Advocates outline Sudbury's housing crisis to NDP leadership candidate

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When NDP leadership candidate Heather McPherson rises in the House of Commons on Tuesday to demand the Liberals declare a national housing emergency, she will undoubtedly highlight horror stories that surfaced during a housing roundtable in Sudbury on Monday.

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McPherson, the MP for Edmonton Strathcona, heard from those assisting the city’s homeless that “people are dying faster than we are housing them,” that the national housing crisis should be treated like an out-of-control forest fire threatening a major community and that the mobilized resources put into housing should be similar to the level of Second World War effort made by Canada.

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She also heard that the homeless cannot afford housing when they are limited financially, either from being working poor, being on welfare, being unemployed or getting Ontario Disability Support Program benefits.

McPherson told the roundtable that declaring a national housing emergency would allow the government to redirect resources to get homeless Canadians – including several hundred in Sudbury – housed.

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“This (housing crisis) didn’t start with the 2025 budget,” she said. “This didn’t start with the 2025 election campaign. It started with both the Liberal and Conservative governments failing to remember their obligations … A failure to build housing to scale.”

McPherson said the NDP’s national housing emergency call would take corporations out of housing management and ownership that treats housing projects as investments rather than places for families to live.

The NDP would also propose an Indigenous housing plan that is culturally appropriate.

N’Swakamok Native Friendship Centre‘s housing support case manager, Louise Jacko, told the roundtable she is “out of ideas” trying to find affordable housing for Indigenous people, especially youth, coming to her office.

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“I’m out of answers,” she said. “What do I tell them?”

With youth, continued Jacko, “we are having to let them know you can’t afford to live here. We have to ask, ‘If there is any safe way to repair relations back home’?”

Jacko said that a teen who still wants to stay in Sudbury and can’t get housing is going to end up in a homeless encampment.|

“If you are on Ontario Works, you are on the street: that’s it,” she said. “It’s either a job or school.”

Jacko noted that a new housing development now being built on Pine Street across from the N’Swakamok Native Friendship Centre will only offer market rents.

The roundtable heard that the federal government’s goal of 40,000 new housing units each year is far below the estimated 200,000 needed annually to solve the national housing crisis.

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“We have several people paying market rent now in public housing, but they can’t leave because it is a lower rent overall in the (housing) market,” said Raymond Landry, co-ordinator of The Homelessness Network, a partnership of six Greater Sudbury agencies that assist the homeless. “There are no options for them to leave to obtain housing for that rate. There’s a lack of flexibility in the system.”

Landry added that the Manitou housing project, now being built downtown, will have 347 units, but only 10 per cent will be designated affordable housing. Those affordable housing units, he said, will be at 80 per cent of the market rate.

“Nobody on the street will be housed in that building, even on ODSP or Ontario Works,” he said.

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The roundtable heard that the city also urgently needs a youth shelter to replace one that closed.

Landry said that the city’s Housing First Approach, adopted in 2016, doesn’t have any impact if there is no housing available.

“Housing should be treated like a forest fire threatening a community,” he said.

Evie Ali, executive director of the Go-Give Project, which assists individuals in the city with substance use disorders, told the roundtable that three years ago, there were about 80 people living on the streets of Greater Sudbury. That number has grown to about 320 today.

Ali said the 95 emergency shelter beds currently available just aren’t enough.

The roundtable heard that as of October 2024, 505 people in the city identified as homeless, an increase of 40 per cent from two years earlier.

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Landry said some people in the city have been on the waiting list for supportive housing assistance for more than two years, “and they are on the urgent shelter list.”

“There’s simply no housing and no affordable housing for the clientele we serve,” he said.

The roundtable also heard that the city’s transitional housing complex, which just opened on Lorraine Street, has 40 units. It’s a good step to help people transition to housing they can afford, but it’s difficult for people struggling with mental health issues to get into that complex.

Jacko said that some homeless Indigenous people are so desperate that they are almost resigned to committing a crime to get arrested and put in the Sudbury Jail so they can have a warm place to sleep and three meals a day.

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McPherson also heard that “renovictions” – landlords evicting low-rent tenants to make improvements to a unit so they can charge more rent – occur in Sudbury.

Landry said the phenomenon of “cash for keys” – a cash payout to turn over the keys and leave an apartment – is occurs so landlords can charge higher rents to new tenants.

Marlene Gorman, executive director of the Sudbury YWCA, said the agency’s 33-bed shelter for women and their children is always full. She said it’s “demoralizing” for a woman who gets the courage to leave a dangerous relationship, only to be told there’s nowhere for her and her children to go.

Gorman said women at the shelter are supposed to only stay for three months in emergencies, but some have been there for over a year “because they have nowhere to go they can afford.”

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Landry said shared rooms in the city are now renting for $800-1,000 a month, while one-bedroom apartments are going for $1,300 to 1,400 a month on the low end. However, even if “you are able to pay rent, you are not eating, not getting your needs met for mobility issues.”

The roundtable also heard that seniors are now joining the ranks of the city’s homeless, and they don’t have the survival skills to get by on the streets.

“These are people who have worked their entire life,” said Ali. “Now, they are on a pension and can’t afford rent.”

Two to three freezing deaths occurred in the city last year, along with several amputations, the roundtable also heard.

McPherson concluded the roundtable by stating that the housing crisis developed due to a lack of government money for housing projects.

“Essentially, I am saying our governments – municipal, federal and provincial – are not recognizing this is a problem, not recognizing this is an emergency,” she said. “(The solution) starts with declaring a national housing emergency to mobilize resources.”

McPherson said while the federal government can provide housing developers with funding help, there should be “strings attached” to ensure that people on low incomes can get into some of those new units because they are affordable.

hcarmichael@postmedia.com

X: @HaroldCarmichae

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