As of April, there were 146 empty homes in North Central and 41 in Heritage, the city says
In Regina’s North Central neighborhood, at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Retallack Street, there is a bungalow. Most of its windows are made of plywood. The roof of the mudroom is beginning to fall in. The grass is not well taken care of, and there are two thin trees growing out from under the front steps.
Last month, Ward 3 Coun. Andrew Stevens went on a ride-along with members of the City of Regina’s bylaw enforcement department through his ward. He was brought to this house by the police.
“I asked [bylaw] what the best property would be to stand in front of, and they showed me this one,” Stevens told CBC News during an interview outside the house.
“This house and many others like it might have been a problem for the neighborhood for months or even years. People would rather see houses torn down than have them become eyesores and problems that hurt the whole block.
The city’s community standards bylawSets rules for how land and building owners must take care of their property to make neighborhoods safe and attractive. The bylaw deals with things like overgrown grass, buildings with signs, and old cars, and those who don’t follow the rules are fined.
Derelict properties, which are called nuisances in the bylaw, are a constant problem.
Experts say that these properties, which are mostly in North Central and Heritage neighborhoods in Regina, make the area unsafe and lower the value of nearby homes. Residents, on the other hand, feel like they are being ignored and think that these properties make their neighborhoods look bad.
In the past few years, the city has taken steps to give bylaw enforcement more power and to tear down such properties.
But it is harder than it sounds to get rid of these properties and find new ones.
Problems around the neighborhoo
On a rainy Friday night, Leah O’Malley and two other volunteers walked their weekly route, picking up needles in back alleys in the city’s north end and giving people on the street sandwiches, snacks, and ponchos if they needed them.
On their way, the three people pass by a number of boarded-up, burned, and empty buildings. This time, O’Malley noticed one that looked like it had just been moved into.
“This community has a problem with abandoned houses,” said O’Malley, the board chair of White Pony Lodge, a non-profit organization in the area.
Desirae Bernreuther, a spokesperson for the City of Regina, said that as of April, there were 146 boarded-up homes in North Central and 41 in Heritage. Bernreuther said that there were 169 empty homes in North Central and 39 in Heritage in June 2022.
The community standards bylaw says that a nuisance is a “property, structure, thing, or activity” that may or does hurt the “safety, health, or welfare” of the neighborhood or its residents.
Some properties are considered to be a nuisance because they have been boarded up for more than 90 days or are empty but have broken doors or windows.
O’Malley and other locals, on the other hand, have seen a number of properties that have been a nuisance for months or even years.
No one from bylaw enforcement was available for an interview, but Bernreuther told CBC News that there could be “a number of reasons” why a property could stay the same for more than 90 days, like the owner waiting for insurance after a fire, a new renter, or the property being completely abandoned.
Bernreuther said that the city tries to work with landowners to figure out what’s going on and, “wherever possible,” get them to bring their property into line with the law.
When a fire damages a building, the Regina Fire Department puts up boards and keeps the area safe until the investigation is done. Bernreuther said that after that, the owner is once again responsible.
She said that the time it will take to finish the work depends on many things, such as the time of year and the availability of materials and contractors.
Residents and other landowners have to deal with the problems in the meantime.
“When a house is empty for a long time, it causes stress for everyone in the neighborhood,” O’Malley said.
“Everyone else who lives there needs to be careful, because nobody wants that to be broken into.”
CBC News talked to people who said that some people break into the homes to find shelter, which can lead to fires and drug use. Others break in to steal things like copper wiring, which could cause an explosion if they are not taken care of.
Each person interviewed said that the break-ins are signs of bigger social problems, like poverty and homelessness.
In the past few years, the Regina Police Service has brought up the issue. In May 2021, the police gave a report to the city’s executive committee. In it, they suggested that people take more responsibility and that laws be enforced more strongly.
Part of the goal of the recommendations is to make it less likely that problems like squatting and fires will happen again.A report from the executive committee from last year. The committee voted to pass the item, which called for stiffer fines for people whose buildings become unsafe or don’t meet the community standards bylaw, among other things.
Cameron Choquette, CEO of the Saskatchewan Landlord Association, said that the dangers that often come with abandoned properties create “a perfect storm of danger” that lowers the value of nearby properties.
In places like North Central, where there are a lot of rental homes, this is a big problem for landlords.
Choquette said, “It’s a problem all through the year.””We want to make housing in Regina and the rest of the province better. We want to make sure our neighborhoods are safe and as free of crime as possible. We also don’t want them to be full of ugly, boarded-up homes that attract crime and homeless people.
He asked all of the people in his association, including renters and homeowners, to follow the law.
Stigma and neglec
Erinn Brouzes and her fiance, who grew up in North Central, recently took a day off from work to drive around the neighborhood, from Fourth to Ninth avenues and Elphinstone to Argyle streets.
They wrote down the address of each problem property and empty lot and made a note of whether or not anyone was living there at the time. Later, they looked up the names of each property owner and made a list of the 98 properties they found in a database.
A copy of their spreadsheet was given to CBC News. A lot of the houses are right next to each other. There are more than 20 homes on the list for a few streets.
Brouzes, whose family moved from Cathedral to North Central a few months ago, said, “It’s completely unacceptable that any neighborhood in any city would have this many abandoned homes.”
“You’d never see anything like that in the Cathedral neighborhood, even though it’s in the same ward.”
Brouzes grew up in Winnipeg’s North End, which is known as the roughest part of Manitoba’s capital city, but she only remembers the strong sense of community there.
She sees a lot of similarities in North Central, but she said that run-down homes are making the bad reputation even worse.
O’Malley has lived in the neighborhood for 16 years. He is from White Pony Lodge. Even though it has a reputation for being dangerous, she feels safe there because there are other people around and she knows her neighbors.
“It’s disheartening,” said O’Malley.
“People who live in this neighborhood and already feel like they don’t have a voice will feel even less like they have a voice when their neighborhood is left like that.”
Brouzes has talked to her neighbors about the abandoned homes and other things that are important to the community. She said that they keep telling her and her fiance to fight, even though they’re tired of trying.
“They feel like no one cares about them,” she said.
Fix for properties that are a pai
Bernreuther said that the city can step in to make sure a property meets the standard, but it won’t do so until “all efforts to get voluntary compliance have failed.”
In this case, the city will do the work and add the cost to the tax bill of the property owner. Bernreuther said that most of the time, the city sends a contractor to do the repairs.
Demolition is the last choice. Bernreuther said that bylaw enforcement tore down 22 homes last year, 15 of which were in North Central.
So far this year, she said, seven homes have been torn down. Five more are waiting in line behind the three that are already going.
Coun. Stevens told CBC News that getting rid of these properties has come a long way in the last few years, thanks in part to new leadership and better coordination between bylaw enforcement and other departments.
“Everyone is now taking this issue seriously,” he said.
“We’ve probably seen more action in the last 10 years in terms of securing properties, holding owners accountable, and demolishing them.”
But it gets hard to tear down buildings.
Bernreuther said that before giving a property owner an order to comply, the city has to think about a number of things, like how often the property has been boarded up and whether or not law enforcement is sure that no one lives there. Once that is done, the property owner has 15 days to appeal the decision.
Bernreuther said that if they don’t appeal, the city will send a worker to the property. But, depending on how old the building is, testing for asbestos is often needed. If tests show that there is asbestos, it must be removed before the building is torn down.
Then, after a building is torn down, there is still the question of what to do with the land.
There used to be several buildings next to the derelict property at Seventh Avenue and Retallack. Now there is nothing but a green, vacant lot.
The parcels of land are still privately owned, Stevens said, and nothing has replaced the dwellings that were once there.
“The conversation now is: what do we do with this?” he said.
Stevens said some local business owners and landlords hired a consultancy group to draft a document titled the North Central Revitalization Action Plan. Stevens handed that over to the city manager and staff, and said he’s waiting to see movement on it.
O’Malley suggests the solution in North Central is not more low-income housing.
“The low-income housing that we already have here, a lot of it is empty,” she said.