Pandemic is stagnating waitlist for Greater Sudbury housing, manager says

The ongoing pandemic is affecting wait times for community housing in Sudbury, according to the city's manager of housing services.

Cindi Briscoe says since the pandemic started, people seem to be staying put and not moving, and that's affecting how long people are waiting.

"About 80 per cent of our waitlist is wanting to access one-bedroom [apartments], while about 40 per cent of our entire stock is one bedrooms. So right off the bat, you've got a supply-and-demand issue," she said.

"So if someone is waiting for a preferred location in a one bedroom, they can wait up to 10 years."

Briscoe says they encourage people on the list to consider more options for housing — like asking for a different location — to be placed faster. 

"Some folks are very particular as to where they want to live. And that's their choice, but it limits them to how long they're going to wait for affordable housing," she said.

"So if they have a particular area that they want to live in — and that building may be one of the buildings that is a high-demand building — then their wait is going to be longer." 

Currently, the city has about 4,600 units allocated for housing, ranging from one-bedroom apartments to stand-alone homes.

"All of our units are full," she said. "Until there's a vacancy, there's no movement on the waitlist."

And that waitlist is long — about 1,200 people. 

"Especially with COVID, over this past year, we've noticed that a lot of folks are no longer moving. They're staying put, they don't want to take the chance of moving, so it essentially stalled the waitlist," Briscoe said.

"So folks are waiting longer to get in to units because the movement isn't there."

Housing staff also work to find other available programs or funding that may be helpful in the meantime.

Briscoe notes the province recently introduced a new program called the Canada Ontario Housing Benefit, which is a portable benefit that allows eligible applicant households the opportunity to reside in the private market, wherever they'd like to live.

"They may be in a unit that they like, the area they like, but they just find the rent too high. So the benefit is paid to them directly and then they would just pay the landlord their full rent," she said, adding that the person or family would then be dropped off the waitlist.

"We're very pleased that the province was moving in this direction, because of the supply-and-demand issue that we were having here in Greater Sudbury, as well as across the province. This is not just a local issue, this is a provincial issue."

The funding has been used up already, but Briscoe says she asked for, and received, additional funding for another 20 applications.