Losing hope for housing

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This article was published 06/03/2024 (587 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Manitoba Housing announced it was seeking proposals for the future of an abandoned inner-city housing complex, members of the Central Park community were hopeful about the future of Centre Village, which had become a hub for criminal activity since being shuttered.

Now, four months after the latest deadline for proposals to renovate or demolish 575 Balmoral St., that hope has faded and residents want to know what the holdup is.

“I don’t know what the delay is on the building,” said Jason Keenan, who has lived opposite the complex for eight years.

“(Especially) if you can’t give away a building because there’s so much damage to it, and the setup of the building is so inappropriate for the area.”

Manitoba Housing owns Centre Village, a 25-unit apartment complex built to provide subsidized housing to newcomers, but practical issues with the ambitious design of the apartment units and safety concerns rendered the building unusable. It was boarded up in 2022, just 10 years after it opened, and abandoned by the province.

In the time since, break-ins, squatting, drug use and frequent police visits have become a constant for the people who live nearby.

Manitoba Housing issued a request for expressions of interest in April 2023 — 16 months after boarding up the property — seeking non-profits, Indigenous organizations and other levels of government interested in developing social housing, either through redeveloping the current structure or demolishing it to start anew. Proposals had to be submitted by May 19.

After the deadline passed, Manitoba Housing said it had received seven proposals and was in the process of creating a short list of groups to be part of a negotiated request for proposal phase, which began Aug. 1 with a deadline of Oct. 30.

An estimated timetable in Manitoba Housing’s report suggests that successful applicants would receive notice by December, but the province has not provided any public updates on the future of the property.

In an email Tuesday, Glen Cassie, the province’s media relations manager, said plans dealing with the future of Centre Village were going on behind the scenes, but he did not offer any information.

“When I have an update, I’ll be sure to share it. At this point there is nothing new,” he said.

Housing Minister Bernadette Smith said an update on the future of the property is coming.

“I drive by this location every day on my way to work and share in the concerns of the community. Families are proud of their neighbourhood and want to ensure it is safe,” she said.

“This site has been a priority for me and I look forward to sharing more soon.”

Manitoba Housing has offered to sell the property for $1, with priority given to Indigenous organizations and new construction projects. The successful applicant must build at least 25 units of subsidized social housing, meaning rent must be calculated based on a tenant’s income.

The department has also put up $2.2 million in capital funding toward the project, following a 2019 field condition assessment that estimated repairs to the complex could cost up to $1.8 million.

In January, the NDP government announced it would be scaling back a promise made by the Progressive Conservatives prior to the fall election to create 700 new social housing units this fiscal year, instead focusing on offering 250 rental units with wrap-around supports.

Morden-Winkler MLA and PC housing critic Carrie Hiebert called Centre Village “the poster child of the NDP’s poorly-planned approach to social housing.”

“It’s not surprising the NDP continue to hide from their boondoggle, but it doesn’t change the fact that the project sits abandoned while more and more families wait for affordable housing,” she said in an email Tuesday.

Centre Village was constructed under Greg Selinger’s NDP government, but was boarded up while Heather Stefanson and the Tories were in power.

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A report released this week from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives recommends Manitoba set up a long-term capital fund that would have to create 1,000 new social housing units every year for at least a decade to meet the level of need in the province.

In the meantime, Keenan said he fears the property will remain as is until summer, when historically, violent activity and drug use is at its worst. He believes the lack of movement is connected to the area’s high concentration of low-income residents.

“This neighbourhood is ignored by more than just Manitoba Housing, it’s ignored by the police, it’s ignored by everybody,” he said.

“For me to say it’s Manitoba Housing’s fault, well, they should be setting a better example. But (the complex) doesn’t look out of order or out of place here… just matching the community. It’s like, who cares?”

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.