Facing political headwinds that could end their time in government – but not dead yet – the federal Liberals are now confronting the housing issue with the glorious blast-from-the-past plan of standardized housing designs.
At this juncture in the housing crisis, a collection of designs out of a catalogue couldn’t be more welcome reading material for 2024. Prefabricated homes can be fabulous, and this program could be, too.
It’s taking a page out of Canada’s postwar book, when soldiers returned with brides and families were growing, but housing was often scarce. “We intend to take these lessons from our history books and bring them into the 21st century,” Housing Minister Sean Fraser said.
Unlike the program from decades past, however, Ottawa won’t be directly involved in the building of homes as it was through the Crown corporation Wartime Housing Ltd. (which ceased to exist in 1947). The idea of a building catalogue will allow for-profit and non-profit builders to skip the architectural part of the process. Mr. Fraser said this could cut up to a year off of construction time for a project.
The catalogue will start with low-rise constructions, such as small multiplexes and student and seniors’ residences. It will go hand-in-hand with a national building code that will hopefully, somehow, allow for provincial and regional variations. It would be nice if the new homes were more closely aligned to the mid-century modern design that Americans embraced in the postwar decades, rather than the more architecturally modest (but still marvellous) strawberry box houses Canadians got.
To be sure, there are a million ways this could go wrong – including the tendency of this federal government’s attention to drift. A collection of the most exquisite plans won’t solve the much larger issue of explosive population growth contributing mightily to the housing crunch – a situation the Liberals seem to have not yet fully grasped.
But the possibility of getting this sliver of policy right is tantalizing, and progress is desperately needed.
Canadians are struggling with soaring mortgages and rent payments, if they’re lucky enough to have something to struggle to hold onto. As Canada settles into winter, cities are seeing a spate of tent fires. Last week, in a suburban corner of Calgary, three people died in a blaze inside a shed located in the parking lot of a hardware store. Fire investigators believe they were only trying to keep warm.
What we do outside major cities matters, too. For several years, I have been speaking to Grace Richards about the long-term housing crisis in her 200-person Métis community of Conklin in northern Alberta. Surrounded by oil sands wealth, many Conklin residents still make less than $30,000 a year. The hamlet is a historic centre for fishing and trapping but has become known for the unbelievably poor state of its housing.
In 2020, I wrote: “Many of the hamlet’s near-200 residents live in homes that have holes, substandard plumbing and sewage, or are literally crumbling. Ms. Richards, for one, lives with her cat and dog in a mould-ridden camper, with a plyboard addition serving as her kitchen.”
Three years later, not much has changed. “I’m still living in the same thing I have been living in,” Ms. Richards, a grandmother who works as a heavy equipment operator, said this month.
Although there were hopes that 15 new modular homes would be delivered before winter set in this year, that dream has died. The homes are paid for. The community has money from oil sands giant Cenovus and land from the municipality, with some funding from the Alberta government. The sidewalk that would connect the single-family homes is already paved, and the plumbing and electricity hookups are in place.
But the parcel of land the community has been working to rezone for these homes has been mired in paperwork and delays. This month, after a spate of media attention, the permitting process by the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo – which governs Fort McMurray and surrounding rural areas – has kicked into gear. For its part, the municipality said it had noted deficiencies on the part of the developer this fall, but it has now moved to expedite the development approval process.
“I was really hoping we would have got something before Christmas, you know, so people could put up a Christmas tree and enjoy it – something to celebrate,” Ms. Richards said. “It’s so close. Yet so far.”
You can argue Conklin is an extreme example: Small, remote, poor and Indigenous (but not a First Nation). But it’s a demonstration of how we can’t even get it right, or prioritize getting housing built, in the most dire of circumstances.
Anything that rings of a wartime effort and thinking to get housing built – including a canned collection of housing plans – bring it on.