National charity eyes more Sudbury properties for affordable housing projects

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. 

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. 

"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.