What the notice actually requires
Under Vancouver's Graffiti By-law 7343, property owners are responsible for keeping their property free of graffiti — and once the City serves a notice, you have 10 days to have it removed. The City's own page is blunt about what happens next: graffiti that remains after being reported "will be removed and the removal cost will be billed to the property owner." The same page defines graffiti broadly — one or more letters, symbols or marks, however made, placed without the owner's or tenant's prior written authorization — so slap-tags, marker and etching count just as much as spray paint. It also sets a minimum $500 fine per offence for anyone placing graffiti; that part targets the tagger, but the removal obligation lands squarely on the owner.
Two things the City's page does not spell out, so we won't either: it doesn't state a fine amount for owners who miss the deadline (the stated consequence is removal billed to you), and it doesn't describe an appeal process. If either matters to your situation, confirm directly with the City before relying on it.
Why 10 days is shorter than it sounds
For a strata manager or commercial landlord, the problem isn't the rule — it's the clock, running against how multi-party buildings actually make decisions:
- Days 1–3: the notice sits in a mailbox, or gets forwarded between the owner, the managing agent and the strata council while everyone works out whose job it is
- Days 3–6: someone photographs the wall, requests quotes, and waits on council or owner approval to spend
- Days 6–10: a contractor is booked — if one has capacity that week — and the work happens under deadline pressure, at whatever it costs
None of that is mismanagement; it's just how approvals work when several parties share a building. The bylaw clock doesn't pause for any of it. And if the deadline passes, you don't control the outcome anymore: the City removes the graffiti its way, on its schedule, and the bill arrives regardless.
The day a notice arrives: four moves
- Photograph everything — the notice itself, the graffiti, and the surrounding wall. Dated photos are the backbone of every later conversation with the City, an insurer or a council
- Identify the deadline date and work backwards — removal needs to be finished by then, not booked
- Get a firm quote the same day — ours are done from a photo, so there's no site-visit delay. One-time removal starts at $295 plus GST; current rates are on the pricing page
- Keep the completion photos — proof of removal, dated, in the same file as the notice
How a patrol plan changes the equation
A patrol program is proactive by design: we visit on a schedule — weekly or every two weeks — whether or not anyone calls. Covered areas are inspected up to 12 feet from the ground, marks that take under 15 minutes are removed at no charge during the visit, larger graffiti is removed on the spot and billed in 30-minute increments at member rates, and offensive or hate graffiti is removed the same day. After every visit you receive a photo report, which means dated documentation already exists before anyone asks for it.
Most notices simply never happen on a patrolled property, because the graffiti is gone before anyone reports it. That's the quiet value of the schedule: the bylaw process starts with a complaint, and a wall that's clean within days of being hit rarely generates one.
The bylaw notice guarantee
And for the notice that slips through anyway, patrol plans carry a specific commitment: if the City serves a graffiti notice on your property while it's on a plan, we remove that graffiti free of charge, before the deadline — just forward us the notice within 2 business days. The 10-day scramble becomes a two-minute email, and the documentation trail is already in your inbox from previous visits.
Build the file before you need it
Whether or not you ever join a program, adopt the habit the bylaw process rewards: keep one graffiti file per property. Every incident gets the date it was found, photos before and after, the invoice, and any correspondence with the City. Councils ask for it at budget time, insurers ask for it with vandalism claims, and if a notice ever arrives for graffiti you've already removed, that file ends the conversation in one email. Patrol clients get this for free — the photo reports are the file — but reactive owners can run the same system with a shared folder and five minutes of discipline per incident.
What to do today
Holding a notice right now? Photograph it and the graffiti and send both to us — the deadline becomes our problem. Managing a repeat target with no notice yet? That's the cheaper moment to act: compare the two approaches in patrol vs. one-time removal — biweekly patrol starts at $135/month plus GST.
Call or text (778) 200-8343 · support@flatmateclean.com · or request service at graffitimedic.ca.