Alex Pagani arrives to work at his auto shop every morning and sees a mess less than a hundred feet from his doorway.
“I’m very frustrated about it and you know, hopefully we can get the right people in motion to do something,” said the owner of ACP Performance.
He and other tenants in his building on Salter Street are at their wits end as they’ve watched garbage accumulate and shady traffic travel in front of their businesses.
“If you’re going to own a land, you should keep up with it, at least clean it, take care of it to some degree and they’re not doing that. Our hands are tied,” Pagani said.
The owner of the building, Jerry Vidican, had an agreement with previous landlords to clean up the property, but not this one.
“The city can’t do anything because it is private property,” Vidican explained. “The owner is up in Hamilton, God knows where. He doesn’t have to deal with the situation that we do here.”
Homeless Encampments are scattered across the property stretching as far as Wyandotte Street.
City Coun. Renaldo Agostino took a walk towards the middle of the property and found a wasteland building up.
“Disgusting,” he said. “It’s a garbage dump. Somebody has an unofficial garbage dump, and the property owner is [going to] pay.”
Agostino wants to have the property cleaned and pass along the bill to the owner.
He said he plans to ask council for direction on how to best get properties like this cleaned, fast.
“Enough pressure on that property owner by continuing to send bills, it’s going to put the pressure that’s going to be needed to clean this up and do something with this space,” Agostino said.
A homeless man who has lived on the property for at least a couple of years said he was unaware the mess was costing nearby businesses.
“We’re going to deal with it to make his business keep running. I don’t want any problems for him. He’s never caused any problems for us,” said the man, who pointed out the area was cleaned out last year by the city.
He spoke with someone at the time, but he said there was no follow up on finding help, “Anyone in my position would want help. I don’t know who to go to or who to talk to. I don’t have anyone telling me where to go or who to see.”
Agostino feels governments at all levels need to work together to help, “The best we can do is get our teams down here, try and get these people into a shelter. Try and find some housing for these people. Try and find them supports.”
