Ten years of fighting roofs: Sarnia’s NIMBYs never change

A decade after the fight to close River City Vineyard, the same neighbourhood tactics are being deployed to stall a critical 35-unit housing project.

I showed up fifteen minutes late to the Lochiel Kiwanis Community Centre on April 14 and walked straight into a time warp.

Same faces. Same flyers. Same frantic energy I saw in 2014 when this exact crowd tried to shut down River City Vineyard’s shelter on Mitton Street right around the corner. Back then they argued a bylaw should override compassion. The shelter was forced to close in June 2014. They won that round on zoning technicalities. The church appealed, won at the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2015, and eventually reopened.

Tuesday night they were at it again: asking for donations for a $7,000 planner and a lawyer, getting coached on how to beat the Ontario Land Tribunal.

The instructions from the front of the room were crystal clear:

Stop talking about “hard-to-house.” Stop mentioning active addicts or violent records or “pressure cookers.” Talk about building height. Talk about green space. Talk about parking variances.

Whatever you do, do not talk about the people. Basically coaching everyone to hide their bias.

Because the people are still the problem they can’t say out loud anymore.

These aren’t all wealthy neighbours who can just sell up and move north of the 402. Some of them probably can’t afford to leave. They’ve lived here for decades, watched the neighbourhood change, and now they’re digging in to protect what little stability they have left. I understand that fear is real — especially for people whose next move might be into supportive housing of their own. But fear doesn’t get to veto 35 people getting roofs and actual care. And it sure as hell doesn’t justify spending another decade fighting the only model that works for the hardest-to-house.

This neighbourhood isn’t some pristine historic enclave worth “protecting.” It’s a strip of houses that look like they were dropped in from the Rapids, sitting beside two brand-new three-storey apartment buildings, an EMS station, and within sight of taller structures that are completely normal anywhere else in Sarnia. A five-storey building here wouldn’t be an “atrocity.” It would be unremarkable. Hell, a ten-storey one wouldn’t make most people blink twice driving by.

Yet one man stood up and proudly declared he moved into the neighbourhood knowing the Vineyard was there — therefore he couldn’t possibly be a NIMBY. The irony was lost on him. They lived through the messy years, survived the cleanup, and still decided the solution to homelessness is to block the next attempt one block away.

They claim they’re “doing their part” because the area already has services. Then they treat a 35-unit supportive housing project — already scaled back from 50 to meet the city’s own parking rules — as neighbourhood-ending saturation. They wave a 2018 hospital-site agreement to cap heights at three storeys while ignoring that the Official Plan allows six in this intensification zone.

They’re furious that Indwell calls it “affordable housing” for planning purposes while telling donors it’s “supportive housing” with on-site nurses and wraparound care. They’re right that everyone is gaming the system — because Sarnia’s 24-year-old zoning bylaw still has no definition for supportive housing. That’s not Indwell’s fault. It’s ours.

But while these neighbours collect donations to fight over shadows on their lawns, Indwell is forced to burn donor dollars — money meant for nurses and social workers — just to defend the right to put roofs over 35 human beings who currently have nowhere else to go.

This isn’t about neighbourhood character. It’s a calculated bureaucratic war to keep the sidewalk occupied. In 2014 they won a temporary victory that left people in the cold. In 2026 they’re trying the same trick.

The OLT hearing is May 6. The neighbours will show up with their carefully laundered statements about height and variances. I’ll be rooting for the 35 people who aren’t in that room — the ones whose lives are being used as bargaining chips by a group that has spent ten years on the wrong side of history.

Some things never change. Sarnia’s NIMBYs are one of them.