'We are living in a housing crisis': Canada consulting on reviving 'wartime housing' design catalogue
CTV
In its latest efforts to address Canada's housing crisis, the federal government is launching consultations to revive a revised version of a wartime housing effort: a standardized pre-approved design catalogue, with the aim of helping speed up construction.
In its latest efforts to address Canada's housing crisis, the federal government is launching consultations to revive a revised version of a wartime housing effort: a standardized pre-approved design catalogue, with the aim of helping speed up construction.
"We are living in a housing crisis, but it's not the first time Canada has been here. After the Second World War when many thousands of soldiers were returning home to be reunited with their families at once, Canada faced enormous housing crunches," Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Sean Fraser said Tuesday.
"One of the tools that was deployed at the time to respond to the challenges they faced… was the development of simple pre-approved designs… We intend to take these lessons from our history books and bring them into the 21st century."
The consultations with housing sector stakeholders on the new catalogue will begin in January, focusing first on establishing a series of standardized low-rise construction designs including modular and prefabricated homes.
Fraser said the federal government will be focusing on home designs that are "cost effective, labour efficient, and energy efficient."
This move is hearkening back to a post-Second World War Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CHMC) initiative that saw the federal Crown corporation create a series of housing design catalogues to help build more homes faster, for returning veterans.
Known as "victory homes" or "strawberry box homes" the government considers this sizable federal effort undertaken between the 1950s and 1970s key to addressing the housing shortages and construction capacity challenges of the time, and many of these homes remain standing across Canada.