A boarded house is cover. A clean lot is not.

I just released my plan for vacant buildings. Winnipeg cannot become the safest and cleanest city in Canada while hundreds of empty properties sit boarded up and waiting to burn.

A boarded house is cover. It is a place to hide, a place to sell and a place to light a fire. Neighbours who pay their taxes should not have to wonder who is using the empty house next door after dark, or whether it will go up tonight. Every vacant building will be repaired, reoccupied, rebuilt or taken down. A clean lot is not cover. It is a community opportunity.

From January to September 2024, Winnipeg firefighters answered 182 vacant-building fires, more than in all of 2023. City data later put the full-year vacant-property total at 274, including 123 vacant homes and apartments. On May 12, 2026, crews fought six vacant-building fires in three hours. As of August, the City was enforcing the vacant-building bylaw at 810 properties, 641 of them homes.

Since 2023, the fire service has billed more than $3.5 million in vacant-property fire charges and collected about six cents on the dollar. The City started taking-title proceedings on 48 properties. As of May 2026, it had not finished one.

City Hall already has a bylaw and a strategy. What it does not have is a closed file. Mayor Gillingham has ignored the problem. The vacant buildings are still there after four years. Closing these buildings will not fix every crime number in Winnipeg. It will take a known hazard off the block, and it will take the cover away from the people who use that block after dark.

Under my plan:
- Every vacant building is a file to close: repaired, reoccupied, rebuilt or taken down.
- No demolition fee if the owner rebuilds affordable housing on the same site.
- Every other demolition approval takes 15 days at most.
- If a lot cannot be rebuilt right away, it is cleaned, seeded and kept as open ground.
- A building vacant for more than two years faces a doubled vacant-building charge; after three years that charge triples. Unpaid fire fees go on the tax roll.
- Winnipeg will ask the Province for faster taking-title, with fewer loopholes.

There is no new cost to the general taxpayer. Owners who left the hazard will fund the cleanup.

Do you think the vacant home problem has gotten better under Scott Gillingham? Neither do I, and that’s why I’m running to be your Mayor; let's make Winnipeg cleaner and safer.

Kevin