Frustrated shop owners in Toronto’s Yonge and Wellesley area say the city is refusing to pick up mounds of garbage that regularly accumulates in an adjacent laneway because it’s private property — even though the laneway’s last known owner died more than a century ago.
In an emailed statement to CBC Toronto, city staff said: “The City of Toronto is aware of the litter/debris in the laneway near 6 St. Joseph Street. A complaint about this was received in September and the City has been working through the ownership rights of the laneway as it has been identified as private property.”
But Adam Wynne, chair of the Toronto and East York Community Preservation Panel, said he’s already done the legwork and found there is no longer a legal owner, making the area behind St. Joseph Street an “orphaned laneway.”
Wynne said Ontario Land Registry records show the lane last changed hands in 1882, when it was purchased by a William Jones for $9,000. Jones has been dead for at least a hundred years, Wynne said.
Found where homeless camps won’t get removed from…
Suddenly city services jump to action, citing new information.
I mean if no one has claimed it or paid taxes on a property for over 100 years can the city not legally seize it?
Yes they can … but then it means they are obligated to take care of it, which costs money they don’t want to spend.
Turn it into a bike lane!
Would the city not need to make sure that William Jones had to heirs to inherit the property before taking ownership, cleaning it, and then auctioning it off?
I expect that’s pretty much what’s going on: trying to determine whether William Jones has living descendants and, if so, which of them owns the property.
One wonders about the property tax records—if no one’s been paying up, maybe the city could seize it for a century of back taxes without doing the detailed search.
Yeah, I would imagine they need to inform whatever potential owner that there is a century of back taxes and then give them the choice to refuse and give up the property or choose to pay it.
Doesn’t seem like the fairest option if the descendant was never notified the land could be theirs. I’m not sure what the fair option is but it seems wrong to throw 100 years of taxes at someone for a property they may not have known they could inherit. Why did the city never catch on they didn’t get the taxes for 100 years? Why did they wait for public complaints to look into it and suddenly the taxes are important?
Yeah, maybe just a backlog of 7 years would be the most I would say is fair if not nothing.
