Mono asks county to look into a tax on vacant homes

An unoccupied home during a housing crisis is unacceptable.

As such, the provincial government took steps recently to enable municipalities to make vacant homes available for needed housing. And Mono got on board with a request to Dufferin County to initiate a vacant home tax.

Councillor Elaine Capes made a motion during council’s meeting April 23 to contribute to making more vacant homes available for housing by requesting that the upper tier council look into the feasibility of a Municipal Vacant Home Tax.

“That recognizes that, in our instance, the county has tax policy responsibility,” Mayor John Creelman said.

“I’m all in favour of the motion,” Deputy Mayor Fred Nix said. “But I do have to admit, given the problems Toronto has had with the vacant (home) tax, it concerns me.”

Nix said his concerns include the administrative cost to establish and enforce a Municipal Vacant Home Tax.

“I think it (administrative costs) just might turn out to be horrendous,” he said.

“This is a bit of a niggling point, but we’re not asking (the county) to investigate the feasibility,” Coun. Ralph Manktelow said. “We’re asking them to consider investigating it. So they have to decide whether they want to bother with this or not first.”

Capes suggested the motion be amended to ask the county to investigate the tax’s feasibility.

Creelman said he has concerns about the complexity of such a tax, especially in light of Toronto’s problems with it.

“Really, all we want is the county to say yes we can have a vacant property tax and then we can take care of implementing our own bylaw on our process according to the wonderful framework that’s going to be available,” Capes said.

“I think we have more than justification in asking that it be investigated,” Creelman said.

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James Matthews, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Orangeville Citizen