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A Winnipeg property manager is voicing frustrations after the city ordered him to clean up debris from a homeless encampment on his property.
Marvin Sharp, the CEO of AML Properties, manages the Pen-Eve apartment complex on 35 Balmoral Street, which backs onto the river.
He says there has been an encampment along the river on his property for several years.
“You can see down here there’s clothing, there’s consumer good items, there’s needles,” Sharp says, standing behind the apartment building.
He says the encampment residents have taken shelter in an area under the apartment complex’s surface parking, which is slated to be torn down due to the land along the river shifting. He says there have been multiple fires on the site and that people have cut through the fencing they added.
The real frustration, he says, is how the city is dealing with it. Sharp says he received a compliance order on July 17 ordering him to clean up the area himself.
“Literally I said, this is bulls–t. You, the city, are responsible for the encampments. I can’t go clean this up unless you deal with the encampments. It’s absolutely unsafe,” Sharp says.
“Ironically, in the order it says if you don’t clean it up, the city will and put it on our tax bill. So really, what they’re saying is, if you don’t (clean it up), we’ll go do our job and deal with the encampment and clean it, but you get to pay for it. And that just infuriated me.”
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Sherri Rollins, the councillor for the Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry ward, agrees, telling Global News it’s “absolutely absurd that he’s getting blamed for the debris in front of him.”
“I want Winnipeggers to see this for what it is,” said Rollins. “An absolute Band-Aid on a gaping wound. That now the resolution for encampments is to apparently to penalize the very people who have been spending extra money on security, extra money on fences, extra money on broken doors and broken glass.”
Rollins noted that other city and province-owned properties with encampments are not receiving compliance orders.
“This city, who is pointing every which way except on them at accountability — It’s someone else’s fault always,” she said.
“We need a sustainable public safety plan and we keep seeing symptom after symptom … including this property owner who has seen bills and repairs for years, who has quite obviously called 911 several times to say there’s a dangerous fire, who has quite obviously called on public safety in this city…. means he’s now being blamed,” Rollins claimed. “Stop the blame. Put on your city hall leadership pants and get back to work.”
In a statement to Global News, a spokesperson for the City of Winnipeg said bylaw enforcement officers visited the property at 35 Balmoral St. and observed abandoned material and furniture and issued a compliance order to clean up the area.
The spokesperson noted that the city responds to encampments on public property. For situations on private property, the property owner can contact the Winnipeg Police Service non-emergency line, they said.
But Sharp said having police help move the encampment would also be a Band-Aid solution.
“The debris goes all the way into the encampment, so the only way I can clean this area is by moving the encampment. So I can ask, with the help of police, to move this intangible property line, go move (the encampment) on that side of the tree, clean it up, and what are they going to do? They’re going to move right back over here and it will all come back.”
Sharp says he understands the complexity of the issue, but feels this is no solution.
“I think it’s incredibly frustrating because this is a serious, complicated issue, without question,” he said.
“I understand the issues, but what they can’t do is just simply say kick the can down the road.”
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