Rooming houses prone to failing fire inspections: report

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This article was published 09/01/2024 (654 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than half of Winnipeg’s rooming houses flunked their first fire inspection, a city report has found.

The document compiled by the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service for Wednesday’s community services committee meeting found that 57 per cent of the city’s 147 rooming houses with shared facilities hadn’t complied with fire prevention bylaws when inspectors came knocking in 2022.

The report shows compliance improved after the second inspection, but it took three inspections before all 147 rooming houses were in good standing.

In 69 locations, smoke alarms were missing or malfunctioning; in 61 cases, the fire alarm system wasn’t operable; at 52 locations, furnace repairs were required or a heating system service report wasn’t available; and at 52 houses, fire extinguishers were missing or needed to be serviced.

“We have seen some terrible instances of rooming house fires and unsafe situations,” said Coun. Sherri Rollins, who as chair of the civic property and development committee, understands the scope of the problem.

“They are necessary housing stock… There is no surprise that rooming houses present risks, and flunk fire inspections, (but) when they repeatedly flunk, this is of concern and mean repeated life safety risks.”

But real estate lawyer Richard Fulham, who owns a few rooming houses, said it’s not always the owner’s fault when a fire inspection is failed.

Fulham said he makes sure he has a full-time caretaker in each building, and insists on regular checks of each suite to correct problems before an inspector shows up. He said many tenants will cover smoke alarms with a plastic bag to stop them from going off while they cook.

“It is constant and it is usually the same tenants,” he said. “It is endless. You try to reason with people and they look at you with a blank stare.

“That’s why you have to get into the suites to take a look. If you only come around once a month to collect rent, there will be problems. If you come back more often, you have no problems… it wouldn’t bother me if inspectors came more often.”

Fulham said records are kept to make sure the furnace system is inspected annually and to ensure fire extinguishers are in place and have been serviced.

He said the caretaker also makes sure hallways are clear of refuse or material and the entrances and exits are not blocked and snow has been cleared.

“You can’t have a hot plate in your room, and we will tell tenants that, but then you come the next time and one is there,” Fulham said.

“In one of my buildings, it is why I took a room and turned it into a shared kitchen. I could then tell everyone no hot plate, this is where you cook food.”

Sherry Reich, the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service director of fire prevention, who used to work as an inspector herself, said the number of rooming houses that fail the first inspection is typical.

“There is a lot of turnover in the properties with both residents and owners,” Reich said. “By the time we go back we think it is a pretty high compliance rate.

“In an ideal world, we would find no violations.”

Reich said education is one of the priorities during inspections.

“Sometimes people get annoyed, if they are smoking or cooking, with the chirp (from the smoke detector) and put a bag over them or sometimes landlords don’t put them in properly,” she said.

“We tell them if it can’t detect the smoke from smoking, it won’t detect the smoke from a fire… it goes without saying these systems are there to project them so they are notified when there is a potential fire happening.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca