Coleen Thompson finalized purchase of new home in northern Ontario town the same day it announced it was in financial crisis
The joy of purchasing her forever home has quickly turned into a journey into the unknown for a Guelph woman shipping up north.
On July 9, Coleen Thompson got the call to close on her new home in northern Ontario. That same day, the township where that home is located announced it was in a financial crisis, a move the 48-year-old said “blindsided” her.
Despite that, she has no intention of looking for a way out, seemingly all in despite the hardship facing her new hometown.
Thompson had been a lifelong renter, but decided a few years ago to make some changes and save up to purchase her first home.
She looked north after homes in the Guelph area were too expensive for her budget.
After saving up over the last three years, she went house browsing and saw a few homes listed, including one in the Township of Fauquier-Strickland that really caught her eye.
“It just screamed to me as the perfect house,” Thompson said. “I was hoping it would still be on the market when I had booked vacation to come up. It wasn’t necessarily when I was going to start looking, but because that house seemed like the perfect house, I did want to see it.”
The 48-year-old went up in April with her son and daughter to see a few houses.
Seeing the one Fauquier-Strickland home in-person, she still felt it was the perfect house to fill the needs of her family.
“I knew that was my forever home,” Thompson said.
Fauquier-Strickland is a community with a population of about 500 people, and is located on Highway 11, about an hour drive north of Timmins.
The location was key in the decision-making process, as she has family in neighbouring communities and wanted to be in an area where her kids could afford a home one day.
She reached out to the realtor, put in an offer and got the house on Jul. 9 for $268,000.
That same day, the town made headlines with its announcement, calling it “the most difficult decision council has ever had to make.”
“At no point did any of this come up in my research, albeit I’ve never bought a home before,” Thompson said.
“I’ve never moved far away before and while I was doing lots of research in the area, my lack of knowledge in this process meant I was researching what now I see was the wrong thing.”
She said she was looking up things that were “not relevant to the financial fitness of the town that I was purchasing in.”
It didn’t occur to her that the town could be in financial straits.
It didn’t occur to those up north either. Thompson said the realtor had no idea this could happen.
The township said it would be laying off municipal workers as of Aug. 1, and all services would be temporarily halted.
This includes things like garbage collection, fire protection and road maintenance.
According to the township, it accumulated an operating deficit of over $2.5 million in the last decade. Its reserve funds are empty.
The residents of the small town posed questions to the township at a recent meeting on how it got to this point, and for a plan moving forward.
Thompson watched virtually, and as a newcomer to the town, decided to take a back seat, get a feel for the tone set by residents and take notes.
“I was quite disappointed that there was not more in terms of an action plan on how the town moves forward. I do believe after sitting in on that meeting that their plan is to wait and see what the (federal and provincial) government’s plan is.”
There are meetings happening between the town council and provincial ministers, and anticipates more information to come once those meetings conclude.
For Thompson, there is a concern about how garbage and snow removal will work if this situation drags along without a resolution, especially for a community primarily with older residents.
On a personal level, she fears for the property value of her brand new investment.
“For me, this is meant to be a forever home so it’s not an immediate concern for me,” Thompson said. “But I don’t want to find out that three months down the line my house is worth nothing because this is happening.”
She is also worried about drastic tax increases, as well as her home insurance premium going up, or even being cancelled because of a lack of fire services.
She wants to believe the sellers didn’t know this would be possible, and came across as “genuinely kind people.”
“I think it would be a disservice to everybody to kind of have that attitude, to be wanting to look for somebody to blame, especially at that level,” Thompson said, adding she really wants to understand from the current council how this happened.
“It is staggering, so I have a lot of questions about the leadership, and their fitness to continue.”
She said no matter what, she hopes a watchdog or someone with power gets put into position to watch over decisions being made moving forward.
With all this, how is Thompson herself moving forward?
She has her 17-year-old daughter and 27-year-old son making the move with her.
The number one priority beyond anything is finding full-time work for herself and her son along the Highway 11 corridor.
Thompson said she has enough of a nest egg to keep her going while she’s job hunting.
And she has no plans of backing out.
“My intent would be not to back out of it now,” Thompson said. “I really am committed to moving forward, despite my worries and fears about what that might look like.”
-With files from TimminsToday.com