Toronto is cracking down on fraternity and sorority houses in an effort to close a loophole that allowed these types of student housing to operate unlicensed.

City council voted this week in favour of stripping away an exemption these housing units — multi-tenant shared dwellings mostly rented out by university students — have long held. With the vote, 19 fraternity and sorority houses in and around the Annex neighbourhood will be subjected to the same standards as any rooming houses, a move officials say is strictly about improving safety.

The city licensing bylaw states that if there are more than three people in a shared accommodation, the owner is asked to provide an emergency contact, have an approved fire safety plan, and conduct annual inspections for fire code and safety standards, among other requirements.

But fraternities and sororities have been exempted from these requirements for many decades, which means they’re not accountable to the city or to the University of Toronto, said Councillor Joe Cressy, who put forward the motion for change.

“They exist in a legal grey area,” he said. “There’s a void there.”

Last year, city staff conducted a review of the existing fraternity and sorority houses, both to evaluate their compliance with safety standards and to gather feedback from community about any concerns.

According to a subsequent report presented to city council, local residents were worried about parties that sometimes spilled over into the streets and were a source of noise and acts of violence.

The report notes that since 2013, the city has received a total of 166 complaints from residents living near fraternities and sororities, most commonly about waste, noise and property standards.

Data from Toronto Police also showed that between 2014 and 2018, there have been a total of 78 incidents related to theft, assault and sexual assault at or near these fraternity and sorority houses, according to the report.

The University of Toronto, area resident associations and anti-gender based violence organizations wrote letters of support to Mayor John Tory, urging the city to consider scrapping the exemption and hold these fraternities and sororities to the same standards as other rooming houses.

“Our concern is that too often fraternities and sororities have a culture of initiation and partying that is highly confidential. When sexual violence occurs in those spaces, there is an added pressure to not speak out,” reads part of a letter written by a number of local anti-gender-based violence organizations.

Annemarie Brissenden, president of Kappa Kappa Gamma House Corporation — one of the sororities at 32 Madison Ave. — told the Star she didn’t want to talk about this issue. But in a joint letter she and members of other sororities sent to the city in opposition to the proposal say there’s “no connection between licensing and reduced incidents of sexual assault.”

“Each of our organizations has a mandatory risk management program that must be completed by every member that includes educational programming on sexual assault prevention and awareness, and once a year, every member reviews and signs a commitment to prevent hazing,” they wrote.

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Cressy said owners of these fraternities and sororities have no need to worry about the exemption being lifted, because no one is trying to shut them down.

“This is simply about ensuring that everybody plays by the same rules,” he said. “If we have frequent complaints, we can place conditions on their license.”