For Tannis Hills, joining Community Builders was the best thing that’s ever happened to her.
She affirmed as much in conversation with Sudbury.com outside of the Monarch Recovery Services residential building in downtown Sudbury she is currently living in to aid in her sobriety.
“I’d been wanting to get into the trades for a while, but I have an addictions issue. I’ve been an addict most of my life, and then it went bad to fentanyl and I went to recovery,” she told Sudbury.com earlier this week.
Monarch Recovery Services helped reintegrate her into society following a period of addictions, and Community Builders got her foot in the door for a new career in the trades.
Hills is now 14 months’ sober and working as part of a team to renovate the building she currently lives in.
Community Builders, she said, is a vocational service that has given her the opportunity to start a career which will change her life.
“It’s the best thing that’s happened to me,” she said. “With the stability of Community Builders and how they support you wherever possible, it makes it easier to stay sober, because you have something to look forward to each day.”
Earlier this week, Greater Sudbury city council unanimously approved a motion by Mayor Paul Lefebvre to “initiate a community benefit pilot project between Greater Sudbury Housing Corporation and Community Builders” by June. They also approved having staff draft a sustainable procurement strategy by the end of the year.
The procurement strategy, Lefebvre explained to Sudbury.com following this week’s city council meeting, would seek to better prioritize the hiring of other local non-profit charitable organizations.
Community Builders was flagged specifically due to their proven track after having already worked with the city, as well as Lefebvre’s belief in what they’re doing.
Incorporated in Barrie in 2016, Community Builders opened their second office, in Sudbury, in 2021.
The non-profit organization takes in fresh groups of 12 people four times per year to take part in three months of employment training and paid on-site work in Greater Sudbury.
Whether they’ve faced addictions, a criminal history or other barriers to employment, Community Builders trains people from the ground up, from how to be a good employee to the basics of construction.
“This program is a way to bridge that gap between unemployment and good full-time meaningful employment — kind of a step one, a soft launch,” Community Builders executive director Carly Gasparini said.
“We’re a second-chance employer in that you get second and third chances, all the while you’re being taught proper behaviours for the workplace.”
SEE: From ex-con to carpenter: how Community Builders is helping fill Northern Ontario’s labour gap
Each intake of 12 people finds at least 150 applications submitted, Gasparini said, including repeat applicants.
“People do want to work; they want better for themselves,” she said, adding that many of them just need certain barriers removed, which can include such things as opening bank accounts and learning the basics of employment.
There is a wealth of businesses in Greater Sudbury eager to take on Community Builders employees, she said, both during and after their three months with the non-profit are up.
They boast a graduation rate of approximately 85 per cent, of whom 90 per cent move onto other employment opportunities once they’ve graduated from Community Builders.
Community Builders employees were behind the non-profit Raising the Roof effort, which saw the city sell off five single-family homes which were renovated into two units each, for 10 units total of affordable housing. Last year, city council voted in favour of selling off five more houses to Raising the Roof to repeat their prior effort.
Gasparini said they’re still waiting to start on this second phase of the project.
Meanwhile, the city has also hired Community Builders employees to renovate Greater Sudbury Housing Corporation properties, as well as do such things as grass cutting and landscaping.
Although the details behind a community benefit pilot project with the city still need to be hashed out, Gasparini said the goal is to formalize the relationship to allow for greater predictability in their work.
For each cohort of 12 employees starting every three months, Community Builders needs consistent year-round work for them to do, which Gasparini said, “is not an easy thing for any construction company to do.”
As for the city drafting a sustainable procurement strategy to better prioritize the hiring of other local charitable organizations, Gasparini said social procurement efforts like these are increasingly commonplace with public organizations.
“There are lots of ways to use social procurement, and we’re just holding our elected officials to use taxpayer dollars in ways that aren't necessarily always the lowest bid. It’s about value, and social procurement allows communities to define what we want to value,” she said.
With the federal and provincial governments both pledging to get more housing built, she said now is a good opportunity to bolster community organizations.
“Non-market housing should be built by non-profit builders,” she said. “It just makes sense. Social procurement policies are a great step in the right direction to building that capacity within the non-profit sector so that we can do this in a huge way, and we’re excited.”
Although it wasn’t called a social procurement policy at the time, Gasparini noted that the procurement policy amendment city council adopted earlier this year to prioritize Canadian and non-U.S.-based companies similarly helped guide municipal priorities in procurement.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
