The president of the Yukon Condominium Homeowners Association says long-overdue condo legislation — now entering public consultation — will ease financial strain on unit owners and smooth out the wrinkles among condo boards, individual landlords and tenants.

Sonny Gray said the new laws, currently in the final drafting stages, are “strong.

“It’s definitely a huge improvement over the ancient document that we had before,” he said today. “Overall, it’s a step in the right direction.”

The planned Condominium Act looks to introduce a required reserve fund, applicable to all condo properties, for major repairs.

“A lot of the old condos in town, they didn’t have that in place and they suffered in the end and had to impose levies,” said Gray, who also serves on the Yukon Residential Landlords Association and owns Sirius Security Services.

He noted maintenance and repairs for roofs, and sometimes elevators, have proved especially costly for condo boards.

A formula to be laid out in the regulations will calculate the reserve fund amount, based in part on the number of units.

“Our Condominium Act dates from 1976 and has fallen far behind industry standards and practices,” Justice Minister Mike Nixon said last year.

“Today’s condominium owners need many protections, such as reserve funds, which were not considered in the 1970s.”

The draft legislation also allows condo boards to impose fines directly on a tenant in certain situations, bypassing the unit owner.

“In dire circumstances, a board can also evict a tenant. That’s pretty wild stuff. We haven’t got anything like that in place right now,” Gray added.

Most Whitehorse condo boards are roughly 50 per cent tenant-occupied, he said.

“That has proven to be difficult, simply because a lot of the landlords are not even present. They’re down south, they bought these units as an investment. So tracking down landlords to deal with tenants has been a bit of a problem.”

The new law so far states that any dispute can be dealt with by mediation “to encourage settlement of the dispute” — “which is great,” Gray said, “because it doesn’t clog up the legal system.”

The planned legislation also forbids a condo board member — possibly the developer — who holds 50 per cent or more of the units from “the use of voting rights ... in a manner that is or would be oppressive or unfairly prejudicial.”

Comments received through public consultation by Jan. 31, 2015, will be considered in the final bills tabled in the legislative assembly this spring, the Justice minister said last week.

Condominiums make up a growing portion of Yukoners’ home buys. In 2012, 224 condos were purchased, up from 39 in 2004, according to the Justice department.

Gray said the legislative void around condominiums resulted in part in legal situations like the drawn-out debacle in the Falcon Ridge subdivision.

The two-year court battle ended this year shortly after a Yukon Supreme Court judge ruled last January that a half-built condo block must effectively be torn down to keep the property in line with the character of the neighbourhood residents thought they were buying into based on the original site plan.

Justice Ron Veale said that “it would be unjust and inequitable to the majority of unit owners who oppose the condo developer’s (Brian Little) proposal to allow it to proceed with the construction” of the rectangular, 24-unit building — out of step with the single-family residences and rowhouses that surrounded it.

Under the upcoming legislation, that litigious dispute may well have been settled out of court by an arbitrator.

On top of reserve funds and dispute resolution, the new laws also lay out more clearly the powers and obligations of condo boards and update administrative requirements under the Land Titles Act — largely untouched since the late 19th century — for information to be filed in the land titles office.

“Condominiums are unique corporations in which unit owners are members of the corporation and elect a board of directors from among themselves,” the Justice department stated last year.

“Unit owners share ownership and maintenance of common areas, while keeping individual ownership of their units.”

Four units or more are required to register as a condominium.