Fiddling while Main Street burns

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/01/2025 (270 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As cities have expanded over the decades, many have been faced with the task of reviving their respective main drags, but in Winnipeg it seems we are faced with the challenge of keeping ours from burning entirely to the ground.

The Sutherland Hotel has joined a growing list of Main Street-area landmarks, such as Vulcan Iron Works and Holy Ascension Greek Orthodox Church, which have been destroyed by flames.

The once three-storey hotel is now just another pile of debris piled up in a city that seems not to know what to do about the mess. The hotel had been closed since last summer after a different fire. Its loss is keenly felt, not only because of the blot it now makes on the city, but also because its destruction dashes plans to repurpose the building for affordable housing.

Destructive fires, particularly at vacant buildings, are nothing new for Winnipeg, but the losses are felt acutely on Main Street. This paper reported last week that city firefighters have fought 39 fires in just four years on a five-block stretch of Main.

This rash of fires in the downtown core can be seen as a consequence of a rat’s nest of social ills, all of them festering for want of a comprehensive solutions: poverty, addiction, mental health issues, and crime.

So who is responsible for this mess?

According to Mynarksi Coun. Ross Eadie, it’s not the city. He correctly identified money as “the underlying issue” of the situation while speaking to this paper in the aftermath of the Sutherland’s destruction. Building owners, he says, don’t have the money to deal with these vacant or run-down properties. He blames the fires themselves on criminals.

Criminality has a role to play in these fires. As much as criminals must bear responsibility for their actions, they are not actually to blame for the presence of empty or derelict buildings. That responsibility rests on either the buildings’ owners (who, as owners, are responsible for the upkeep of their properties) or the city itself (as, broadly speaking, it’s responsible for the safety of Winnipeggers).

“Should the city raise property taxes to buy the buildings and do something with them? Because that’s ultimately what it comes down to,” Eadie told the Free Press.

If that’s the only option, that is what we’re left with. But surely there are other solutions, because the status quo is untenable.

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Money is the underlying issue to this problem because it’s the underlying issue for most of these crises.

As with mental health and drug addiction, the problem of vacant, rotting buildings along Winnipeg’s Main Street is the result of a long period of dereliction of duty by the people whose responsibility it is to provide the resources necessary to avoid a mess like this. Years of austerity — and in the case of property owners, plain negligence — are hitting us where it hurts, yet again.

The result is one fire after another, turning more of Main Street and other parts of the city into char and rubble each year. Often, buildings damaged by fire are lighted on fire again. And again. And again. There are clear life and safety risks, and fire-damaged buildings in a variety of stages of destruction do nothing but continue to drag neighbourhoods down.

There are people who, for one reason or other, come to rely on these buildings in poor repair for some form of shelter or community.

Poverty is certainly a factor in this situation, but the people who own these buildings, and the members of city council, are not the ones who get to plead it.