While Premier Doug Ford has been calling on municipalities to do more to spur the construction of housing, his government has allowed residential properties in Gogama to remain vacant.
Such is the crux of an open letter Nickel Belt NDP MPP France Gélinas penned to Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma, in which she urges the government to finally put the long-vacant properties up for sale.
“The housing crisis is not only a big city problem,” she wrote. “It is a problem in many small Northern communities.”
Gogama is not an incorporated municipality, she said, so the province has nobody to blame but themselves for this inaction.
“How can it be that your government is not able to give permission to a family to purchase a lot, to build a simple family home, in the same amount of time it took a brand-new mine to go through all the permitting and logistical processes to get built and operational?” Gélinas asked in her letter.
“Without land for businesses to set up shop and houses for people to live in, Gogama continues to be missing out.”
Sudbury.com reached out to Gélinas for greater insight on Gogama’s housing shortfall, which she reportedly drew attention to when Ford, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other dignitaries broke ground on an IAMGOLD mining project in Gogama in September 2020.
The Côté Gold Mine was projected to create 1,300 jobs during its three-year construction period and approximately 450 full-time jobs when operational for a projected lifespan of 18 years. There’s a nearby satellite project which might extend their time in the region.
“During the speeches, the premier talked about the economic opportunities that Gogama will face, that they’ve never seen before, expect an influx of people to come to your community, and all is good and people are happy,” Gélinas said.
Between shuttered OPP detachment and Ministry of Natural Resources and Forest offices, as well as the now-vacant housing afforded to employees of these closed facilities, the province owns a collection of vacant properties, including several with structures and some empty lots.
Gélinas inquired about the properties in September 2020, and reported receiving a positive response from provincial officials.
With nothing appearing to have taken place by January 2021, she wrote a letter to the premier and various ministers, through which she learned the government had to do “due diligence” when entering into real estate transactions, which would take 12 to 24 months.
She wrote a follow-up letter this year, in which Gélinas said she urged the province, “There’s a lineup of people who want a place to live in Gogama, you still own the 20 properties, you pay for the maintenance of those 20 properties ... so put them up for sale.”
In the written response she received from the province on Aug. 11, Gélinas reported receiving the same letter she’d received more than two years ago, noting the province again requires 12 to 24 months of “due diligence.”
“I was not happy,” Gélinas said, adding that with people looking for homes to buy in Gogama every day, she anticipates that any properties put up for sale in Gogama will be sold within days.
“Those homes are on paved roads with sewer, water, electricity, internet and everything is available, and they’re not allowed to buy them,” she said of the provincially owned properties.
Some of the properties are big enough to accommodate more than one unit, she said, and some community members have suggested that the abandoned Ministry of Natural Resources and Forest office building could be repurposed as seniors’ housing.
Although IAMGOLD has bunkhouses for employees, Gélinas said there’s a shortcoming of accommodations for contractors.
The commute to Gogama is more than an hour from Timmins and more than two hours from Sudbury.
While the IAMGOLD project has made Gogama a housing priority, Gélinas said there are provincially-owned properties at unincorporated municipalities throughout Nickel Belt which could also be sold.
Sudbury.com reached out to the Province of Ontario for comment on Monday, and received the following response after this story was initially published on Tuesday:
"These properties are active files in Infrastructure Ontario’s real estate disposition process. As part of our standard process, IO conducts considerable due diligence, and this work is underway for the properties in Gogama. This work takes time and must be completed prior to any future transaction. IO’s intent is to move forward as expeditiously as possible, following our standard process."
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
