Sudbury drafts housing supply strategy to address growth

In order to meet the growing population the City of Greater Sudbury has set an ambitious housing goal.

It wants to build 3,800 new homes by 2031.

Recently the city created a draft housing supply strategy to help achieve that target.

The current vacancy rate in Sudbury is 1.6 percent, so the city is looking to increase the supply of all types of housing.

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Mayor Paul Lefebvre said having a strategy in place will provide the city with direction.

“Our city is growing. We’re already seeing the impacts of that. We want to make sure that we get it right — make sure we have the supply, the right incentives and the right sections of the needs that we have as a community,” he said.

“It will be a series of initiatives that we’re going to take on through policy changes,” said the city’s director of planning services, Kris Longston.

“To make the development easier through zoning bylaw changes, potentially incentives, and also some strategies that we’ll work on as well to get at things like servicing, infrastructure that are needed to make those developments happen.”

The Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce had invited Jeremy Tessier from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to speak at a luncheon on Thursday.

He spoke to the crowd about the National Housing Strategy and the various incentive programs available for potential developers and municipalities.

It wasn’t new information for the city.

“The more that people know about these programs the more we can coordinate our efforts with the federal government to get people developing housing in the city, the better off we’ll be and we’ll see those number increase, particularly in the area where we want to see,” Longston said.

“That’s where the CMHC presentation focused on -- that affordable market rental. That’s where we need to see more development happen.”

Chair of the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce, Geoff Hatton said affordability of housing is top of mind with its members.

“I don’t expect us to solve the housing crisis we’re having right now, with this event today, but hopefully it just provides us with some solutions and some positive steps forward that we can take to help our members with the housing issues that they’re facing,” he said.

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Now that the city has a draft of its housing supply strategy it’s asking for feedback from residents.

That will be taken into consideration before the final document is approved by city council in June.