Windsor asks residents to report vacant homes in effort to tax unoccupied properties

The city of Windsor is asking residents to report vacant homes in their neighbourhoods, becoming the latest Canadian municipality to implement a tax on unoccupied properties to help ease the housing crisis.Owners of homes in the Southern Ontario city that sit empty for more than six months a year must pay an annual tax of 3 per cent of the property’s assessed value. Exceptions will be made for residences under renovation or for sale.“We’re looking at all strategies to try and deal with the housing supply and demand mismatch. And this is one that we thought was relatively low-hanging fruit in that there are already homes built that have been left vacant,” Mayor Drew Dilkens said in an interview.