Re: “Council ignoring illegal suites problem,” Letters, The Leader.
Actually, Surrey already has a bylaw that for any home that has a basement suite, the property tax rate for that home goes up by $400 per suite.
So if that home has two suites, the homeowner is levied $800 on top of his/her normal rate.
For example, if there are 10,000 illegal suites and the city enforced this bylaw, each year it could collect a cool $4 million.
If the city had been enforcing this bylaw for the last five years, it would have already earned $20 million that could go a long way to pay for badly needed road repairs, school upgrades, etc.
M. Hajee
Surrey