A complete teardown

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This article was published 13/09/2016 (3472 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Several Winnipeg homeowners say the city is violating its own bylaws by neglecting and later demolishing properties bought to accommodate the widening of Kenaston Boulevard.

Ken Klassen said neighbourhood residents have watched in frustration after homes on Fulham Avenue near the St. James Bridge fell into disrepair since being purchased by the city several years ago. The city has now deemed the buildings unlivable and is tearing them down.

Demolition began Monday morning while Klassen watched from his home across the street. He said the two Fulham houses are adjacent to a third house the city has already demolished. Another home on Kenaston is scheduled to be demolished this week.

He said the city’s actions are a waste of taxpayers’ dollars and in violation of its own bylaws, which warn private homeowners from practising “demolition by neglect.”

“The city is ignoring its own neighbourhood livability and vacant building bylaws. There’s one set of rules for you and me as homeowners, while the city has a completely different set of rules,” Klassen said.

“There’s no way these houses could not have been rented when the City of Winnipeg took possession (in a span of six to 10 years ago). The two houses they’re destroying today (Monday), when the City of Winnipeg took possession, these were both habitable houses. One of them was even described as a ‘stunning character home.’”

Klassen said area residents were promised by city officials at public consultations in 2009 the homes would be maintained and rented out until the city was ready to begin the Kenaston project.

“What the city has done over a period of years, due to their incompetence, is they’ve broken their promise, they haven’t maintained their houses, they’ve run them into the ground,” he said. “How come perfectly good houses — that the city paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for — were left like this? It’s like erosion, it’s like a cancer growing in the community. No one is accountable at the city, no one seems to care. It’s not just damage to the community, it’s costing taxpayers.”

Klassen said civic administration has ignored repeated requests from area residents for an explanation.

On Monday afternoon, a city spokeswoman said the homes — 61 and 65 Fulham Ave. and 49 Kenaston Blvd. — were demolished to protect the public because they were a safety risk. The Fulham properties will be converted into a green space, retaining as many trees as possible, the spokeswoman said.

Adding to the neighbours’ frustration, Klassen said, city police used the abandoned homes as practice sites for tactical drills.

“I came home one day, coming down beautiful Fulham, a very nice street, and, oh my god, what’s going on? Police vehicles everywhere. Police with helmets and guns drawn and armour and dogs and yelling, ‘Open the door, police!’

“It turns out, they were only practising and they didn’t tell me,” Klassen said. He said police later told him an officer had knocked on his door but there was no answer.

Another homeowner in the neighbourhood, Ian Farrell, said area residents want answers from Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman.

“How would the mayor and councillors feel if the city purchased a house next door to their home, then left it vacant for years and stopped doing basic maintenance, cut the heat, electricity and water and then allowed the police SWAT team to use it for practice?” Farrell said in a statement. “No private homeowner would be allowed to do what the city has done.”

On Monday, a representative from the province’s Workplace Health and Safety temporarily halted the demolition after plumes of dust were rising from the site and nearby phone lines were inadvertently cut.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca