Troubled Manitoba housing complex still vacant, left to ‘sit there and rot’

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This article was published 06/04/2023 (969 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jason Keenan had hoped speaking out publicly about the vacant subsidized housing complex in his neighbourhood that had become a hub for illicit activity would result in the province taking action.

He was disappointed. Just weeks later, there was a fire at two of the units at 575 Balmoral St.

“The fire department came, put that out. They were back later on that day, and then the police were back later on that night,” Keenan told the Free Press this week.

“I think the police themselves secured the building. I never did see Manitoba Housing. I haven’t seen Manitoba Housing here doing anything to the property yet.”

Centre Village, a 25-unit Central Park property opened in 2010, was an ambitious project meant to be a family-focused, rent-to-own co-op for newcomers before it became a subsidized housing complex.

Through a mix of design issues and safety concerns, it slowly lost tenants and was boarded up in January 2022.

No changes — other than a fence being put up that Keenan said is regularly breached by squatters — appear to have been made since.

The building has been a gathering spot, Keenan said. Plywood barriers are regularly torn off the boarded-up units and appliances are stolen or dragged onto the grounds.

According to Keenan, who has lived across the property for seven years, the last time he saw a Manitoba Housing officer on the grounds was November 2022.

Spokespeople from the province have said Manitoba Housing officers are scheduled to check the building multiple times a day.

“I’d love to see their records on who has been going by there,” Keenan said. “Because it’s not visual to us in the neighbourhood. We don’t see them doing anything there.

“If they’re saying they’re there daily, why does it take two or three weeks for them to close up the gate? Why does it take them so long to go into a unit? How did the place burn?”

The province says while it is scheduled to make those visits, how many patrols actually occur is impacted by how Manitoba Housing staff levels and the amount of service calls it is receiving.

“Call volumes and staffing levels impact the times and total number of patrols actually completed,” the spokesperson said in an email.

“The patrols consist of inspecting the fence line for breaches, and looking for boards which have been removed from windows or doors. They then either enter the fence with security officers or engage the Winnipeg Police Service to assist in clearing the units prior to reboarding.”

The spokesperson did not respond to questions asking if there was data being kept on how often patrols happen or if data on patrols is kept at all.

There are 22 Manitoba Housing mobile security officers in Winnipeg. They responded to 16,146 calls for service in 2022, which does not include patrolling and document services.

The total budget for Manitoba Housing security was just over $3 million in 2022-23, with $1.3 million going to the mobile security program.

Housing advocate and University of Winnipeg Prof. Shauna MacKinnon called the present fate of 575 Balmoral St. “tragic,” especially in a low-income area where more available subsidized housing is needed.

“There’s issues around it, the safety, all the issues that people have identified, it was poorly designed, all that, but there might be some potential there for someone that might be a decent fit and especially if they were able to put somebody in the building that could be providing supports for people,” the urban and inner-city studies researcher said.

“There’s no reason that couldn’t be done, but it would be expensive.”

As to why the building has sat for so long, MacKinnon theorizes, unlike 185 Smith St. (a downtown building once owned by the province and sold to Edison Properties in 2018 for $16.2 million), Centre Village may have not been put up for sale yet because it’s in a less desirable location for developers.

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“My guess is, this is the cheapest route… It’s easier to just let it sit there and rot, than invest money into doing what is needed to make it safe, to be putting people in there,” she said.

Daniel McIntyre Coun. Cindy Gilroy, who represents Central Park as part of her ward, said she’d like to see the building invested in and made into social housing, rather than torn down or sold.

“Right now, it could be a really good fit for a lot of Ukrainian refugees that have come into Winnipeg,” she said.

“They’re living in hotels, and they have to find places to live and we need places for them to live… in the long term. I think it should stay social housing. We need all different types of families living downtown.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.