A broad standing resolution that had deferred nearly all enforcement against unlawful residential dwellings on Salt Spring has been rescinded, replaced with a refined, slightly narrower policy trustees say is custom-built to protect precariously housed islanders.
Both tenants and “well-meaning” landlords should have little to fear from the island’s new bylaw compliance and enforcement policy, according to Salt Spring trustee Laura Patrick, as the proposal adopted by the island’s Local Trust Committee (LTC) Thursday, May 14 is written to incorporate the intent behind that deferral and five additional now-rescinded standing resolutions into a single document.
But Salt Spring landlords — some of whom, she noted, had been “doing some horrible stuff” under the LTC’s benign neglect — will find the new policy is designed to find an “out” for tenants who may endure poor conditions under fear they have nowhere else to go.
“We have slumlords, let’s be frank,” said Patrick. “As soon as there’s a whiff of a complaint, they threaten the person or throw them out.”
By design, the new policy essentially tasks bylaw enforcement staff with inventing an “alternative approach” for non-permitted dwellings, one that targets “mediating the compliance concerns and mitigating housing and living situations.”
“They won’t get the typical letter that we send to respondents when we’re opening a file,” said bylaw compliance and enforcement manager Warren Dingman. “We will develop a completely new process to deal with complaints about non-permitted dwellings, and I believe that that was the intention from the start when this motion was passed. There’s an alternative way to do this, and we can do that.”
That will likely include coordinating with local housing and social service groups when possible, and law enforcement when necessary.
“The person needs to be taken care of, helped to get out of the situation,” said Patrick. “Second thing then is to throw the book at that slumlord so they stop doing those things.”
That situation is distinct, she added, from well-intentioned landlords with infractions they might not be able to afford to fix.
“Maybe their septic system is failing, and they need help finding resources to fix it,” said Patrick. “We’ve got all kinds of extremes, and it’s really about bringing a compassionate approach to the issue — recognizing there are some pretty awful situations that some people are in.”
Local governments have generally wide discretion on whether, when and how to enforce against contraventions of their own bylaws — a discretion historically exercised unevenly in the Gulf Islands, usually due to community desires or simply because of limited resources.
Salt Spring’s resolution halted most enforcement activities for existing dwellings “until there are safe, secure [and] appropriate housing options that are affordable for all demographics and household types in perpetuity,” with narrow exceptions chiefly related to health and the environment. Despite this, the Islands Trust’s on-the-ground policies on bylaw enforcement came under fire in 2023, with residents voicing concern over issues of transparency, fairness and heavy-handedness in how the land use authority worked to gain compliance with its bylaws.
That came to a head after the provincial Ombudsperson’s office issued a list of recommendations that fall, and by early 2025 trustees had launched a review process, producing a draft template later that year for each LTC to modify as needed.
For Salt Spring, that meant incorporating several standing resolutions into a single document, retaining that “in perpetuity” language and addressing controversial policies like when to conduct site inspections, when bylaw enforcement staff could close a file at their own discretion and whether to take property owners’ financial situation into account when looking at infractions.
Local trustees had their first look at a draft policy in March, and Dingman returned this month with asked-for amendments, including specificity around types of non-permitted dwellings that won’t see enforcement.
Patrick explained new-to-a-property trailers and recreational vehicles (RVs) will still be “protected,” but that will no longer extend to new construction.
“People building a house without a permit [is] very different from putting an RV in your front yard,” said Patrick. “Until we have housing, RVs are going to continue to proliferate, unfortunately.”
The updated policy will be available soon on the Islands Trust website.