City council approves new vacant home tax program

A new tax on vacant homes in the city has been approved by council. 

Windsor city council met Monday afternoon, with one report being presented to consider adding a three per cent tax added to properties unoccupied for more than 183 days in a taxation year.

This program will see properties that have been declared or deemed to have been vacant, a bill will be issued to the property owner. The bill will be payable in one instalment within 90 days of the issue date of the bill. Any amount outstanding after the due date will be added to property taxes and will be subject to penalties and interest accordingly.

However, administration recommended that if a false declaration has been deliberately made to avoid the tax, a penalty of $2,500 be charged in addition to the tax for that year.

Ward 2 councillor Fabio Costante put forward a motion to approve the recommendation, and asked that administration report back to council in one year with how effective the program has been. A friendly amendment was approved to increase the fine for false declarations from $2,500 to $3,500. 

Council unanimously approved the report. 

Caroline Taylor, ward 2 resident, says she's excited to see this moving forward, as these vacant properties cause issues.

"They are a nuisance, the buildings themselves and the properties are generally not maintained. They have broken and boarded up windows, and overgrown littered lawns. This attracts vagrant rodents, and other derelict properties, and decreases surrounding property values."

Thadd Opiola, property owner, says while he understands the need for a tax, he wishes it had been lower after a survey by the Assessment Division solicited community input asked for less than three per cent. 

"Based on the study there was only 46.8 per cent people agreeing that the tax should be more than two per cent. So I don't know why then the tax would be at three per cent with less than half of the people from the survey saying it should be greater than two."

Kieran McKenize, ward 9 councillor, says he's hoping this will have a positive impact on the growing need of housing locally. 

"We do have a number of vacant homes in the City of Windsor, and those homes frankly could form part of the housing stock to help us address some of the challenges that we're seeing in our community around housing availability."

McKenize says the city wants to prompt property owners to bring their properties into a state where they can be livable. 

"Whether it's by themselves or be made available on the rental market, or perhaps in a better condition for sale, whatever it might be, but we're trying to incentivize property owners through an additional tax levy that would be recorded to people who aren't addressing vacancies in the properties that they own in residential areas."

He says he's okay with the three per cent implemented.

"I think that our administration arrived at a reasonable number. They were originally contemplating two per cent, but they did an Environmental Scan of what different communities have done with respect to the implementation of a vacant home tax, and found that three per cent was closer to where the average was."

City administration is unsure at this time how many vacant houses there are throughout the region, but states that more than 85,000 tax bills are issued every year/

There are exemptions to the definition of vacant, including items such as residential units that are considered to be under construction, renovation, or redevelopment as supported by permits issued by the City's building department, units that are vacant following the death of the registered owner, transfer of ownership of property during the year, among other exemptions. 

Now that the program has been approved by council, a request will be sent to Ontario's Ministry of Finance for authorization to begin the program in 2024.

The city would launch an education campaign before any measures under the program are used.