Vacant home destroyed by fire slated for affordable housing

A home with high hopes has gone up in flames.

The property at 124 Lisgar Avenue was one of three vacant buildings to catch fire in a 24-hour period between Friday night and Saturday in Winnipeg. The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service (WFPS) also responded to a blaze in the 600 block of Flora Avenue and another in the 400 block of Elgin Avenue.

The Lisgar home, however, had high hopes of becoming affordable housing in the Point Douglas neighbourhood. Those hopes came crashing down as the flames overtook the building, rendering it a total loss.

"You can see what's up there, you can see the boarded windows,” community advocate Sel Burrows said. "This could have been a decent housing asset for us.”

Burrows is the coordinator for Point Powerline, a crime watch group in the neighbourhood.

“Keeping track of garbage, drug dealers, and potential arson in vacant housing," he said.

They had been watching the property years before the fire, noting at the time that it was a drug deal hotspot.

The vacant home was one of 10 properties at the centre of the Winnipeg Police Service’s Project Matriarch - a massive crack cocaine bust in 2021.

"Not only were the drugs being manufactured and sold and distributed out of Point Douglas but the people that we've arrested were residents,” Corpl. Rob Carver said at the time of the bust.

Burrows was glad to see the crackdown, but disappointed the Lisgar home had been sitting empty ever since. It, along with the nine others, were seized under the province's criminal property forfeiture act.

This property was one of six that Manitoba Housing opened up for proposals from non-profit or Indigenous organizations looking to build affordable housing.

"Six houses on this block,” Burrows said. “What if we have six people who are really happy to live in decent housing adding to the strength of this block?"

Proposal submissions closed two weeks before the Lisgar property went up in flames.

This spring the City of Winnipeg began to fine owners of vacant buildings that catch fire.

The city said in am email to CTV News the owner of 124 Lisgar Avenue may be subject to those fines, but does not have information specific to that property at this time.

Burrows wishes the house had been renovated before it burnt down - and that other vacant homes don't meet the same fate.

He also wants to see the Province of Manitoba’s justice system sped up so that properties seized by crime can be fixed up sooner.

Burrows said the neighbourhood needs help to keep people safe and active in the community. “If we really want to have crime prevention we must do things like have much better recreation for kids, for everybody."