A man called me up recently and gave me some homework. Now, I'm no expert on housing. I'm a writer and publisher who's spent the better part of the last few months researching housing, poverty and homelessness across Canada, sometimes for twelve hours a day. I've been talking to politicians, housing organizations, developers, frontline workers and people who have experienced homelessness themselves. I read a lot, ask a lot of questions, and when someone knows more about something than I do, I tend to listen. This particular conversation sent me looking into Schumacher, and more specifically, what happens when somebody takes a neglected house and decides it's worth saving.
We've been talking a lot about building homes in Timmins, and for good reason. We need them. Unfortunately, building in Northern Ontario isn't particularly cheap or easy. The price of land, construction materials, labour shortages, financing, and the cost of servicing a lot can turn a fairly modest house into a major financial undertaking. Timmins' own 2024 Housing Action Plan reported an average of just 23 housing starts annually over the preceding five years. That's not exactly a construction boom.
And while we're discussing construction, it's worth looking at what other northern municipalities are doing. North Bay reported 242 new dwelling units in 2025, while Sault Ste. Marie broke ground on 302 homes that same year. Those figures are measured differently, but they're still worth examining alongside Timmins' more recent construction numbers. These communities have winters, expensive materials, contractors to find and infrastructure to maintain too. So what are they doing differently? Are their incentives better? Is permitting easier? Are developers finding opportunities there that they aren't finding here? Maybe there's something worth learning from our neighbours instead of assuming the challenges of living in the North make progress impossible.
What about the houses we've already built?
In Schumacher, 109 Croatia Avenue offers a good example. According to the listing’s published sales history, the three-bedroom bungalow sold for $35,000 in October 2024. After renovations that included an updated kitchen, bathroom, new metal siding and a deck, it sold again in July 2026 for $155,000. That's a $120,000 increase in sale price in less than two years. Of course, renovations cost money, and the difference between two sale prices isn't automatically profit. But someone invested in an existing property and brought a renovated three-bedroom home back to market. The lot was already there. The neighbourhood was already there. The municipal services were already there.
Now, I'm not suggesting every vacant house can be purchased for $35,000 and turned around for $155,000. Some properties need extensive work, and some probably aren't worth saving. But that's precisely why I wanted to look into this. How many homes are sitting around Timmins, Schumacher and Porcupine that could be restored for considerably less than the cost of building new ones? How many could be brought back into use by someone willing to do the work, assuming they could actually acquire the property?
And we certainly have plenty of older homes. According to the 2021 Census, more than 70% of Timmins' occupied private dwellings were built before 1981, and approximately 1,440 occupied homes were reported as needing major repairs. That's about one in twelve. These aren't necessarily vacant properties, but they tell us something about the housing stock we've inherited. It's getting older, and keeping it usable requires investment. Every home we maintain today is potentially one less home we have to replace tomorrow.
There's another financial benefit worth discussing, and it doesn't stop at the property line. Researchers Rohan Ganduri and Gonzalo Maturana examined the effects of rehabilitating distressed properties in a study published in the Journal of Urban Economics in 2024. They found that neighbouring house prices increased by an average of 2.3 percentage points following rehabilitation. They also estimated broader economic benefits worth 3.8 times the amount invested. The research examined American properties, but it makes a compelling case for something homeowners have probably understood for years. The condition of the house next door can affect the value of your own.
And that's before considering what those improvements mean to the people living nearby. A boarded-up house, broken windows, an overgrown yard, garbage accumulating around the property, perhaps years of neglect. The neighbours are maintaining their homes, paying their taxes and looking after their yards, while somebody else's property slowly becomes everyone's problem. Then someone comes along, fixes the place, cuts the grass, replaces the windows, and suddenly the street looks a little different. There's measurable economic value in that work, but there's also something harder to calculate. The relief of not having to walk past an eyesore every day, or the feeling that somebody finally gave a damn about the neighbourhood.
I was in a smaller municipality outside Timmins recently, and vacant homes were hard to miss. In some parts of town, there seemed to be one or two around every corner. Residents told me about properties that had been deteriorating for years, despite efforts by the local government to require owners to maintain them. Some felt that allowing those homes to fall apart without meaningful consequences had practically invited more neglect. Why bother maintaining your property if the one across the street has been falling apart for ten years and nobody seems able to do much about it?
I don't know that the same problem exists in Timmins, Schumacher or Porcupine to the same degree. But it raises a question worth asking. When municipalities already have property standards and enforcement powers, what happens when those measures aren't enough?
Timmins introduced its Vacant Building By-law in February 2024. Buildings vacant for more than 30 days must be registered, maintained and secured. According to an April 2026 report, 38 properties had been added to the registry since its introduction, with 18 buildings remaining. Four were located in Ward 3, which includes Schumacher. Those counts point toward something more interesting than the numbers themselves. What happened to the properties that were removed? How many were repaired? How many became occupied homes? Were they purchased by people who renovated them, or were they demolished? There's a difference between getting a property off a municipal list and getting a family through the front door.
Then there's the question of ownership. A vacant house doesn't become municipal property simply because nobody lives in it. Someone still owns the land, whether that's an individual, an estate, a company or another legal owner. The City can enforce its bylaws, and unpaid taxes can eventually lead to a tax sale, but that doesn't mean someone willing to renovate a house can simply walk into City Hall and buy it. So what happens if a local contractor, a small investor or even a private citizen has the money, skills and willingness to restore an old property? Can they find out which houses might be available? Is there a practical way to connect them with owners who would consider selling? And are we doing enough to encourage that work?
There's also a question about the cost of doing nothing. Timmins uses registration fees and penalties to encourage property owners to maintain vacant buildings. Sault Ste. Marie has taken another approach, introducing a vacant-home tax equal to 4% of a qualifying property's assessed value. For a house assessed at $150,000, that could mean an additional $6,000 annually. It's a substantial difference in approach, and worth watching to see what actually happens to those properties. But the question isn't necessarily whether Timmins needs another tax. It's whether our existing measures give owners enough reason to maintain, repair or sell properties before they become everybody else's problem.
And before anyone suggests nothing is happening here, that isn't the full picture either. Timmins has a Housing Action Plan, a vacant-building registry, expanded community improvement grants and plans for new development. The City recently awarded a $36.3 million infrastructure contract, plus HST, for Melrose Heights, supporting 172 serviced residential lots over the next three years. Its Housing Community Improvement Plan also offers grants of up to $7,500 per new unit for qualifying small-scale developments of two to four units, while the Downtown Community Improvement Plan provides certain building improvement and redevelopment incentives in designated areas. These are real initiatives, and I think they're worth recognizing. I also think anyone interested in developing property, investing in housing or renovating an existing building should spend a little time looking into them. Do some homework of your own. The information is available through the City's planning department and website. I try to give readers the full picture, not just an amuse-bouche of complaints to take away.
A Northern Ontario example
Five vacant houses. Ten affordable homes.
In Greater Sudbury, Raising the Roof restored five vacant single-family houses and added secondary suites, creating ten affordable homes. The first phase was completed in 2023. Raising the Roof now reports 29 people housed and 31 people trained and employed through the project.
In November 2024, Greater Sudbury Council approved the sale of another five housing units to the organization. Here’s a northern municipality working with a housing organization to put existing properties back to use. Could a partnership like that make sense in Timmins?
And we're already seeing what can happen when people start looking at existing buildings differently. In South Porcupine, a historic building at 71 Main Street has been repurposed into student housing through a partnership between Collège Boréal and the Cochrane District Services Board. The building will accommodate at least 25 students. It wasn't a new subdivision or an entirely new structure. It was an existing building given another purpose. That doesn't mean every old building can become housing, but it's a fairly practical example of what happens when somebody looks at what's standing instead of starting with an empty lot.
Affordability still matters, of course. A renovated home selling for $155,000 and a new home costing several hundred thousand dollars to construct serve different parts of the market, but neither price alone tells us whether the people who need housing most can afford it. That's where housing organizations, nonprofit partners and public policy have another role to play. Restoring older homes could produce ownership opportunities, rental housing, or properties acquired by organizations interested in longer-term affordability.
Sometimes the benefits aren't quite as obvious as another house becoming available, either. Consider a smaller home, perhaps not particularly attractive to a growing family, but just about perfect for someone looking to downsize after retirement or after the kids have moved out. Maybe it's easier to maintain, costs less to heat, or simply suits their changing needs. That person moves into the renovated home, and suddenly there's another, larger family home available for somebody else. Perhaps that family leaves behind another home that someone else needs. One restored property can create opportunities elsewhere in the housing market. The cause and effect of doing something isn't always found in the statistics or reports I've been digging through. Sometimes we have to connect those dots ourselves.
I've spent a fair amount of time lately talking to people about housing solutions. Some have ambitious plans for subdivisions, some are looking at vacant land, and others are interested in apartments, supportive housing or partnerships with the private sector. We need those conversations, and we need new construction. But I think we're overlooking another part of the housing supply, partly because it's less exciting to announce that somebody fixed an old house than it is to unveil plans for a hundred new ones.
There's something a little ridiculous about spending millions preparing new land for housing while we still have homes standing on land we've already serviced, in neighbourhoods where people already live. Not every property is worth saving, and not every renovation makes financial sense. But some clearly do, and there are people with the skills, energy and money to make those projects happen. Perhaps we should spend more time figuring out how to make their work easier, and less time walking past these properties wondering why nobody is doing anything about them.
Which brings me back to the man who called me up and gave me some homework. Well, I did the homework, and here's my report. It's not finished. There are still questions about ownership, incentives, enforcement, and how many homes we could realistically bring back into use. There are also people in Schumacher and elsewhere who have already done this work, and I think we could learn quite a bit by listening to them.
But like Timmins and the surrounding communities, this report is a rough draft of something that can get better. That's usually how developing stories work, anyway. We ask some questions, find a few answers, and discover there are more questions worth asking. We don't need to pretend nothing has been done, or that everything we've tried has worked. We can recognize what's been accomplished, learn from it, and think a little differently about what comes next.
I'll keep following this one. I want to hear from the people who've restored these properties, the people living beside them, and those who might be willing to take on the next one. Hopefully, some of you will stay engaged too. There's more homework to do, and the answers shouldn't belong to just one person.
We can't stop building. We certainly need more housing. But while we're waiting for the next subdivision, perhaps we should spend a little more time looking at what's already standing.
Because sometimes, making room for another family doesn't begin with building another house.
Sometimes it begins with saving one.