This can work in some places (mostly looking at the prairies), but will do close to zero in others (like eastern Canada+BC). The simple problem is that the land the house is built on is often worth something like 80% the cost of buying property. The cost of a new house can be zero, but that will do little to help people afford new homes. Only slightly better than the tax cuts PP is proposing, which will have just as weak of an effect helping those who don’t already own six houses.
The solution is to use the land we already use for homes more efficiently, and the only way to do that is to build condos and apartments. Make them mixed use and you can add the rental fees of a grocery store and several other services to the mix to subsidize the cost even further. A single grocery store that’ll take up half the ground floor paid something like a million in rent a year, and that was before COVID. Add a convenience store, a couple fast food restaurants, a bar, and a dentist or salon, and you’ve got a mini-mall that’ll rake in several million in rent that has a captured clientele in those that live above and near them. And that number will be in the hundreds for a 30 story apartment in the space of half a city block, since there’d be more than ten units per floor, even if it only has two-four bedroom units.
Such buildings can’t be built in a factory, even partially. Not if we want them to last more than ten years, since that’s the problem with the quick condos China tried to build.
Is the only thing that’s going to fix the housing crisis actually reducing the cost of homes? And nobody actually wants that to happen… so…
Nobody who owns a home wants that to happen*
Because the entire economic system inherently benefits entrenched Capital.
This game of Monopoly was decided before we were born.
Even moreso, those who own other people’s homes.
I had a friend do this. It’s a great house and the process went very smoothly.
It’s a sensible way to do it. Modern prefab doesn’t necessarily mean the house is entirely built offsite and then dropped in place. It just means that more of the assembly is done in a controlled, precision, effficient environment (a factory) and then assembled on site with less time and expense. It means more houses, faster and cheaper. Which is what we need.
The answer to this has always been no, everywhere.
Not quite true. Many homes in Canada literally were ordered from the Eaton catalogue. Truck arrives with all the components, you assemble it yourself. We used to do these things.
Yeah. We actually already do prefab with roof trusses. They are precision manufactured in a factory, shipped to the site and then assembled. This is extending the same principle to other home components like wall assemblies.
Yeah, but it won’t fill the housing gap.
Those houses still have to be assembled somewhere.
The more likely solution is a big fibre optic rollout and getting all information workers out of the cities.
They would be assembled on site.
Yeah; in most of the places where there are housing issues, the problem isn’t skilled labour to build houses or a lack of building materials (although those can become issues) — it’s the cost and availability and accessibility of land. There’s no “on site” to assemble them on.
the problem isn’t skilled labour to build houses
Can you provide any references for this? My naive web searches find that most sources say there is a significant skill labour shortage, so if you can provide sources which I can learn from that would be helpful.
it’s the cost and availability and accessibility of land
Housing shortage is a multi-dimensional problems with what you mention here included. One plank in the BCH platform that attempts to address this is the release federal lands for new housing. I suppose it will remain to be seen how that works out, if Carney is elected.
We should give tax credit for wfh too perhaps.
Except our government doesn’t actually want housing prices to fall, or for there to be less people in the city.
More people should be living in the city so the wilderness can remain the wilderness. Build up, not out.
The Vancouver special was made illegal in the late 80s for seemingly no reason. Every municipal has tons of bureaucracy on what can be built, likely in order to stifle new development and to raise home values.
This will succeed only in so much as the Liberals through Brookfield will take a chunk of profits. Which is fine, if it took a bit of corruption to wipe out municipal bureaucracy then its still a win for the poor.
I was also in favor of Doug ford getting kickbacks for opening up greenbelt, I don’t see how we do 4% annual population growth without actions like that.
The greenbelt doesn’t even need development. The province’s own report said we just need to make better use of our land. In too much of Ontario for too long, zoning has restricted most homes to be inefficient single family housing and suburban sprawl far from peoples’ jobs. We need missing middle housing, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and greater density.
Ford won’t do like Eby because his voters will revolt. Opening greenbelt is the only way to get houses built sadly, though I agree that is the logical thing to do.
The green belt is an important wildlife corridor and it helps to protect surface water and ground water recharge areas. The benefits of a few mcmansions built in a desireable area are not worth the long term consequences of destroying the greenbelt.
Lets stop kicking the can down the road and finally address the factors that caused this crisis like sprawl and zoning.
If it could be done I agree. But voters won’t allow it, unlike BC they aren’t progressive, they vote Ford.
Opening greenbelt is the only way to get houses built
How can you possibly think this??
I was also in favor of Doug ford getting kickbacks for opening up greenbelt, I don’t see how we do 4% annual population growth without actions like that.
Going to assume this was awkwardly worded because why would you ever think that politicians getting kickbacks is in your best interests?? That’s pants-on-head.
What in the world does the greenbelt have to do with housing? Do you think lack of space to build is anywhere on the roster of issues standing in our way??
I think land values are extremely high due to a lack of available land relative to demand. Exacerbated by sprawled zoning that nimbys have fought tooth and nail against.
Honest request: Explain to me how Brookfield is involved
They are heavily invested in prefab homes. Which will help us bypass municipal laws, and build architectural style to maximize floor space with relatively cheap construction costs, like the Vancouver special used to be.
They are heavily invested in prefab homes
That could have been because they believe prefab homes are a good industry to invest in because they saw the potential to solve the affordable housing crisis that afflicts populations around the world. That doesn’t make it nefarious.
Which will help us bypass municipal laws
Do you have any facts to share about this? I would expect any new, modern, prefab homes to be built in Canada to the local building codes. Municipalities have as much at stake and to gain in solving our local housing shortages.
Weird take.
Because prefab homes are an euphemism for mobile home or trailer home. That’s why. No one wants to live in a low quality house.
You have no idea what a prefab is.
Yes I do i, I have had neghibors who lived in them. all notedethat even the good ones make quality compromises over the better site built. Which isn’t a surprize as site built gets nost things pre cut to size and to there isn’t much room. A site built house just brings the factory to the site.
Are you aware that many high-end luxury log homes are prefab?
high end and luxury need not imply quality. For that matter I’m aware of some of those logs houses and calling them prefab implies a lot more factory than they have - they are built (at least for the one I know of) just like any other stick house then left to dry for a year.
Just because we’ve built homes on site from raw materials for decades doesn’t mean there are not better ways to do it. Prefabrication is not that uncommon in other parts of the world. The problem in Canada is that our industry is built around on site construction so it has a lot of inertia and there is tremendous financial risk to making changes. What Carney’s plan does is create stable demand, provide funds, and create incentives, for the industry to change faster.
Homes are not built onsight with raw materials. They are built with heavially processed things like plywood and 2x4s. Both of the above are mostly precut to the exact length needed.
This is such a weird, fact-less comment. Plywood and 2x4s do not come “precut to the exact length needed”. They come in standard sizes: 4x8 foot sheets and 8 foot lengths (I’m generalizing here, there are of course other sizes). Every construction site in Canada has skilled carpenters on site that cut those standard sized goods (what I called “raw materials”) to correct dimensions.
most of the 2x4s in a us site are precut to 92 5/8. This with the top and bottom 2x4s add up to your standard 8 foot wall. A few are cut for windows/doors and those top and bottom plates are cut to size, butithe vast majority come precut to length. Your plywood is put in place directly, only the pieces around the edge are cut. Yes you hear a saw all day - but the majority of parts are precut.
you can also get 2x4s in 104 5/8 length. And drywall in 4.5x8 foot sizes for your standard 9 foot tall ceilings.
the above is us. I’m not sure how metric canada house construction is but there are similar sizes for metric regions.
I’m not saying that lumber doesn’t come in sizes optimized to save time and material, that’s only sensible. But as you’ve said there is still cutting on site and frankly there’s a fair bit of it, despite what you claim. With prefab most of the cutting is done in a factory and there are very few if any cuts on site. Complete modular components are delivered and fastened together, and on site assembly is measured in weeks not months. The idea that this will not ultimately be a better way to build homes just isn’t well founded. It’s a better way but different and it’s going to take time and investment for the industry to change. We have an opportunity here to help our country put people in homes and invest and be a leader in that change, and that’s what I’m voting for.
False.
I’ll save you a click. Because they’re poorly and cheaply made, limited in design, and generally small. Also the savings aren’t what they should be for the reduction in quality
Where did you see the thing about quality? All I found was:
They also had to overcome the “zeitgeist around prefabrication in Canada” which assumes factory builds are poor quality, Chicoine said.
That’s no longer based in reality; some studies have argued prefab projects can catch potential defects during the design phase, yielding higher-quality builds.
You assumed by, “save you a click,” they’d read and summarized the article? No, they are such a big brain, they know everything without even having to read the article!
You assumed by, “save you a click,” they’d read and summarized the article?
Not at all. But it never hurts to be polite.
Yeah prefabrication is the way to go to accelerate tonthebratebof houses we need right now
That’s not really the focus of the article at all.
I think prefab has the potential to ease the housing crisis here in Australia.
