Province has to untie Winnipeg’s hands in fight against vacant, boarded-up properties

Mayor Scott Gillingham deserves credit for at least trying to tackle one of Winnipeg’s most stubborn urban problems: derelict, boarded-up houses that sit vacant for years, rot into neighbourhood eyesores and too often become fire traps.

But let’s not pretend the city’s renewed use of “taking title without compensation” is some kind of game-changing solution. It isn’t. Not under the current rules.

The city has begun the process of seizing 48 vacant properties since council directed staff in December to use the tool more aggressively. That sounds impressive. It certainly makes for a strong political headline after a week in which firefighters battled six vacant-building fires.

Yet the uncomfortable reality is this: the vast majority of derelict property owners already know exactly how to avoid losing their buildings.

Pay your property taxes, pay your vacant building fees, board up the structure when ordered to do so. Stay technically compliant with city bylaws and the city’s hands are, largely, tied.

That’s the loophole big enough to drive a fire truck through.

Under the current system, the city can begin the taking-title process only after a property owner is convicted in provincial court for violating the vacant buildings bylaw. Even then, the owner gets at least another 90 days to bring the property back into compliance.

And what often happens? The owner cleans up just enough to satisfy the rules, pays the fines and fees, and the seizure process dies.

Then the house sits boarded-up for another year or two. Or longer.

Meanwhile, neighbourhood residents are forced to live beside dangerous shells that attract vandalism, squatters, drug use, arson and crime. Families raise children next to properties that look like they belong in a war zone.

Firefighters repeatedly risk their lives responding to blazes in abandoned structures that never should have remained standing in the first place.

This is not a failure of enforcement. City inspectors and bylaw officers are doing the work. Winnipeg conducted 12,000 inspections of vacant buildings this year and boarded up nearly 500 properties.

The problem is the law as it’s currently written.

As long as an owner keeps paying taxes and remains technically compliant with bylaws, a property can effectively remain boarded up in perpetuity. There is currently no mechanism that says enough is enough.

That has to change.

The city needs stronger powers that allow it to seize or force redevelopment of chronically vacant and derelict properties after they have remained unused for an extended period of time — whether that’s five years, seven years or 10 years.

At some point, private-property rights have to be balanced against the public interest.

A boarded-up house sitting empty for a decade is not contributing to the city. It is undermining neighbourhood stability, depressing nearby property values, creating public safety risks and draining civic resources.

And in a city facing a housing shortage, allowing hundreds of lots to remain frozen in decay indefinitely is increasingly indefensible.

The current approach essentially rewards absentee ownership and speculation. Some owners hold onto worthless structures because the carrying costs are low and they hope the land value eventually rises.

Others simply lack the money or motivation to redevelop but continue paying taxes to avoid forfeiture.

Either way, the result for communities is the same: stagnation and blight.

The city says it is currently enforcing its vacant buildings bylaw at 765 properties, including 600 residential buildings.

It’s a problem that disproportionately affects older inner-city neighbourhoods already struggling with poverty, crime and disinvestment. Residents there should not have to accept boarded-up homes as a permanent feature of the landscape simply because the legal framework favours property owners over communities.

To be fair, the city has made some improvements. Council recently shortened the tax-sale process for owners who fail to pay taxes, reducing the trigger from three years to two. But even that process can still take another three years to complete.

And tax arrears are only useful when owners stop paying taxes.

Many don’t.

That’s why the province needs to get involved.

The legislative authority governing municipal property seizure powers comes from provincial law. If Winnipeg wants broader authority to deal with long-term derelict properties, the Manitoba government will have to amend legislation to allow it.

This should not be a difficult conversation.

The NDP government has repeatedly emphasized housing, neighbourhood renewal and community safety as priorities. Here is an opportunity to help municipalities address all three at once.

Of course, stronger seizure powers would need safeguards. Legitimate hardship cases should be treated differently from absentee speculators. Property owners should have ample warning and opportunities to comply. Due process matters.

But right now, the pendulum has swung too far in the wrong direction.

The city can spend years monitoring a dangerous vacant building, repeatedly inspect it, repeatedly board it up, repeatedly send firefighters to it and still be unable to take meaningful action if the owner keeps paying fees and taxes.

That isn’t an effective system. It’s bureaucratic limbo.

And until the laws change, Winnipeg residents should understand something important: the city’s new taking-title initiative may help at the margins, but it will not fundamentally solve the boarded-up housing crisis.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca