Should Hamilton tax vacant homes? New survey wants your opinion

The city has released an online survey and wants Hamiltonians to share how they feel about implementing a vacant home tax.

This comes after city council voted to explore a bylaw on taxing vacant homes in the efforts to increase the amount of rental properties available.

City staff will use the responses from the survey to help create a framework for the draft bylaw and the cost to implement whatever is needed.

Hamilton was ranked North America's third least affordable city in a recent Oxford Economics report. There have also been plans from big developers to buy single-family homes and rent them out.

Right now, owners whose properties are vacant (some of which are exempted) must register them on a city registry. They can be fined if they don't. It costs $297 to register and inspection costs are $840 a year.

The city previously said it's alerted to empty properties by complaints and municipal law enforcement. It knows of 325 vacant buildings, of which 221 are residential, but there could be more as that count doesn't include vacant units within occupied buildings.

The city said it could implement a mandatory property declaration to identify an accurate number. That declaration would be required in order to roll out the potential tax on vacant homes.

The online survey runs from Sept. 7 to Sept. 28.