Sudbury

National charity eyes more Sudbury properties for affordable housing projects

Raising the Roof wants to purchase and renovate homes currently owned by the City of Greater Sudbury with the goal of tripling the number of available housing units.

Raising the Roof plans to triple the number of units in existing single family homes

Construction workers stand on a partly built house in the Hanmer area of Greater Sudbury, surrounded by machines, piles of lumber and other houses under construction.
Raising the Roof invested in five properties back in 2021, and built additional units in them to increase the supply of affordable housing. (Erik White/CBC)

Earlier this week, Greater Sudbury City Council agreed to go ahead with the sale of five affordable homes to the national charity, Raising the Roof. 

This would be the second time the group is renovating existing properties to add more units and then rent them out at an affordable price to people at risk of experiencing homelessness. 

The group's initial project also involved buying five vacant single family homes from the city and adding secondary suites to them. 

Tenants for that project moved in over the spring and summer of 2023. 

An empty bedroom seen from a hallway.
In Raising the Roof's first affordable housing project, the main floor units of the existing homes were converted into three bedroom units, while the basement unit has two bedrooms. (Aya Dufour/CBC)

Raising the Roof wants to do a repeat of that project, but this time around, it hopes to add even more units by building outdoor suites on the properties. 

"Sudbury has very competitive attached and detached accessory dwelling unit debate programs," said Raising the Roof director of housing development, Adrian Dingle. 

He says the details of what homes will be bought and for what price have yet to be determined, but the group is excited to invest in Sudbury once again. 

"We think there are great local municipal funding programs in place that are permitting us to do this work," he added. 

Increasing the supply of affordable housing 

As with its earlier project, Raising the Roof intends to hire Community Builders program participants to renovate the homes. 

These are people with barriers to employment who are learning to work in the trades.

Dingle says the group will have to do some fundraising and borrow money to do the construction work on the properties, but says the projects will probably break even in the long term. 

"Because we're operating the housing as affordable, we can't collect as much revenue as private landlords would be able to collect," he said. 

A man in an orange hoodie standing outside a house.
Josh Stone is a Community Builders participant who was part of the group that was learning trade skills in the Raising the Roof's first affordable housing project. (Aya Dufour/CBC)

"But in the 10 units we are currently renting in Greater Sudbury, we have operated according to the expectation of breaking even," he said. 

Rents in Raising the Roof units are affordable, meaning 80 per cent of average market prices. 

For a two-bedroom unit in Greater Sudbury, that would be approximately $1,000 per month. 

Dingle says he expects the Sudbury Centre for Transitional Care will be referring the tenants for the newly created units, as it did during the initial project.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aya Dufour

reporter

Aya Dufour is a CBC reporter based in northern Ontario. She welcomes comments, ideas, criticism, jokes and compliments: aya.dufour@cbc.ca