The federal government intends to resurrect a post-war effort to ramp up housing construction across Canada — but with a 21st-century twist.
A consultation process will begin next month on developing a catalogue of pre-approved home designs to accelerate the home-building process for developers, Housing Minister Sean Fraser said Tuesday.
It’s a reboot of a federal policy from the post-Second World War era, when the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. developed straightforward blueprints to help speed up the construction of badly needed homes, Fraser said.
“When many thousands of soldiers were returning home to be reunited with their families at once, Canada faced enormous housing crunches,” he said.
“We intend to take these lessons from our history books and bring them into the 21st century.” … [More in the article]
This was not on my radar of potential solutions to the housing issue, but it’s a very good idea that we know works. The Liberals have been garbage at getting the message across, much of the public seems to have slipped into just not listening to them at all. But they’ve been working on this problem, following the recommendations in the National Housing Accord: https://www.nationalhousingaccord.ca/
Up to this point, I don’t think the problem has been messaging for the Liberals, it’s that they have largely ignored housing as an issue for way too long and are struggling to respond effectively.
No, it’s messaging. They’ve been implementing housing policy steadily since they were elected, much of the policy was passed well before the pandemic, and due to the long development lag on new housing starts, and the catastrophic jolts from covid19, we are only starting to see the effect. This is not a problem that will be fixed fast or with one piece of legislation.
In 2018/2019 we got the national cohousing investment fund, the rental construction financing initiative, the rapid housing initiative, the first time home buyer incentive, the canada housing benefit agreement.
You agree with these, you don’t agree, you didn’t find them effective, you would have picked something else, fine, that’s fine, people always disagree, but “ignored” housing is honestly just a meme people repeat that weirdo policy wonks like me roll their eyes at.
Good. I don’t care if my home is unique, I just want a roof over my head and to start building equity.
I’ve been saying this for years. These were simple, efficiently built homes to account for a huge influx in housing needs. Why it took us this long to remember a solution that already worked is wild to me.
Sure, there is less space to build in on cities proper, but with how much we have progressed with WFH, it shouldnt be as much of an issue to build outside the core.
I love the idea of these houses, but I think multi family plans should be considered as well. I’m sure they could drum up plans for multi level triplexes that would fit on many lots in cities where density is an issue.
When they had a “housing crisis”, the USSR built a shitload of prefab concrete housing, the famous “commieblock” buildings. They were imposing, ugly, and made out of load bearing asbestos, but they succeeded in their goal of transforming an impoverished rural serf society into an urbanized industrial powerhouse. While you can and should criticize the Soviet Union, their housing project of the early/mid 20th century was the singular most successful social project in history.
I’m not saying we need “commieblocks”, but we definitely need high quality mass produced social housing in this country. We will simply never be able to solve the problem by building endless suburbs of timber and rockwoll shacks. It won’t “destroy the real estate market” because loads of people will still want their own homes eventually, but for everybody else it will be a great improvement over what we have now.
Should be achievable with this project, so long as multi-family and mixed use buildings are included in the catalog.
My understanding is the whole point of the catalog is that you can build any of the designs anywhere in Canada. This fights the “well my municipality/HOA/neighborhood appeal” roadblocks.
If it’s in the catalog, it can go up. Period.
The article says this
The modern-day version of the catalogue will instead focus on low-rise builds, such as small multiplexes, student housing and seniors’ residences, then explore a potential catalogue for higher-density construction.
So it sounds like that’s sorta the plan
A hackneyed plan that exists only to give the appearance of doing anything about the problem. They claim this “catalogue” will be ready next year. Let’s be realistic and say it’ll be two years, then it’s passed on to the provinces to actually do anything about it. These in turn sit on it for another year or two, and eventually build double digits of these houses. Problem solved, everyone!
We don’t need new house plans, and we certainly don’t need more suburban sprawl. Why not provide interest-free loans on multi-unit construction instead, something that can get built right away?
I mean, you dont like this plan, that’s fine, but its one that developers, advocates and experts put together so im onclined towards their opinion over yours. They’ve already implemented new loan programs that developers wanted. Interesting, measuring since 2008 , every year since 2019 has been a record year for Federal investment in housing.
I’m not so eager to trust developers. Many of them only care about profits and less about build quality or functionality of a residence. I’m certain many of them would start using lead and asbestos again if it were legal and they could save a few bucks.
Why not provide interest-free loans on multi-unit construction instead, something that can get built right away?
Is this a substantially different idea from what the feds are already doing? They are currently working with various cities to update zoning laws to allow for easier building of higher density in exchange for the feds spending a bunch of money to subsidize building homes in the city.
Providing interest-free lones to developers feels like a similar program with different pros and cons.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The federal government intends to resurrect a post-war effort to ramp up housing construction across Canada — but with a 21st-century twist.
It’s a reboot of a federal policy from the post-Second World War era, when the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. developed straightforward blueprints to help speed up the construction of badly needed homes, Fraser said.
“When many thousands of soldiers were returning home to be reunited with their families at once, Canada faced enormous housing crunches,” he said.
The goal is to better ensure housing builds can be fast-tracked for approval from the CMHC and others, while also promoting larger-scale production through factory-based construction.
The code, which the minister said the government is planning to update, offers guidelines that are only enforceable if a province or territory chooses to adopt them.
Creating a catalogue will help get shovels into the ground faster by speeding up the process of approval for everything from financing to municipal permitting, he said.
The original article contains 536 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Doesn’t matter unless they modernize the building codes – which includes things like heat pumps / air exchangers / radon remediation / greywater systems… All things that make a house better, but also cost more money – adding to the affordability crisis.
Kids nowadays are so fucked.
Their solution is more single family zoning urban sprawl…this is sheer insanity, they’ve had 7 years and all they’ve got is “we’ve tried nothing and we’re out of ideas”?
Where are you reading that? The article says this
The modern-day version of the catalogue will instead focus on low-rise builds, such as small multiplexes, student housing and seniors’ residences, then explore a potential catalogue for higher-density construction.
Oh nice, I read another article that didn’t mention have as much detail than CBC’s. but that’s still low rise builds, and “potentially” explore higher density…that’s a big if
Another article I saw had a long video in it where an official was even talking about support for local changes that would even make co-ops easier to build/establish. Need to look into it more, but I hope that’s true.
Ya co-ops would be a nice addition too. And removing parking space requirements/single family/duplex zoning from most urban areas.
Apparently the cure to urban sprawl is … urban sprawl. Cheaply-built little matchstick firetraps, low-density shit.
What an embarrassment for anyone backing this mess.
Where are you reading that? The article says this
The modern-day version of the catalogue will instead focus on low-rise builds, such as small multiplexes, student housing and seniors’ residences, then explore a potential catalogue for higher-density construction.
They are not reading, just whinging online because it is easier than actually trying.
Not to mention incredibly poorly insulated. I remember my dad lived in one and holy shit was it cold in the winter.
Thankfully there are modern building codes?
Dont even need to be that modern. My house was built in 1992 and is very well insulated. Rooms stay toasty warm thanks to cheapo baseboard heaters. Admittedly I live in a pretty mild area of BC where winters are mostly “3c and rainy”.
Had you actually read the article you would have seen that they are not simply dusting off the old plan book but creating a whole new one. With modern applicable designs and up to modern codes.
