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Or sign-in if you have an account.The back yard of a house on Wahketa Street in Windsor is shown on Wednesday, July 8, 2026. Photo by Trevor WilhelmWindsor’s Kevin Hart lives in daily dread of what he might find in his neighbourhood.He says he’s seen drug deals, police chases and people high on narcotics falling over in front yards. A few weeks ago, Hart said a man stood on top of a neighbourhood house, perilously wobbling at the edge of the roof.He says there have been garbage fires, rats, an aggressive dog and mountains of trash. The property on Wahketa Street resembles a junkyard.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorLike many Windsorites who have found the longtime peace of their neighbourhoods fractured by fear and frustration, Hart lives near a house he suspects is a drug den.Get a dash of perspective along with the trending news of the day in a very readable format.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of NP Posted will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again“Every night I’m up at like two or three in the morning,” he said. “I’m up here watching out the window. It’s always coming and going. They’re pulling up and getting their drugs. Sometimes you hear a lot of screaming. One guy walked by bragging about the bag of dope he had. You never know what’s going to happen.”The back yard of a house on Wahketa Street in Windsor is shown on Wednesday, July 8, 2026. Photo by Trevor WilhelmThe houses, usually occupied by renters or squatters, range from an apartment in the Erie Street business corridor to one nestled among high-end heritage homes on Victoria Avenue.Ward 3 Coun. Renaldo Agostino said he’s aware of at least seven drug houses in the downtown area, adding that there are ongoing police investigations related to some of them.The Windsor Police Service did not discuss the specific houses where Agostino and the neighbours told the Star they suspect there is drug use. But investigators said they’re aware of concerns about “locations suspected of being involved in drug trafficking within our community.”Police said their Drugs and Guns Enforcement Unit investigates people and places identified through various sources, including police reports, tips and intelligence gathering.“It’s not as easy as people just calling and saying: ‘Hey, there’s a drug house at 123 First Street,’ and we’re hitting the door,” said Chief Jason Crowley. “It’s not the way it goes. People should hopefully understand that. This is part of our public safety piece, and we’re well aware of it. We’re doing our best with it.”A woman sleeps near a parking lot in downtown Windsor on Friday, July 17, 2026. Photo by Dan JanisseAgostino said the houses are roughly split 50/50 between local landlords and out-of-town owners including banks or numbered companies.“Last night, the one on Erie Street, you’re going home at 2:30 in the morning and there’s people just dealing drugs right out in front of the apartment,” Agostino said recently.One fellow over here had a guy pass out right on his lawn in front of his kidsAt a house in the 1100 block of Janette Avenue, garbage is piled high in the backyard. It’s a regular site at many suspected drug houses subjected to damage, neglect, and transient visitors.Agostino says he has multiple photos of suspected drug deals happening outside the house.A house on Janette Avenue is shown on Wednesday, July 8, 2026. Photo by Trevor Wilhelm“It’s just constant,” he said. “We have bylaw here daily, trying to deal with the messes that exist here. Every day it gets worse. There was a point in time when there were people living in tents in the backyard here. It makes everybody in the neighbourhood very uncomfortable.”Two weeks later, the tents were back.A young woman walking around the backyard said she used to live there but doesn’t anymore. She said there is no drug use at the house, “as far as I know,” but declined to say anymore. She said other people who live at the house were “indisposed” and unable to talk.Agostino said such houses are a problem he’s been dealing with since day one of his council tenure in 2022.“I know different councillors that are also dealing with similar issues in other parts of the city,” he said.“We say we want to make sure that everybody’s housed. Then when we house them there are other issues that come from that. This is part of it.”Then he came over toward our driveway and he broke the windshield of my carThere are people in those houses suffering from addiction and mental health issues who need support, he said.“But also, it’s the drug dealing that’s happening out of them,” said Agostino.Drug deals don’t go down like they used to.“Clearly these people are doing fentanyl,” he said. “In the past, you pick up your drugs and then you drive away. These people are showing up to these places, picking up their drugs, using it right there and then having their episodes right there, too. That’s a huge issue.”The fallout bleeds through neighbourhoods.“It’s horrible,” said Tom Porter, who says he lives near such a house in the 2200 block of Victoria Avenue.A man struggles to remain conscious in a downtown alley in Windsor on Monday, July 13, 2026. Photo by Dan Janisse“We’re always nervous. One of them at one point without any provocation from anybody was in some kind of angry fit. He broke out a window in the house that he’s got a room in. Then he came over toward our driveway and he broke the windshield of my car.”One night recently, he said there were four police cruisers at the house. They were back the following morning, along with an ambulance.“This kind of occupation should not even be going on in that house,” said Porter, who has complained to the city. “It’s an illegal rooming house. I think the city has tried to put work orders against the place, and I think they may have laid some charges against the previous owner. But it doesn’t seem to have had any real effect.”Frustrated Windsor neighbours Wyman Calhoun, left, and Kevin Hart are shown in an alley on Wahketa Street on Wednesday, July 8, 2026. Photo by Trevor WilhelmA mortgage company based in British Columbia most recently had possession of the Victoria house following a power of sale, according to land registry records. A representative said the company didn’t actually own the house.“It had temporary possession of the property as part of mortgage enforcement proceedings and made reasonable efforts, within the scope of its authority and applicable law, to manage and maintain the property during that period,” said Sales and Marketing director Steven Lang. “Given the limited and temporary nature of its role and privacy considerations relating to occupants, VWR Capital will not be commenting on specific allegations regarding tenants or activities at the property.”The previous owner, identified through land-registry records, could not be reached for comment.Windsor real estate broker Nassir Alnashmi and a partner bought the house in June.“It was horrible,” said Alnashmi. “There were 13 people living in it.”He said six people were sleeping in the living room, while some of the bedrooms also had several occupants. He described how during renovations occupants kept one of the bedroom doors closed to lock in the stench because one person who slept there used the floor as a toilet.Nassir Alnashmi is shown on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 at a house he purchased in the 2200 block of Victoria Avenue in Windsor. He says the home was overrun with drug users and garbage when he took possession of the property. Photo by Dan JanisseHe said a person also slept in a dingy attic with exposed insulation hanging from the ceiling.That’s just the house.Alnashmi said someone lived in the garage. At the back of the house, there is a defunct little bathroom with a separate entrance used for the former pool. He said someone was also living there.“It was rented as an illegal rooming house,” he said. “We had to pay the tenants. It was a nightmare getting them out.”Alnashmi said many of the residents did not have leases. But he paid them all to leave to avoid a prolonged battle at the Landlord and Tenant Board. He said getting rid of them cost $58,000.The cops are here two or three times a dayWhen he finally took over the house, he said it was brimming with garbage, including some rooms that were so full of trash he couldn’t walk into them. He also noticed someone had ripped bricks from the garage wall and chucked them through a second-storey window.Alnashmi said they found needles, drug pipes, pills and other narcotics scattered through the house.They have embarked on a massive restoration project, with plans to revive old fireplaces full of garbage that were left to rot and excavate a backyard pool buried through neglect under dirt and overgrown grass.Alnashmi said the large dumpster sitting on the front lawn was the 16th one his team has filled, with more to go.“It’s a beautiful house,” he said. “They were just all hoarders. Now that we were able to empty it out, we’re uncovering a lot of stuff. Every day we’re finding something new. There’s a swimming pool here that’s been buried.”Nassir Alnashmi is shown on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 at a house he purchased in the 2200 block of Victoria Avenue in Windsor. He says the home was overrun with drug users and garbage when he took possession of the property. So far he and his employees have filled 16 commercial garbage bins of junk from the home. Photo by Dan JanisseBut there has been a bigger headache than the damage and garbage. Alnashmi said the people he paid to leave keep coming back.“The cops are here two or three times a day,” he said.The previous night before speaking to the Star, someone broke in and cut all the water lines. Alnashmi said he recently walked through the house to find two of the people he paid to leave slumped over each other on a tattered couch, unconscious from overdoses.Despite the ongoing incidents, the change of ownership gives neighbours some hope, even if it’s reserved.“They say they’re going to clear all these people out, and I think they’re making an effort to do that,” Porter said in early July. “But as recently as this morning, police cars and emergency crews were there.”There have been other success stories.In the 1100 block of Church Street, angry residents banded together to rid their neighbourhood of what they suspected to be a drug house, which they claim doubled as a brothel. But it was a prolonged, painful process.“It was the bad apple rotting the neighbourhood,” said Tannis Bence, who lodged complaints with 311 several times a week for years.I had like 20 residents using the app, making the calls, putting the pressure on the property ownerShe said an Internet ad left neighbours with the belief there was also sex for sale at the house. Based a Windsor Star search, the ad no longer seems to be online.“It was also a hub for stolen goods. It was housing people who just got out of jail. There were drug addicts. Drug deals,” she said. People from the area would congregate on the porch and sleep there at night, sleep in the backyard or just pass out on the lawns at all hours of the day and night.”Agostino said it’s crucial residents like Bence get involved. Complaints are key.“Continuously call 311,” he said. “I had like 20 residents using the app, making the calls, putting the pressure on the property owner. So much so that from the dirty yard complaints and all the fines and all the nonsense that they did, their insurance company refused to insure the home. Then I presented options to them to sell, and they sold.”Ward 3 Coun. Renaldo Agostino stands near the back yard of a house on Janette Avenue on Wednesday, July 8, 2026. Photo by Trevor WilhelmWith the new owners came a transformed neighbourhood.“The sense of community is back,” said Bence. “It’s a much better neighbourhood to be in.”The Church Street house highlights what is required to win this battle, said Agostino. It’s a many-headed hydra that must be attacked from all sides.“It’s all of us working together,” he said. “It’s a combination between the community, the residents, the police, bylaw, the city and me. That’s where we’ve seen success. Everyone working together.”Agostino said police involvement is essential, but investigations take time and cannot only rely on what residents see or hear. Investigators echoed that concern, pointing out that tips they receive must be corroborated before they can move in for an arrest.When they get high on fentanyl, they stagger all overBut police stressed they want people to keep reporting suspicious activity, calling it “an important component of our efforts to disrupt drug trafficking and enhance public safety.”“These things take time,” said Crowley. “We get information about drug houses or drugs being sold, then we have to do surveillance. Then we have to apply for warrants and we go to do an arrest or some kind of execution of a warrant. Sometimes by the time we get all that done, the drug house is gone.”Other options are fire inspections and municipal fines, which can range anywhere from $215 to $50,000.Agostino also has high hopes for provincial legislation passed in 2025 called the Measures Respecting Premises with Illegal Drug Activity Act. It prohibits landlords from knowingly allowing properties to be used for producing or trafficking illegal drugs.“The excuse for landlords has been: ‘There’s nothing I can do about it,’” he said. “Those tools now exist. The provincial legislation. And we’re going to use them when we can.”Alex and Munhee Song are tackling the problem on another front, making sure neighbourhood kids never have reason to step foot in a “trap house,” modern slang for a home used to store or sell drugs.Alex Song with Good Hood Community Kitchen, which runs a youth training program, stands outside the downtown restaurant on Wednesday, July 8, 2026. Photo by Trevor WilhelmThe husband-and-wife team run Good Hood Community Kitchen, a Korean lunch spot at 309 Wyandotte St. W. It’s part of the Downtown Windsor Community Collaborative, a non-profit organization focused on poverty reduction and neighbourhood building.In an area blighted by several suspected drug houses, Alex Song calls Good Hood “a vehicle to create community.”“It’s a big concern of ours because we have understanding of how some of these communities can be very detrimental, violent and close off a lot of doors for these kids at a really early age,” he said. “That’s the opposite of what we want for them.”Song is running a six-week summer culinary and work skills program for 22 young people. The group recently hung out at the restaurant, filling it with smiles as they hung out arm in arm.Munhee Song, left, and a group of young trainees show off their culinary skills at Good Hood Community Kitchen in downtown Windsor on Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (WINDSOR STAR – TREVOR WILHELM)Besides honing life skills, Song said the program creates a sense of belonging. It promotes alternatives to drugs and crime for people who assumed there weren’t any.“It’s just something that they see as what you get,” he said. “A sort of acceptance to a very fearful state.”Proving his point, as the kids inside Good Hood laughed and learned, two young men on bicycles met up for what appeared to be a drug deal in a nearby Bruce Street alley.Song said “creative solutions” are required to deal with drug houses and the troubles they create.“When you shut them down, they pop right back up,” he said.“Maybe it’s a radical thought, but how do we collaborate with these groups or community members? Because there are neighbours in there. They do live in our community. How do we collaborate with them so there’s some working understanding of neighbourhood and the values that we want to try and uphold in the neighbourhood?”He was hunched over and kind of in his own world. And he’s just standing on the roof thereBut for those awoken by screams and other strange noises through the night, only to find people sleeping on the sidewalk or in the alley the next morning, collaboration is a hard sell.“It’s every day,” said Hart, one of the weary Wahketa Street residents. “The people come staggering around picking up their drugs. And then when they get high on fentanyl, they stagger all over. One fellow over here had a guy pass out right on his lawn in front of his kids.”A woman who answered the door at the alleged problem house on Wahketa refused to discuss her neighbours’ concerns.“My neighbours can go to hell. Goodbye,” she said while slamming the door.Hart says trouble there began a couple of years ago when a new tenant moved in.“It’s a constant thing,” said Wyman Calhoun, who lives nearby. “We’ve seen him run from the cops. I was out here cleaning. He ran by me and he says, ‘I didn’t do nothing. What do they want?’ And then he ran over and jumped over this guy’s gate.”He said other people have since moved in. Calhoun said he watched a few weeks ago as one of them climbed through an upstairs window onto the roof.Windsor neighbours Wyman Calhoun, left, and Kevin Hart would like more to be done to clean up their neighbourhood. Photo by Trevor Wilhelm“You can tell when someone’s been doing fentanyl or whatever,” said Calhoun. “He was hunched over and kind of in his own world. And he’s just standing on the roof there. He was so messed up.”But it’s not just the police chases and alleged drug use chipping away at quality of life.From both of their homes, Hart and Calhoun see a rotating jungle of garbage and other items piling up in the house nearby. The trash has included several barbecues, office chairs, a mini-motorcyle, ladders, tarps, crates, coolers, and a City of Windsor traffic sign.Along with being an eyesore, they say the mess has contributed to a rat problem. Calhoun says he once called 911 after a fire in the yard filled the neighbourhood with toxic smoke.He says there’s also an aggressive dog that regularly escapes and chases people. Calhoun said he recently sprayed the dog with a garden hose to get it away from a woman it had knocked down on his front lawn.“There’s a gate,” he said. “But the problem is a lot of these people coming to buy drugs or whatever, they’re space cadets. They’re in their own world. They’re not even aware.”After enduring so many challenges for so long, optimism is in short supply. They have lost faith city officials or police will save the day.“How do you get them out of there?” said Hart. “You can’t threaten them. So what can you do? You’re stuck and you’re the one who is suffering.”twilhelm@postmedia.com Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. 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