The City of Windsor is cracking down on hundreds of rundown buildings this week, a job that could take months.
Ward 3 councillor Rino Bortolin says it's big picture progress that could pave the way for new growth within the city.
Building by-law officers will be visiting roughly 700 properties to do exterior inspections, get in touch with the owners and issuing orders for repairs. In some cases demolition is expected.
"We didn't get to the point of having those 700 properties overnight,” says Bortolin. “It's going to take months and months if not years to deal with all of them but we have to start somewhere. If statistics show that we're making improvement and we're actually having an impact in some of these neighbourhoods then it makes sense to invest into more of these inspectors."
Bortolin says this is a proactive approach to deal with issues that attract crime and bring down nearby property values.
The list was compiled by calls to 311 and complaints.
