With Greater Sudbury increasingly in need of more affordable housing, city staff are drafting a communications strategy to address “not in my backyard” challenges with affordable housing.
“Not in my backyard” is frequently shortened to NIMBY, and describes people who oppose something they consider undesirable in their neighbourhood which they might support elsewhere.
The strategy will be presented to city council members in September, city Children and Social Services director Tyler Campbell told the city’s elected officials during this week’s meeting.
“We have reviewed some of the strategies that other municipalities have used both in Ontario and nationally,” he said, adding that they’re looking to emulate what has already worked.
It has been long established that the city’s affordable housing stock has fallen well short of demand — a sentiment further engrained during the City of greater Sudbury Housing and Homelessness Plan annual update delivered to city council earlier this week.
In the update, it’s noted that there were 1,595 applicants on the city’s wait list for geared-to-income housing at the end of 2024, which Ward 9 Coun. Deb McIntosh flagged during the meeting as a significant jump from the 1,050 wait-listed applicants recorded a year previous.
Last month, Briscoe reported that the wait list had grown even further to 1,654 applicants, of which 1,077 were for one-bedroom units.
McIntosh inquired about the upcoming “not in my backyard” report during this week’s meeting, during which she said the shortfall of affordable housing is “a growing problem that we all recognize.”
“We need help from the community and we need help from the province and federal government to solve this homelessness issue,” she said. “There are just too many people not being able to find affordable housing and finding a home. … When I talk to people … we just don’t know what to do, either, it’s so difficult.”
The upcoming NIMBY strategy was first recommended in Greater Sudbury’s Roadmap to Ending Homelessness which city council endorsed last year. It describes the strategy as increasing “public awareness of the benefits of supportive and transitional housing” which addresses “the stigma associated with these programs.”
In conversation with Sudbury.com after Tuesday’s city council meeting, McIntosh said that she is looking forward to the upcoming NIMBY study, but that she doesn’t like the NIMBY label attached to it, which carries negative connotations.
They’re people who “have genuine concerns about things and want them to be addressed,” she said. “You’ve got your home, it’s a big investment and you want to make sure it’s protected.”
McIntosh said that the upcoming strategy should focus on education to help equip people with factual information to consider when affordable housing projects come forward.
“There are places like that all over the city and people just aren’t aware because they’re well-managed,” she said. “People are being taken care of with full support.”
The transitional housing complex on Lorraine Street is a good example of a situation where the concerns residents expressed early in the project are unlikely to come to light, she said.
When a location for the 40-unit transitional housing complex for the chronically homeless was first approved by city council in 2021, area residents widely opposed it, expressing concerns about the negative social elements it might bring to their neighbourhood.
“Fortunately, we’ve received enough funding that we can address it with supports,” McIntosh said, citing the 24/7 on-site programming by medical professionals which transitional housing residents will receive now that additional provincial funding has been secured from the province.
(Even prior to the latest batch of provincial funding, programming would have still taken place on-site during the days, with an overnight gap in service staffed by security.)
When it comes to affordable housing, McIntosh also noted that there are different definitions which she hopes upcoming city communications efforts help clarify.
Affordable housing is 80 per cent of market cost, she said, “affordable to young people starting out, seniors on a fixed outcome. It’s just one of the pieces on the continuum of housing.”
Deeply affordable housing is geared-to-income at 30 per cent of a household's monthly adjusted family net income, while supportive housing includes supports, as its name suggests, such as what’s being offered at the Lorraine Street site.
Although residents routinely argue against being labelled NIMBYs and cite concerns other than the affordable nature of housing developments as rationale for their opposition, affordable housing developments are frequently opposed by area residents.
During a neighbourhood meeting at the future Lorraine Street transitional housing complex in 2021, then-Ward 5 Coun. Robert Kirwan coached the crowd on how to express their opposition to city council.
“What they don’t want to hear is, ‘They just don’t want it in their backyard,’” he said at the time, clarifying that residents should focus on the idea that their neighbourhood “is not the right place for the transitional housing.”
Earlier this year, a large gathering of Azilda residents opposed adding Lionel E. Laonde Centre lands to the city's affordable housing landbanking strategy.
“Some of this is NIMBY-ism for sure,” Ward 4 Coun. Pauline Fortin said during a city council meeting which followed, but she clarified that this wasn’t the prevailing message from area residents, which centered more around retaining greenspace.
Last year, the Sunrise Ridge Estates development northeast of downtown Sudbury was widely opposed by area residents. The project, approved by city council earlier this year, is slated to consist of three apartment buildings with 108 units apiece, of which 32 per cent are to be affordable. Residents advocated for the development’s next phase to instead consist of 66 residential lots, which was the initial plan.
Project Manitou, a 347-unit build (105 of which affordable) currently under construction overlooking downtown Sudbury from the east, faced much less opposition, with only a handful of opponents expressing concern about the building height and its effect on property values.
Opposition to affordable housing is common, but not consistent. The 38-unit deeply affordable Sudbury Peace Tower on Pearl Street, for example, did not receive any objections. The 14-unit Sparks Street affordable housing complex for seniors was similarly approved without opposition.
In addition to affordability, another commonality between all of these housing projects is that they’re multi-storey builds. In recent years, some market-rate multi-storey housing projects were also opposed by the majority of area residents, including a six-storey Algonquin Road retirement complex and two phases of the seven-storey Sudbury Retirement Manor on Second Avenue.
While city staff work to draft a communications strategy to address NIMBY challenges with affordable housing, other organizations have already drafted similar such reports.
Consultants at Goss Gilroy Inc. published a report for the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation in 2019 titled “Understanding Social Inclusion and NIMBYism in Providing Affordable Housing.”
Where some people might support affordable housing in theory, NIMBYs might be less inclined if it’s in their neighbourhood, which the report says works against social inclusion.
Social inclusion, according to the report, “reduces barriers that restrict the resources and opportunities for disadvantaged groups and allows greater participation in society through better access to resources and opportunities, such as employment, services or education.”
Communications and relationship building, partnerships, evidence-based approaches and project planning can help mitigate NIMBYism, they conclude.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission dismisses NIMBYs as holding “negative attitudes or stereotypes about the people who live in affordable housing or use emergency shelters.”
The commission’s report argues that various common points of objection are myths, such as that property values will go down if affordable housing is introduced and that crime will increase.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.