CBRM demolishes dozens of abandoned houses each year, but hundreds remain

Neighbours of abandoned houses in Cape Breton Regional Municipality are tired of living next to them, and the municipality is motivated to get rid of them.

Abandoned and derelict buildings have been an ongoing problem in the municipality.

Neighbours have to live by rodents, squatters and sometimes raccoons. The municipality is taking an aggressive approach to remove the buildings, but isopen to more creative solutions in the future.

The municipality has about 350houses on its list, a number far smaller thanthe 600 needing to be demolished in 2017, and the 480 still standing by the end of 2019.

Despite the fast pace of demolitions, there are still hundreds of people around the municipality who have to deal with the daily annoyances of being a neighbour to the dilapidated buildings.

"I know the one close to my house," said James Thompson, who has lived in Ashbyneighbourhood of Sydney for over 20 years. "It's occupied by raccoons and rats, and they get out and they tear up the yard.The raccoons,they get into the garbage. It's a pain."

Thompson said the structure has been abandoned and causing him trouble for all the years he's been living in Ashby.

David Garcia has only lived in Cape Breton for about a year, but he's already worrying about trouble that may come from the abandoned housenext door.

"It's possible that animals like rats can probably proliferate there easily and move to other houses and sometimes I wonder if that will happen," said Garcia.

Most of the houses to be demolished in the CBRM were built as temporary housing for coal miners and steel plant workers.

'Nothing glamorous'

"There's nothing glamorous about them," said Paul Burt, CBRM's manager of building, planning and licensing."There's a lot of history in them, but they basically were temporary housing and 75 years overdue for being demolished."

Burt is in charge of demolishing thestructures. He said CBRM is making the effort to clear out the houses as fast as possible.

"We maximize that budget every year. We don't leave money on the table. So it's just it's just a continual process. So most municipalities might deal with one or two or five or 10 of these a year."

Burt said the CBRM routinely demolishes 50 properties a year and that pace started about a decade ago when council gave his department the budget to start getting to work.

"Up until that point, they were just kind of dealing with the odd property here and there as it came up on the radar," said Burt.

Burt said the time it takes to demolish a house used to be120 days. Now, because of communication and practice, the average house is torn down 90 days after the order to demolish is brought to council.

Burt said they are able to tear down the homes so fast because they've adjusted the way they do things and have brought in more people. Instead of issuing multiple tenders to one contractor, CBRM now auctions off the properties to a few of them.

"So that means we're not just relying on one guy to do all 20 of them three or four or five of them are kind of ongoing at the same time,"

Their work has started a trend of people and businesses finally showing interest in the properties, Burt said.

"The private sector is kicking in and people are actually selling properties where some of them are buying them with the intention to knock the property down."

'We'll sit down with anybody'

Burt said the CBRM is open to working with anyone who is interested.

"We'll sit down with anybody.We've met with SHIMI, which is Supportive Housing for Individuals with Mental Illness. We've helped them locate some property in the CBRM."

That group has already built new homes on the land they bought in Lingan and Whitney Pier.

Although there is work being done to remove all the derelict and abandoned buildings in the municipality, Burt said he understands the frustrations of people who still have to live next to the structures, but it takes time.

"Right now, we still have probably around 340 to 350 of these vacant properties in our database, and I can't deal with all 350 of them today."