The federal Liberals want to boost pre-fabricated housing and are again laying out millions of dollars in more spending as political pressure to tackle the housing crunch builds.
Friday’s announcements on more funds for pre-fab construction and as part of a series of announcements teeing up what is set to be a housing-focused budget.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the announcement in Calgary, Friday, with a $600 million price tag.
“We need to build more homes in factories if we’re going to solve the national housing crisis. Now, there’s advantages to building in factories. You can do it faster. In fact, twice as fast as traditional stick build homes,” Housing Minister Sean Fraser said at the Calgary announcement.
“You can also work around the clock. You can advance automation to become more efficient. There’s a number of different advantages that can make it more cost effective and more time effective to actually build the homes that we need.”
Of this, $50 million is set aside for a to launch a “Home Building Technology Innovation Fund.”
The stated goal of this is to help the private sector scale up and commercialize building techniques for modular and prefabricated homes.
It’s part of the work to roll out the Housing Design Catalogue, which aims to put a modern spin on the old wartime housing program.
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The government says the catalogue will carry an $11 million price tag this year and include up to 50 types of prefabricated home designs.
To access a previously announced $6 billion housing infrastructure fund, Fraser said provinces and municipalities will need to bring in pre-approved zoning for catalogue homes and fourplexes.
Speaking in Toronto, Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman said that her party’s plan would not include this prescribed approach to as-of-right zoning.
“We just want to see houses built, and we’ve got a plan to actually build in terms of results, in terms of actual places that people can live in,” Lantsman said.
“So, we’re fine with municipalities and provinces making decisions about the kinds of, housing for their own communities. We just want to see more approvals and less gatekeepers in the way.”
The Conservative plan involves calling on municipalities to increase home construction by 15 per cent. Cities and towns that meet or exceed the target will get more federal funding, and those that miss the target would be penalized.
On Wednesday, Housing Minister Sean Fraser told reporters that he expects to have the first “dozen or so” designs ready this fall.
“We’re going to aim to have, the first tranche include some small multiplexes and accessory dwelling units. We will eventually be producing designs for some larger buildings and single-family homes as well,” Fraser said.
Of the proposed $600 million laid out for the Liberal plans, $500 million of that is earmarked for low-cost financing on prefabricated or modular apartment builds.
This is part of the $15-billion increase to the apartment loan construction program announced earlier this week.
The remaining $50 million as part of this announcement will be spread between the government’s regional economic development agencies to put more funding into “dozens” or projects related to newer home building practices.
These projects include initiatives like mass timber construction, robotics, 3D printing and automation.
Other announcements this week include the aforementioned $15-billion increase to the apartment loan construction program, $400 million more to the $4.4-billion Housing Accelerator Fund, $1.5 billion Rental Protection Fund and a new $6-billion infrastructure fund to help build things like water and sewage hook-ups for new housing builds.
This last item has become a source of tension with several provinces due to the requirement to mandate pre-approved zoning for fourplexes and other small multi-unit dwellings in residential areas.
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