During their final city council meeting of 2024, the city’s elected officials adopted a Housing Supply Strategy which they’ve been working toward since early 2023.
Mayor Paul Lefebvre presented a successful motion requesting the Housing Supply Strategy on Feb. 7, 2023. He explained his motivations in an open letter at the time in which he noted it’s “one step on our journey of sustainable growth and development.”
This joins Lefebvre’s longstanding goal of seeing Greater Sudbury’s population hit 200,000 people by 2050.
The strategy has joined several other efforts throughout the last two years whose end goal is freeing up more housing to support a growing number of Greater Sudburians within a tight housing market with a 1.1-per-cent vacancy rate, where five per cent is considered healthy.
This has created an affordability crunch and a decline in home ownership.
(The average residential resale price in Greater Sudbury almost doubled between July 2012 to July 2022, from $237,700 to $452,500. Local residential rental rates have more than doubled in the last 20 years, from an average of $605 in October 2003 to $1,356 in October 2024.)
The Housing Supply Strategy caps an almost two-year process which, as city spokesperson put it, “sets a path to achieve Greater Sudbury’s housing target for the next 10 years and establish a strategy to fill key gaps in the housing supply.”
The strategy includes 17 focus areas, under which there are 41 municipal actions.
Of these 41 actions, 13 are complete, 19 are underway and nine are not started.
“Some of the focus areas are expected to have an immediate impact on housing supply and creation of new units, while others will result in more systemic long-term impacts,” a city spokesperson noted.
Though the strategy passed in mid-December with little discussion or fanfare, many of these actions have fueled lengthy discussions throughout the year.
Action No. 1 is “Develop Strategy to End Homelessness by 2030,” which was proposed by Ward 5 Coun. Mike Parent and adopted by a unanimous city council on May 28. This plan, estimated at $350 million can be linked to such subsequent efforts as the purchase of 307 Cedar St. for use as an emergency shelter and/or transitional housing, and greenlighting a warming centre expansion effort which saw the shuttered supervised consumption site trailer at 24 Energy Court repurposed.
Action No. 3, “complete construction of 40-unit transitional housing project,” is underway, with the Lorraine Street complex slated to open in early 2025, and Action No. 4, “complete construction of 14-unit affordable housing project” is also underway, with the seniors building on Sparks Street also expected to open soon.
The most recently completed action item took place during the same meeting the Housing Supply Strategy was adopted, when they ratified a planning committee decision to allow a fourth unit per residential lot as-of-right. This means fourth units per fully-serviced residential lot will be allowed without required rezoning, though all other requirements still need to be met.
A tax increment equivalent grant for multi-residential builds is another notch in the strategy’s “complete” category, which city council members approved in early 2024. The first taker was the developer of an 18-unit residential building slated to take shape at 7 Pine St.
(Under a tax increment equivalent grant, the difference between taxes levied using a property’s assessed value both pre- and post-development are rebated to the owner for a set number of years. The first three years’ rebate is 100 per cent, while years four and five is 50 per cent. The owner of 7 Pine St. is set to receive tax rebates of approximately $400,000.)
The city has also proceeded with its Land Banking Strategy this year (Action No. 21), which included shoring up land in Minnow Lake and Azilda for affordable housing.
Effective July 1, the city also froze some residential development charges for three years and placed a moratorium on others (Action No. 32). Although no evidence has been provided to support the notion that it will help spur development, this is the expressed goal of the freeze/moratorium.
During a city council meeting in December, city senior planner Melissa Riou said whatever impact the moratorium/freeze might have has not been felt yet.
For a full list of 17 focus areas and 41 actions on these focus areas, click here.
The Housing Supply Strategy was pre-empted by a handful of preliminary reports, including a Housing Supply and Demand Analysis report in 2023 which clarified that Greater Sudbury’s housing stock fell well short of demand, particularly as it relates to affordable housing. There was an immediate deficit of 655 rent-geared-to-income units and at least 301 low-end market rental units.
Meanwhile, housing units have been getting built.
By the end of September, Greater Sudbury had issued permits for 883 new residential units, which far exceeds annual targets issued by the province (a 10-year target totalling 3,800 units, averaging 380 per year).
In April, Greater Sudbury received $1.52 million from the province for exceeding its 2023 housing target. That year, 436 new housing units broke ground.
With the Housing Supply Strategy and its associated reports considered fluid and evolving, the province requires that the city post a new housing needs assessment online by March 31, 2025.
Also next year, city staff will prepare a business case for 2026 budget deliberations to progress with a Residential Land Strategy, which will see the city make infrastructure investments such as water/sewer to ready land for residential developments.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.