Last week, council received confirmation of what everyone knew, we need secondary suites in town.
Hold on let’s rephrase that. We need legal secondary suites. It seems like one of those really badly kept secrets that there are suites in town and that they are occupied.
It is hard to find anyone who has not lived in some sort of secondary suite at some point in their lives. It is hard to ignore the benefits and we’ve heard them a ton these days, extra income, keeping seniors in homes, increasing affordable housing and so on.
What will be interesting going forward is how council will deal with the drawbacks.
There are a lot of concerns about secondary suites in Ladysmith, especially when it comes to detached dwellings.
So how do you legalize what has been done and hold it to the standard of what you are going to be accepting in the future.
There was also a lot of raised eyebrows when it came to discussing ‘relaxed’ standards to legalize existing suites. But as CitySpaces has made clear, safety issues are not relaxing. Suites should still have the proper exits and windows, but people need to understand, especially when it comes to basement suites, there are some things that can’t change.
It is better to forgive a few inches off the ceiling height to have a homeowner come forward and legalize their suite to ensure safety standards are met.
The report had some interesting things to say, others we could have told you at half the price and has left a few questions that we can’t wait to see the answers.