Legislation needed on vacant buildings

THERE is something deeply backwards about a system that lets a property owner keep a building boarded up indefinitely while neighbours are left to live with the consequences.

In Winnipeg, as long as the owner pays the taxes, follows the city’s vacant-building rules and pays the required fees, there is no hard deadline for the building to be dealt with.

The building can remain a neighbourhood eyesore. It can attract drug use and crime. It can become a fire hazard. And the people living nearby can be left wondering how long they are expected to put up with it.

Yet when Premier Wab Kinew was asked Friday whether his government would change provincial legislation to give Winnipeg the power to impose a time limit on such properties, he declined to answer.

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