Article content continued

“You have different groups that still aren’t clear and there isn’t a lot of information for them,” she said.

“I think it’s possible to be more thoughtful and see if there are other solutions.”

Alberta Human Services said 86 out of 172 agencies working in the PDD program have applied for extensions, which have been granted on a case-by-case basis.

The new standards were introduced two years ago, in part, as a response to the findings of a fatality inquiry that looked into the 2007 death of Marilyn Lane, a 43-year-old woman with Down syndrome who was unable to escape a fire that broke out inside her Edmonton group home.

Lane lived in a private residence that was rented and staffed by an agency that wasn’t required by the rules in force at the time to have a licence for the facility. The PDD safety regulations subsequently introduced by the government are intended to close that loophole by requiring compliance from any residential facility that has regularly-scheduled overnight care for two or more adults.

But service providers say the regulations impose costs that landlords who rent properties to PDD clients are unlikely to incur.

Faced with a choice between spending thousands of dollars to renovate an income property to comply with PDD regulations or simply finding new tenants who aren’t disabled, a landlord will simply opt for the latter, said Ryan Geake of the Calgary Scope Society.

Geake said his organization has already received a letter from a landlord who rents four houses to 12 seniors with developmental disabilities warning that he will end their leases if forced to undertake the costly renovations necessary to comply with the regulations.