By Khang Nguyen

City to ramp up enforcement on boarded-up buildings

Nov 10, 2015 | 4:06 PM

Mayor Greg Dionne says the city will be getting aggressive when it comes to boarded-up and vacant buildings.

During Monday’s meeting, city council passed an amendment that allows the city to impose firmer action towards owners of derelict buildings.

The issue has been a reoccurring one at city council over the years, and has been most recently rehashed in the neighbourhood meetings.

“It’s still a detriment to the communities. You want to put your house up for sale and you got a house boarded up beside you – your value is going down,” said Dionne.

Buildings are only inspected upon a complaint, or when the building was deemed as a nuisance to the community.

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Prior to the changes, many boarded-up or vacant buildings were not deemed as being a nuisance.

“We’re tired of them. They’ve been boarded up for too long so now we’re changing the rules and regulations and we’re going to get very aggressive,” said Dionne.

The definition has now been expanded to include, unoccupied or damaged buildings, or have defective or missing hardware, and doors or window frames that are boarded.

 “Before you were allowed to have them boarded up forever. Now there’s going to be a time frame, there’s going to be penalties, there’s going to be interest,” Dionne said. “You’re going to have to do something. You just cannot board them up and let them there forever.”

The amended bylaw would be consistent with the steps typically taken to enforce compliance of municipal bylaws. According to officials, the city is looking to encourage rehabilitation and re-occupancy of the buildings.

A database of the unsightly, boarded-up or vacant homes shows there are currently 32 single unit and multi-unit rental properties and 22 owner-occupied properties that fit the definition. Of that number, there are about 21 vacant buildings with 16 of those being boarded either by property owners or the fire department.

knguyen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @khangvnguyen