living under the stairs.
"An estimated 10,000 homeowners rent out suites in their homes, but the majority are illegal. For the plan to work, thousands of existing illegal suites would have to conform to new zoning rules."
A Few Things To Keep In Mind:
*Edmonton is SERIOUSLY pressed for housing. It is so bad that even engineers can't find a place to live
*Just like in Prohibition if something is illegal, there are no rules to keep unscrupulous people from exploiting the situation - renting any hole under their house to people desperate for housing.
*Fire codes, points of access and egress and ceiling heights may not be up to standard; endangering lives.
Legalizing basement suites and standardizing them will open up a valuable source of housing for people who desperately need it. The main point is to bring the suites that are not safe up to an acceptable level of safety for their occupants.
"We need these affordable suites; we need the secondary suites approved so that they can come into the market at the fastest possible pace to assist us in the housing crisis that we're facing." Read Full Article
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