Housing funding 'really critical' to Sussex's growth plans: CAO

The town of Sussex wants to use its housing cash to keep up to the growth it's seeing now and in the next 10 to 20 years.

The federal government announced $3.2 million in funding for Sussex on Friday as part of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation's Housing Accelerator Fund. The funding is intended to incentivize at least 104 permitted units over three years, with 914 new homes in the next decade, through a six-part plan that involves preparing permit-ready parcels of available land, changes to zoning and alternative housing types, according to a statement from the CMHC.

"It's going to be an incredible boon for Sussex," Saint John-Rothesay MP Wayne Long said at the announcement Friday. "It's going to encourage density, it's going to encourage them looking at different areas to develop housing, it's going to help explore modular housing. It's going to help encourage more developers to come to Sussex with aggressive ways to build housing."

CAO Scott Hatcher said that in preparation for the application under the small/rural community stream, the town completed a housing needs analysis with consultants Dillon Consulting Limited, which was posted online.

The assessment, conducted last summer, found Sussex had 58 per cent single family homes and 21 per cent apartments, with the rest semi-detached or movable dwellings, and only seven per cent of the housing stock built after 2011. Sixty-five per cent of residents owned their home, and 35 per cent rented.

In the five years ending in 2022, there were 109 residential units built in Sussex and Sussex Corner, with no multi-unit apartment growth and "modest" commercial, Hatcher said, a period that included recovery from the closure of the Picadilly potash mine in 2016.

"It took a little bit of time to get the initial starts of the recovery," he said. "But in the latter part of 2022 and 2023 ... you can clearly see that there is more private developers that have the confidence to invest in Sussex."

Of those 109 units, 38 came in 2022, and a further 34 were permitted in 2023, according to council documents. The last four units are wrapping up construction in the Coventry Walk subdivision, which had planned in 2021 to build 81 lots in three phases.

One proposed 37-unit apartment complex opened last year on Main Street, and the 49-unit Westgate Apartments development is expected to open in August near the Shoppers Drug Mart, Hatcher said.

Hatcher said they had received feedback dating to before the COVID-19 pandemic from the Multicultural Association of Sussex as well as by local employers, including Irving Woodlands and Mrs. Dunsters, that more housing is needed to meet the needs of future employees.

He called the funding "really critical" to allow the town "to meet the various types of housing needs in our community.".

The housing needs assessment found that Sussex has had an average growth rate of 0.8 per cent per year since 2016, but that doesn't capture population growth in 2022 and later since it's based on census data.

The report performed low, medium and high growth projections, and the medium projection of 1.5 per cent annually would see Sussex grow from an estimated 6,051 last year to 7,341 residents by 2036, with 36 new housing units needed per year, and 8,520 residents by 2046. Under that model, the 2023 housing gap would have been 26 units, which would grow to 250 by 2036.

In the higher projections of 2.5 per cent annual growth, Sussex could see the population shoot up to 8,501 by 2036, with a housing gap of 696 units, and as much as 10,882 by 2046.

Hatcher said that would be a "tremendous explosion of growth" that requires looking at the town's sewer, water, stormwater and road network infrastructure, as well as flood mitigation.

"Clearly, if you have that level of growth ... there has to be some assessment of infrastructure we provide," he said.

The town is in the midst of updating its municipal plan and zoning bylaws, which are currently planned to wrap up in June, according to council documents. In a statement posted online, Mayor Marc Thorne said "the timing is perfect" for the funding announcement.

"We appreciate the federal government for their confidence in Sussex’s housing plan and their commitment to ensuring that everyone who wants to call Sussex home can do so," he said.

Thorne said it's important to ensure the town is "building the mix of housing, including the missing middle in our neighbourhoods."

Of the 294 units in the plan's growth target, six per cent are targeted as affordable units, at 80 per cent of market rent.

The two new apartment buildings near Shoppers Drug Mart have a percentage of affordable units, and there's more in the queue, Hatcher said.

"If conditions are right and private investment is where we think it is, we could see another eight of those buildings in our foreseeable future, built right here in Sussex," he said.

One of the pillars of the action plan involves modular developments. Hatcher said a few other "interesting" options have presented themselves using modular housing, a growth industry in New Brunswick that includes Sussex’s Prestige Homes, part of the Shaw Group.

The Shaw Group is proposing a rezoning on Marble Street in partnership with Prestige Homes to add a maximum of 36 units in a three-story apartment building built from modular components.

The building is intended to help house Shaw Group employees, and the rezoning and smaller unit sizes would allow a density that permits lower rents, according to the developer's application.

Sussex is also in talks with Fundy Albert Housing, a non-profit aiming to build low-cost modular affordable housing based in Riverside-Albert.

The presentation in December by Patrick Kemp was "kind of unique, we never heard of one like that before," Hatcher said, and came with the non-profit startup costs already taken care of.

Hatcher said the town has been waiting for this announcement to get rolling on those plans, and said the town is eager to get started, after signing the housing accelerator deal in January.

"It was very hard to bite your lip for two and a half months" when reading comments on social media, Hatcher said. "We've been working on that here, we haven't been sleeping here, we've been trying to move our community forward."

He called it "extraordinary" that the federal government is partnering with municipalities on the housing file and called Friday a "good news day" for Sussex.

"Many people want to call Sussex home," Hatcher said. "We're not unlike any community in Canada, we need more housing, and this is one of the first steps to make that happen."

A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the consulting firm the Town of Sussex worked with for their housing needs analysis, which was Dillon Consulting Limited. The story has been updated.

Andrew Bates, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Telegraph-Journal