Sault Ste. Marie to implement vacant home tax
The City of Sault Ste. Marie will soon be charging owners of vacant properties a special tax.
City council approved a proposal from administration to implement a vacant home tax as a means of dealing with an increase in empty properties and out-of-town investors buying properties and leaving them vacant.
Peter Tonazzo, director of planning, said the tax would apply to structures that have been empty for a long time and showing obvious signs of neglect.
“Really what we’re trying to target is these persistently vacant homes that have been unkempt, unmaintained, and quite frankly are having a lot of negative impacts around their neighbourhoods,” said Tonazzo.
Once the tax is in place, he said it will not be up to city staff to patrol neighbourhoods in search of vacant properties.
“We’re looking at more of a complaint-based program because we feel that’s the only feasible way for us to do it,” he said.
“We’ve got 34,000 households, dwelling units, there’s no way that we can go out and have all of those tell us whether they’re vacant or not.”
City council voted unanimously in favour of implementing the tax. One downtown councillor said she is confident that she and other councillors will be able to alert staff to vacant properties.
“All of us as city councillors, we know our wards, we know our neighbourhoods,” said Lisa Vezeau-Allen.
“I think we can definitely compile a list without putting the onus on the bylaw officer to make this move forward. So, I already have four or five addresses that I know that once this is ongoing that we can definitely address.”
o Download our app to get local alerts on your device
o Get the latest local updates right to your inbox
City staff have yet to determine what percentage of the assessed value of the property will be taxed, along with some other factors that still need to be worked out.
However, there will be some exemptions to the vacant home tax covering ‘snowbirds’ and those receiving extensive, out-of-town medical treatments.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Drive one of these vehicles? You may pay 37 per cent more than average insurance costs due to thefts
As the number of auto theft incidents rises in Canada, so have insurance premiums for drivers, even the ones whose vehicles aren't stolen.
'I'm not wealthy': Ontario senior shocked she owes $40,000 in capital gains after gifting land
An Ontario senior who wanted to help her daughter and grandson eventually own homes one day decided to give them two lots on her property as a gift—but she didn’t know it would eventually cost her tens of thousands of dollars.
NDP want Liberals to scrap proposed election date change that could secure pensions for many MPs
The federal New Democrats want to amend the Liberal government's electoral reform legislation to scrap the proposal to push back the vote by a week and consequently secure pensions for dozens of MPs, CTV News has learned.
Israel's war cabinet minister moves to dissolve parliament: statement
Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz's centrist party has proposed holding a vote to dissolve parliament in a bid to bring about an early election, his party said in a statement on Thursday.
DEVELOPING BMO clients face outages in Canada, U.S. following data centre fire alarm
Bank of Montreal clients on both sides of the border Thursday morning have reported outages with banking services. BMO said its technical team is investigating.
Exorbitant fees get Gazans out with no help from Ottawa
The comforting sound of giggling grandchildren has chased away the cloud of anxiety that has loomed over Mohammed and Intisar Nofal's home for the past seven months.
Nick Taylor of Abbotsford, B.C., begins RBC Canadian Open defence
Nick Taylor begins the defence of his RBC Canadian Open title this morning.
B.C. mortgage broker ran $270-million Ponzi scheme, then fled Canada, bankruptcy trustee says
The trustee appointed to manage the bankruptcies of a Victoria mortgage company and its owner has concluded that they committed "numerous offences" and operated as a "massive Ponzi scheme."
Want to turn off Meta AI? You can't - but there are some workarounds
If you use Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram, you've probably noticed a new character pop up answering search queries or eagerly offering tidbits of information in your feeds, with varying degrees of accuracy.