City Bylaw

Some cities have bylaws that outline the conditions that homes need to be in. These are sometimes referred to as Standards of Maintenance bylaws. Rentals must be up to these standards as well as the Statutory Conditions.

Not all municipalities have these bylaws*, as of 2024 the ones that do are:

  • The Halifax Regional Municipality

  • The Cape Breton Regional Municipality

  • Municipality of the County of Victoria

  • Town of Stewiacke

  • Town of Wolfville

  • Town of Kentville

  • Town of Bridgewater

  • Town of Annapolis Royal

  • Municipality of the County of Antigonish

  • Town of Port Hawkesbury

  • Town of Stellarton

  • Town of Amherst

  • Town of Truro

  • Town of Digby

  • Town of Lockeport

  • Town of Shelburne

  • Town of Yarmouth

* Does your town not have a standards of maintenance bylaw? Fight for one! Renters in the HRM have successfully won stronger protections for tenants under these bylaws by organizing for them. For more on tenant organizing, see Advocacy & Organizing.

Not all municipalities have the resources to enforce these bylaws. The rest of this section details the process for filing a bylaw complaint in the HRM, which has the most robust bylaw enforcement division in Nova Scotia. For other municipalities, you may need to call city hall to ask about the process of filing a complaint.

The process of filing a bylaw complaint in the HRM is as follows:

  1. Call 311 and say you want to file a Standards of Maintenance complaint. You may need to cite the bylaw (Bylaw M-200: Respecting Standards for Residential Occupancies).

  2. Provide the bylaw officer with your name, address, landlord’s name, landlord’s contact information, and the best telephone number to reach you at. Bylaw is not allowed to contact your landlord until the inspection is over.

  3. Wait 1-2 weeks, a bylaw officer will call you to set up a time to go through the building.

  4. The bylaw officer will do a walk-through inspection. They will go through the common areas and any unit tenants give them access to.

  5. If the bylaw officer finds violations of the Standards of Maintenance, they will detail all the violations and issue an order to the landlord to bring the property up to code. In some cases, the city can fine the landlord each day that the repairs are not completed.

The bylaw officer will not tell your landlord who filed the complaint, but if they cite specific issues in your unit, it won’t be hard for them to guess.

Despite what they might hear from bylaw or Residential Tenancies, tenants can file both a bylaw complaint and a Statutory Conditions complaint. There are pros and cons to each option, detailed below.

  • Pros:

    • Faster than the tenancy board

    • Can be anonymous

    Cons:

    • Can’t be awarded rent abatements

    • Can’t force a landlord to return services

    • Not legally enforceable (the landlord isn’t legally compelled to follow the order, but if they don’t they can get fined)

  • Pros:

    • Can get a legally binding order to do repairs

    • Can be awarded money back (a rent abatement)

    • Can order the return of services (like heat or water)

    Cons:

    • Time consuming

    • Longer wait time to get the issue resolved

    • Cannot be done anonymously

There is no follow up process after an order is issued, so if the landlord continues to not do repairs tenants will need to call bylaw again. Bylaw orders and complaints have been used in Residential Tenancies to prove maintenance issues.

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