Scarborough should stand firm against rooming houses, licensed or otherwise, local councillors declared this week.

Scarborough Community Council slammed the door on a suggestion by Ward 15 Councillor (Eglinton-Lawrence) Howard Moscoe that it’s time to license some rooming houses in the area if they can meet city standards.

Moscoe last week said he’ll bring a proposal to the city licensing committee he chairs, arguing rooming-house licensing has worked in downtown Toronto. But Ward 39 Councillor (Scarborough-Agincourt) Mike Del Grande said Moscoe “should not be dictating what occurs in Scarborough,” where rooming houses, though increasingly common and popular, are illegal.

“Scarborough is not downtown Toronto, it’s not Parkdale,” Del Grande said, arguing that colleagues thinking about legalizing such businesses in the area under any circumstances should think again.“We need to do what’s right for ourselves, not be dictated to by special interest groups.”

At least two current Scarborough councillors are former rooming house tenants themselves, a fact that didn’t have much effect on the discussion Tuesday.

Both Ward 41 Councillor (Scarborough-Rouge River) Chin Lee and Ward 42 Councillor (Scarborough-Rouge River) Raymond Cho have said they were rooming house tenants decades ago when they first arrived in Canada as immigrants.

“Having gone through it myself, I can see where people are coming from,” Lee, who lived in a legal downtown Toronto rooming house in 1971, said in an interview earlier this week.“ People are going to move where they find the cheapest accommodation, whether it’s legal or illegal,” he added.

But during the discussion Tuesday Lee said people who want to run rooming houses should look for zoning that allows it, rather than “messing everybody up” in a single-family neighbourhood.

Cho, a rooming house tenant in Vancouver 40 years ago, also admitted to mixed feeling on the subject. “When you are new Canadians you don’t have a regular income. The reality is they need housing, they need shelter,” he said.

Other councillors, such as Michael Thompson of Ward 37 (Scarborough Centre) however, stressed the “demoralizing” effect rooming houses have on neighbourhoods and said licensing any “would be a slippery slope,” perhaps leading to Scarborough becoming “the transient capital” of Canada.

Ward 40 Councillor (Scarborough-Agincourt) Norm Kelly said licensing rooming houses on arterial roads should be considered because, though he finds rooming houses on local streets “anathema,” migration to Scarborough is a fact.

“The world is on the move as never before. Cities everywhere are feeling the effects of that movement,” said the community council chairperson, warning that monitoring and fighting what is now an obvious housing trend in Scarborough will take lots of money, funds he said must come from somewhere.

Homes in Scarborough can legally have an approved second-suite apartment and rooms for two boarders. Politicians and staff say enforcing that rule is very difficult.

Ward 38 Councillor (Scarborough Centre) Glenn De Baeremaeker said he has no sympathy for such business owners, who De Baeremaeker argued don’t care about the poor tenants they house. “Their intent is to cheat the law and maximize their property.”