Windsor hopes to avoid expropriating land for $50M housing, homelessness help hub

City officials believe theycan work out a negotiated deal to avoid forcing a property owner to sell theland selected for Windsor's $50-million homelessness and housing help hub known as H4.

The privately owned industrial site at 700 Wellington Avenue in the west end of the city was picked by council following a closed-door selection processthat ended in April.

Administration initially saidthat negotiations had failed and the land would be expropriated within four to eight months.

"We're hoping that we don't have to expropriate but I can't comment exactly right now what we'll be doing," said Andrew Daher, the city's commissioner of human and health services, when asked for an update on the project.

"We're working with the owner of the property to ensure that we can try to find a willing buyer, willing seller kind of situation here."

The land will be used to move housing support services out of the former Water World building and into a newly constructed building that includes 64 single-bed supportive housing units.

The initial timeline for the project was at least three years with a $50-million total cost that the city warns will likely grow because of inflation.

Daher said they're in the final stages of determining an offer price for the land and expects to have a report back to council by the end of the year.

"If we actually have to move to the expropriation process, then it may take a little bit longer because we have to go through court."

The selected site,supported by a majority of council, wasn't what councillors Fabio Costante and Fred Francis wanted to see the city move forward with.

Both say that there were other options among the 200 properties identified, including city-owned sites they say would be cheaper, more centrally located and would not require the expropriation process.

Downtown councillor Renaldo Agostinosaid the 700 Wellington site, which sits on the edge of his ward boundary with Costante, was a difficult but correct decision.

Expropriation moves at a 'glacial' pace

Daher says the owner of the property has allowed staff to access the site to get an understanding of the condition it's in.

"They provided us with temporary access to the property to do additional soil and water testing so that we can really get a better understanding of the cost of the remediation," he said.

It's part of due diligence, he said, that would be required whether the city expropriated the property or bought it through a negotiated sale.

A lawyer with expertise in expropriation said that the process can moveat a "glacial space."

"And that's not an exaggeration," said Ava Kanner, a co-managing partner with Davies Howe LLP.

"It's a very slow process."

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Brian Cox is the manager of the housing program for Family Services Windsor-Essex. Christine Wilson-Furlonger is the administrator at Street Help.

In general, a city can trigger the expropriation process for any land that is required for development of public interest.

The owner of the land is served a notice and can then request a hearing on the issue within 30 days.

That hearing allows a property owner to challenge whatever governingauthority is expropriating the process at the Ontario Land Tribunal but Kanner said it never works.

"I rarely, and I underline rarely,recommend asking for a hearing of necessity because essentially from my perspective, it's simply thrown away money," said Kanner.

Daher says a hearing was not requested in this process. The next step would be for the city to register a plan to expropriate the land, which must be at least three months after the city serves notice to the owners.

How much will expropriation cost Windsor?

Kanner said the time between issuing notice to registering a plan can take between sixto ninemonths at a bare minimum.

Daher said Windsor has not registered a plan to expropriate. He saidnegotiations continue alongside the city's due diligence with property inspections.

The lot at 700 Wellington is currently assessed at $490,000, but that doesn't mean it's what the city will pay for it.

During the expropriation process, the owner is offered market value for the property, which is assessedon a best-use scenario.

"That means that if, for example, you have raw land that's highest and best use would have been development for low-density residential or for high-density residential, the appraised value will have nothing to do with what the owner paid and it will have nothing to do with the assessed value," said Kanner.

That value is decided by an appraisers' report that comes from the expropriating authority. The land owner is able to present their own appraisers' findings.

The final dollar figurewill also cover all reasonable costsassociated with the expropriation of the processfor the property owner.

"If I were aperson who was being expropriated, I would never do that without a lawyer who deals in expropriation," said Kanner.

"Because even though it's not brain surgery, it does have its own intricacies."