Calgary secondary suite amnesty program to end this year

A City of Calgary program that provides cost savings for landlords is coming to an end in December.

This comes as more and more Calgarians become desperate to find places to live in the wake of the housing crisis.

The Secondary Suites Amnesty Program provides cost savings of up to $700 to anyone looking to legally offer a suite in their home, by removing the development permit and registration feed.

Additionally, during the amnesty, existing suite owners can save on costly renovations to meet current building code which, in some cases, has saved Calgary homeowners up to $20,000.

However, the program will no longer be available after Dec. 31.

Joshua Howes, city program manager for secondary suites, says it incentivizes landlords to provide safe, legal, housing options and can protect them from potential fines.

“There’s primarily three different types of charges — it can be a Safety Codes Act charge, there can be a development charge, as well as a bylaw registry charge — all of those get sent to the province and they have a varying levels of what is actually charged once they’re found guilty through that process, then they would be levied a fine, potentially associated with that,” he explained. “On the Safety Code side, that tops out at $100,000.”

Unregistered suites often bring on safety concerns like undersized windows, unprotected exists, and improper fire alarms.

Even though illegal rentals can be dangerous, and put landlords at risk of significant penalties, Howes says they still make up for the majority of the city’s rental market — at around 80 per cent.

“If you assume that we have 11,000 registered and about upwards of 20 per cent of them are legal, then you can make some guess has to how many are illegal,” he said.

However, Howes notes that there will be a push to extend the amnesty, similarly to what was done in 2021, when a two-year extension was approved by council.

The city program manager for secondary suites says even though the program is coming to an end, the city has been working hard over the last few years to make it easier for landlords to offer safe, legal rental housing.

“I’ve a major improvement in the suite process and heard directly in a conversation with somebody from the public about how she’s majorly impressed with the improvements and the changes,” he said. “She did a suite conversion years ago and compared to now when she did another one, she just felt like the improvements we’ve made through the ease of the process have been extremely powerful in terms of helping people through the process.”