One person fixes a lot of blight

A summer student hired to detail city housing-bylaw infractions in the William Whyte neighbourhood came up with a whopping 1,006 offences.

Hers was a pretty low-tech effort. Armed with nothing more than a clipboard and a pen, she walked the streets of the neighbourhood, noting broken windows, wonky steps, knee-high lawns and other eyesores. Back at the office, she'd send the city a separate email detailing each complaint.

She then mapped the area, using red dots to indicate bylaw infractions. Some streets are layered with dots. Some have few, usually streets with businesses and few homes.

The student doesn't want her identity released, fearing repercussions from an irate property owner or gang member her report may inconvenience. She was hired by community activist Sel Burrows, who used a federal grant to pay her salary.

Commons answers prayers

Six years ago, St. Matthew's Anglican Church was faced with a dwindling congregation, a sprawling century-old building to maintain and the understanding the focus of its much-used structure had gradually shifted from serving God to serving the needs of the larger community.

Church leaders are frank about the crossroads they faced. When they received $500,000 in unexpected bequests, they could have taken the money, used it for operating expenses and shuttered the place when the money was gone.

Instead, they signed a 50-year lease, turning their building and $200,000 over to a non-profit housing organization. What was once a massive church is being transformed into WestEnd Commons (WEC), an affordable rental property for area residents.

It's a more than $6-million project, funded by three levels of government, the United Way, foundations and private donations. An active fundraising campaign is underway.

Divided we stand: as middle class shrinks, gap between Winnipeg’s rich and poor widens

Steve Swartz slowly opens the battered wooden door of his legendary Spence Street rooming house. He blinks into the sun, greeting two strangers cautiously.

Life has been hard on the 49-year-old. He's been on disability for five years, he says, and never expects to hold another job. Welfare pays $285 toward his $385 monthly rent. He has two rooms, no private bathroom. Swartz has to scramble to make up the rent shortage and feed himself.

He lives in the formerly grand home of the late John W. Dafoe, once editor of the Winnipeg Free Press. There's a plaque in the shaggy yard reminding passersby of Dafoe's legacy.

"I get pissed off," says Swartz, who once had his own autobody business and a ticket as a heavy-machine operator.

Economic inequality at root of Winnipeg General Strike

When the workers of Winnipeg went on strike, the newspapers went on the offensive: "Bolshevism invades Canada," screamed the New York Times.

But for most of the men and women who streamed out of the warehouses and onto the streets, the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike was not an exercise in ideology. Instead, its roots grew from a yawning chasm of economic inequality that had become too impossible to ignore.

When spring came that year and the snow melted into the mucky streets of the North End, the city was restless. The world was gasping for breath in the wake of the Great War.

Soldiers returned home from the trenches looking for work, but there was little to be had. Those who could find work gathered in fraternal halls to cry out in frustration at wages that limped behind a soaring cost of living.

Why you should care about the gap

More than morals should make you care about the growing income gap. Here's why:

Democracy erodes.In their much-talked-about new book Why Nations Fail, M.I.T. economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard political scientist James Robinson found that nations with huge disparities of wealth tend toward dictatorships and kleptocracies. Civil unrest is more common, as is profound mistrust of government, reduced economic and technical innovation and crime.

And the reverse is true -- countries thrive when their civil, political and economic institutions are inclusive and equal.

History lessons and hope

The Free Press asked a number of community leaders to comment on the growing gap between rich and poor. Is it getting better or worse? What has changed since the 1919 General Strike?

Lloyd Axworthypresident, University of Winnipeg

The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was an event of cataclysmic importance, reported around the world as a forerunner of revolution in the post-First World War western world. It was a violent confrontation between class and ethnic forces, an epic struggle between haves and have-nots.