The eyesore next door: Musgrave Harbour man fighting for action on derelict grocery store | CBC News

Newly elected Coun. Steve Butler says it's a safety risk and environmental hazard

A derelict building in the way means this man can't get his house insured

It’s now part of his regular routine. Steve Butler scans his lawn and picks up shingles that have blown off the roof next door. 

He’s built a shed around his heat pump to protect it from flying debris. Sometimes it’s a sheet of metal siding, other times scraps of building material. 

Living about four metres away from a derelict, abandoned grocery store hasn’t been easy for the Musgrave Harbour, N.L., man.

“I’ve had damages done over the past. The eaves got torn off last winter in the storm because shingles blew off the porch there. The siding is blown off the back."

"Every time there's a bad storm, you don't know the minute the roof is going to come off.”

His neighbour is the once-thriving Foodex grocery store. It closed in 2009, and a year later Butler moved in next door. In the early days, he expected the business to sell and possibly open again. But that didn’t happen. Instead, it started a steady decline to dilapidation. 

“If a little child goes inside, that place is wide open and, God forbid, goes through the floor, who’s going to be responsible at the end of the day?” Butler said. “I got no interest in that building at all, other than to get it cleaned up.”

To amplify the issue, given the state of the building, he says he cannot get house insurance. 

“I got insurance on the car and truck and my motorcycle … every time I renew my insurance at the end of the year, this comes up. ‘Well, why don't you get house insurance?’ I explain it to them. ‘Oh, well, that's a different situation.’"

For many years, Butler has been looking to municipal, provincial and federal governments for help, but he says nothing has worked.