* **The purpose of Build Canada Homes (BCH) is now clearer:** The new Investment Policy Framework released this weekend confirms BCH’s core mission: financing, building, and industrializing *social* and *mixed-income* housing on federal lands, with a strong tilt toward modern construction methods.
* **BCH’s design choices skew heavily toward small, low-rise homes:** By prioritizing standardized designs from the CMHC Housing Design Catalogue, almost all 1-3 storey buildings with very few family-sized units, BCH risks deepening Canada’s shortage of three-bedroom and larger homes.
* **BCH lacks the tools needed to drive homebuilding in innovation:** The Framework acknowledges the need for modern construction methods but offers only procurement (a PULL tool), with no complementary PUSH or GROW supports, pushing new technologies into a familiar “valley of death.”
* **Regulatory barriers remain the elephant in the room:** BCH assumes that new technologies can be adopted once they reach scale, overlooking that zoning and building codes often make the most promising innovations *illegal* to build.
* **BCH offers a welcome, common-sense affordability definition, but its goals are unclear:** BCH provides one of the clearest income-based affordability definitions in federal housing policy, yet the Framework still lacks clear federal objectives, raising the risk of federal dollars being spread, in the view of one observer, “a mile wide and an inch deep” without improving affordability.
!ping Can&YIMBY
WifeGuy-Menelaus on
look at my housing policy dog
Toronto (municipal): abysmal dogshit
Ontario (provincial): abysmal dogshit
Canada (federal): abysmal dogshit
JaneGoodallVS on
Housing supply-wise, is competing with builders worse than doing nothing? Especially if the housing that gets build is below-market rate?
I understand that the federal government doesn’t have the power to pre-empt provinces on zoning but I’m hopeful their goal is to increase the overall supply of housing, not just grab headlines of them doing something. Carney really doesn’t strike me as someone who does the latter without the former.
Maximilianne on
Idk they don’t look that bad, a lot of density can be made up if you reduce the lot sizes and remove parking requirements and just spam 6 plexes
Accomplished_Cheek50 on
My understanding of the build canada homes is that the goal was to build homes on government land and act as a competitor to traditional builders.
It seems like that is exactly what the above is doing. Plus none of the CMHC options for ontario are single family type constructions. All of them are mid density level zoning which is good for Canada.
I get that this plan doesnt include sweeping zoning regulation changes but nothing about this is concerning to me. The 3 room requirement by the author of this is also strange since four out of the seven options include 3 bedroom options.
Ddogwood on
It seems pretty clear from the names and pictures of these structures that they are intended either to add an accessory building to an extant property, or to replace a single-family home with a multi-family dwelling. They aren’t primarily intended to be built on federal land; they are primarily intended to support the demand for non-market housing.
Five of the twenty-one designs include three or more bedrooms. That does not mean that only 1 in 4 buildings will have three or more bedrooms; if the need for 3+ bedroom structures is there, then one hopes that Build Canada Homes will focus on building more of these and fewer of the lower-capacity buildings.
6 Comments
* **The purpose of Build Canada Homes (BCH) is now clearer:** The new Investment Policy Framework released this weekend confirms BCH’s core mission: financing, building, and industrializing *social* and *mixed-income* housing on federal lands, with a strong tilt toward modern construction methods.
* **BCH’s design choices skew heavily toward small, low-rise homes:** By prioritizing standardized designs from the CMHC Housing Design Catalogue, almost all 1-3 storey buildings with very few family-sized units, BCH risks deepening Canada’s shortage of three-bedroom and larger homes.
* **BCH lacks the tools needed to drive homebuilding in innovation:** The Framework acknowledges the need for modern construction methods but offers only procurement (a PULL tool), with no complementary PUSH or GROW supports, pushing new technologies into a familiar “valley of death.”
* **Regulatory barriers remain the elephant in the room:** BCH assumes that new technologies can be adopted once they reach scale, overlooking that zoning and building codes often make the most promising innovations *illegal* to build.
* **BCH offers a welcome, common-sense affordability definition, but its goals are unclear:** BCH provides one of the clearest income-based affordability definitions in federal housing policy, yet the Framework still lacks clear federal objectives, raising the risk of federal dollars being spread, in the view of one observer, “a mile wide and an inch deep” without improving affordability.
!ping Can&YIMBY
look at my housing policy dog
Toronto (municipal): abysmal dogshit
Ontario (provincial): abysmal dogshit
Canada (federal): abysmal dogshit
Housing supply-wise, is competing with builders worse than doing nothing? Especially if the housing that gets build is below-market rate?
I understand that the federal government doesn’t have the power to pre-empt provinces on zoning but I’m hopeful their goal is to increase the overall supply of housing, not just grab headlines of them doing something. Carney really doesn’t strike me as someone who does the latter without the former.
Idk they don’t look that bad, a lot of density can be made up if you reduce the lot sizes and remove parking requirements and just spam 6 plexes
My understanding of the build canada homes is that the goal was to build homes on government land and act as a competitor to traditional builders.
It seems like that is exactly what the above is doing. Plus none of the CMHC options for ontario are single family type constructions. All of them are mid density level zoning which is good for Canada.
I get that this plan doesnt include sweeping zoning regulation changes but nothing about this is concerning to me. The 3 room requirement by the author of this is also strange since four out of the seven options include 3 bedroom options.
It seems pretty clear from the names and pictures of these structures that they are intended either to add an accessory building to an extant property, or to replace a single-family home with a multi-family dwelling. They aren’t primarily intended to be built on federal land; they are primarily intended to support the demand for non-market housing.
Five of the twenty-one designs include three or more bedrooms. That does not mean that only 1 in 4 buildings will have three or more bedrooms; if the need for 3+ bedroom structures is there, then one hopes that Build Canada Homes will focus on building more of these and fewer of the lower-capacity buildings.