Editor:
City of Surrey bylaws have no teeth.
Illegal new build next door; unsightly property across the street, with an empty house collecting garbage as an unsecured dumping ground; empty lot down the road overgrown with garbage and a large fallen tree hanging over a pedestrian lane way.
Several of our neighbours have been complaining and talking to the City of Surrey about these properties for more than eight months.
The illegal new build documents remain on the inspector’s desk, not having yet time to forward to the legal department. The other two properties continue to get complaints from residents, and fining owners can only happen through the court system.
All this happening in the land of massive invasive new builds by developers and a city that has no qualms about seeing a community being destroyed or any teeth to enforce bylaws, not to mention the once somewhat affordable fixer-upper that gets replaced by a massive, hopefully legal, structure for $2.3 million.
So yes, OK, you are allowed to build massive, invasive, out-of-character homes. There’s nothing illegal about that, but at least be able to enforce your bylaws.
What is the point of having a bylaw department, when developers know a bylaw is powerless, taking advantage of laws that were applied at a time when people had integrity and sought ways to contribute to a community, instead of taking it for all it’s worth, leaving us to live with the mess of empty lots/homes or a towering massive houses that destroys space, sunlight, greenery and nature, not to mention trees and the waste of a good house in the landfill?
I looked up past news articles and found several… in 2011.
Has nothing changed?
City of Surrey, you have to get off your seats and start figuring this out.
Carol Savage, Surrey