Lately I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the inner-city. More and more fire damaged houses are staying vacant and boarded up.
I was giving a tour of Windsor yesterday to a reader from Wales, who is in Canada on vacation, and hunting down some family history.
Throughout our drive, I saw more houses that were burned out and boarded up than in years past. Usually in the past, these houses would be quickly demolished, why is it that some of these aren’t? The house in today’s photo is located on Niagara St., and has been in this condition for well over a year…
Anyone know why these rotting burned out hulks are left standing? Shame on the city for allowing this to happen.
You’ve captured one of the better buildings. At least that vacant burned out building hasn’t also been all covered in crack house ghetto graffitti for years. A year ago, I asked Councilor Halberstadt if there was or could be a by-law that states that if a building is vacant for more than six months, that the city could order it demonished. He forwarded the question to the building department and they told me that it wasn’t within the city’s jurisdiction to do that–it fell within the jurisdiction of the province and as far as they know there isn’t such a law in place. At least, I got a response. I tried to ask Councilor Valentinis the same question and he just ignored me, even though his election brochure made a promise to be more aggressive on dealing with graffitti hit property owners who do nothing about these ghetto properties for years and vacant buildings like this. All you have to do is board up the windows and doors so it’s not a safety issue for homeless people breaking in and cut the grass and you can turn your block into an insta-ghetto.
Oh and just to add, I tried to get in touch with Pupa-useless about this provincal jurisdiction thing that our local building department mentioned and she’s about as available to the electorate as Valentinis. No answer.
There is probably a magical Interim Control Bylaw surrounding it. I also heard that such homes are being left in a boarded up state for the firemen to practice on. Also Parks and Rec are interested in the possible use as play grounds for bored kids in these neighbourhoods.
I have noticed a sharp increase in the amount of these abandoned homes as well. I remember not even 10 years ago when houses were boarded up and within a year they were demolished.
I think, of course this is my own opinion, that either the budget does not have room to tear these down anymore (we have lawyers to feed and politicians to learn how to be businesspeople); And/or the political will not to do anything about them at both the municipal and provincial level.
The other issue is that these landowners eitehr have no money to have them torn down due to the economy (if locally owned); And/or landowners have become so greedy that once the house is burned they just let it rot and hope to show that they lost investments and therefore have a return on their taxes.
I’m not sure what changed (in fact I always had pride in the fact that this city didn’t have burned out houses like other cities I have visited did/do) but the fact remains this type of ignorance shouldn’t be ignored!
I forgot to add, does anyone think this would be o.k. in South Windsor, Southwood lakes, Banwell area or any of the other subdivisions on the out-skirts of the city? I would imagine that those would be torn down immediately and rebuilt. But not in the core, no way! Take a look at Caron Ave and Janette area as well as some other spots (not including Indian rd which is a city made slum) in lower to mid-income areas. Houses have sat vacant and boarded up for over a year as well. Forget about the broken window theory when whole houses are left to sit and rot.
Interesting of note. If you put a car on the street without valid plates it gets ticketed as an “abandoned vehicle” and if not moved in 30 days it will be towed away. Why can’t we do this with houses? Better yet, why isn’t the city lobbying the province to remove this blight?
Say what you will about Mike Hurst, though I am not sure if he should receive kudos for this but, at least when he was mayor this crap didn’t happen.
You can’t blame the councillors for not addressing the problem. As we know from recent events the building deparment is the hampering culprit.
ME, don’t view the four-blocks of boarded-up homes on Indian Road in isolation. If you go west two-blocks to Felix you’ll find two-blocks of boarded-up homes on Edison Street. More recently homes on Felix on both sides of the Essx Terminal tracks are boarded up and in the last week a house nearby on College Avenue has been boarded-up. The homes are being patrolled by the same security company. It looks like land is being acquired for a major development at the foot of the proposed new Ambassador Bridge. Leaving the homes boarded-up drives down prices in the neighbood so the developer can get the rest for a song. Eventually the intervening public and commercial land between the two sites will be acquired with the money saved on driving down the prices of these smaller residences
I recently wrote a post on just this thing in a different city. Youngstown, Ohio has demolished more than 1000 homes and other buildings in the past few years. They have gone as far as buying up the last couple of homes on otherwise deserted streets and then tearing out the roads and other infrastructure. Go on google earth and look at Youngstown, Ohio. Particularly look at the oldest areas, the grid pattern streets closest to the downtown.
I have also noticed this trend in the core area. I used to be quite proud of the fact that Windsor didn’t really have a “slum area” like most other cities, but that has definitely changed in the last couple of years. I think it is a combination of unemployment, immigrants with different values and slum lords or non-resident property owners who can’t rent out their properties. Too many vacancies in this city!! We had the infamous “cat house” torn down on our street and now we have a vacant lot which will be sprouting weeds all summer, but at least it is not a rotting, burned out, boarded up hulk. I personally think it sounds like city hall is passing the buck since it always much easier and cheaper to say it someone else’s jurisdiction. Maybe more homeowners need to get vocal about this blight on our city landscape.
Chatham Street in the area just east of the Casino–there is one that’s been burned out–and not even boarded up for quite a few years in the block between Glengarry and Aylmer, with another one rougly across the street from that one–and another set of burned out rowhouses on the SE corner of Chatham and Aylmer. That’s not mentioning the non-firedamaged examples at Aylmer and the Drive.
Why don’t you guys push to have these boarded up buildings declared “Historically significant” – them I’m sure they’ll been torn down ASAP. 🙂
-g
Sure, we can say former Prime Minister Alexender MacKenzie lived there or Albert Kahn designed it. Like there’s anything “historically significant” about this house that would make it even fall into this category.
This house is STILL there according to Google streetview. “1220 niagara” or so? Maybe I’ll drive by sometime to see if it’s still really there.
Mike it is still there, we’re coming up on three years since the fire… Still in the same condition…
that’s a nice brich tree lol. someone should save it.