‘It was such a wasted opportunity’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/01/2018 (2954 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than a dozen homes on Kenaston Boulevard, that housed members of the military, are being demolished — but it doesn’t mean motorists will soon be driving on a widened Route 90.

And a group that formed to protest outside the houses more than a decade ago, asking that they be used by low-income families instead of sitting empty, is disappointed they are being demolished.

Local Coun. Marty Morantz (Charleswood — Tuxedo — Whyte Ridge), who is also chairman of the civic infrastructure renewal and public works committee, said the demolitions are being done solely by the federal government and the city has no input on it at all.

Morantz said that while the city has been looking at options for widening Route 90 for a few years — and this year plans to develop a more detailed design for the widening from Taylor Avenue and Ness Avenue — the current house razing is not part of it.

“It is a completely separate matter,” he said on Tuesday.

“The land is under federal jurisdiction and the city has no say on this land.”

Last year, the Department of National Defence (DND) budgeted up to $400,000 to demolish military homes along Kenaston, Corydon Avenue and Tuxedo Avenue.

The military said at the time it had 558 homes in Winnipeg, but it only needed 480 housing units in the city.

A statement this week from DND said 18 residential housing units would meet the wrecking ball now, and in the next few months.

“17 Wing Winnipeg no longer requires the 18 (residential housing units),” the statement said.

“They are in poor condition and it is not economically feasible to reinvest in these units to make them suitable for occupancy.

“This will allow DND to continue to better meet the needs of Canadian Armed Forces members posted in Winnipeg.”

The statement didn’t say whether the demolition is also to make way for the city to widen Kenaston, but in a statement last February to the Free Press, an unnamed military official said the houses to be demolished in 2018 were “to permit the eventual road widening by the City of Winnipeg.”

The houses are also some of the same ones that protesters were asking to be turned into housing for low-income families back in 2006.

Those protesters later joined other groups to create the Right to Housing Coalition.

Kirsten Bernas, who chairs the coalition’s provincial working group, said while the DND houses are disappearing, the housing challenge for low-income families is still there.

“It is a huge disappointment,” Bernas said. “Especially in a place we have long advocated to open up for housing to people and to see it now just being demolished is disappointing.

“It was such a wasted opportunity.”

Bernas admitted the housing “wasn’t low income housing in the first place, but this is an example of an opportunity to create a space for low-income housing to be built.”

The housing was not part of the years-long battle for the former Kapyong Barracks property further south on Kenaston between the federal government and Treaty 1 First Nations. The federal government declared the property surplus in 2007, but when it tried to sell it to its Crown corporation developer, a lawsuit by the First Nations ground the process to a halt.

Federal courts later sided with the First Nations and, just before the last federal election, the Conservative government didn’t appeal the decision. Talks are still going on between the federal government and the First Nations.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca