In response to a human-rights complaint about zoning bylaws dealing with group homes for people with disabilities, the City of Sarnia has agreed to make changes.
Earlier this year, the southwestern Ontario city made the move after the Dream Team, an organization of people living with mental-health issues, launched its challenge of the bylaw with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.
In Toronto, meanwhile, the city is pushing ahead with a new comprehensive zoning bylaw to harmonize land-use rules across the six former municipalities that includes allegedly discriminatory provisions (see Law Times, page 12).
The proposed bylaw would leave existing restrictions on group homes in place, which in Ontario’s biggest city range from a mandatory separation between such facilities of 245 metres in the former city of Toronto to 800 metres in suburban Etobicoke.
The rules deal with homes for “a specific number of residents who by reason of their emotional, mental, social or physical condition or legal status require a group living arrangement for their well-being,” according to the Dream Team’s application to the HRTO.
Kathy Laird, the executive director of the Human Rights Legal Support Centre that’s representing the Dream Team in its case against the City of Toronto and two other municipalities, says those provisions are discriminatory since they restrict options available to people with disabilities at a time of a housing shortage.
“From an equality standpoint, any restriction that is arbitrary can be found to be discriminatory,” she notes, adding the current rules force supportive housing providers to spend scarce funds on legal fees in order to get facilities built.
In Toronto’s case, the proposed city-wide zoning bylaw aims largely to harmonize the language, rather than the substance of, its land-use rules. So there’s a plausible argument that the restrictions on group homes merely reflect that goal and that substantial changes may come later.
At the same time, the city notes the Dream Team application may be premature for the HRTO to consider given that the municipal council has yet to pass the new rules. In the meantime, concerned citizens will still have
opportunities to comment on the bylaw.
While that’s all true, it’s still a fact that the proposed changes did alter the substantive rules in a few cases, particularly those related to employment areas.
As a result, it seems reasonable that officials could make changes to group-home provisions that are out of step with Ontario’s equality protections. As Laird notes, research shows no evidence of negative impacts from homes for people with disabilities on their neighbours.
So while city residents might be concerned about the wide-ranging types of group homes that removing the separation rules would permit, that’s hardly a justification for allowing the provisions to stand. Toronto, then, should follow Sarnia’s lead.
- Glenn Kauth
