Derelict houses frustrate neighbours, city

Decaying houses with boarded-up windows and trash-covered lawns in Ottawa's Hintonburg neighbourhood are frustrating local residents, but the city says there's little it can do about the problem.

Cheryl Parrott, who is on the board of the Hintonburg Community Association, said she and the association have complained repeatedly and unsuccessfully to the city about some buildings that have been left empty and falling apart for years.

"They're completely rundown, they are overgrown, people dump on the property and they're just an eyesore," she said. "As well … there are safety concerns about them being broken into, the fires happening, squatters living in them."

She showed a CBC reporter one property where shoes littered the yard, and said a dirty diaper stuffed in a tree root growing out of the basement had been there for a year.

Other similarly rundown buildings stand across the street a block of each other in the neighbourhood just west of the city's downtown.

City too understaffed to force cleanups

The city's director of bylaw services, Susan Jones, said the city has issued orders to the owners to fix up the properties, but doesn't enforce them.

"A property standards officer in this city typically handles about 900 calls a year compared to about 150 that a regular property standards officer does in the rest of Ontario," she said. "It has been a resource issue."

Neither canthe citytear the houses down. Abylaw bansdemolition unless the owner has a plan to build a new building.

Kitchissippi Coun. Christine Leadman, who represents Hintonburg, said that needs to change.

"We're looking at it and saying 'This is wrong. How do we fix it?'" she said.

A revised bylawthat will make it easier for the city to tear down abandoned houses is expected in the new year.

In the meantime, municipal officials said the city has already hired more property inspectors.