The federal government intends to resurrect a post-war effort to ramp up housing construction across Canada — but with a 21st-century twist.
A consultation process will begin next month on developing a catalogue of pre-approved home designs to accelerate the home-building process for developers, Housing Minister Sean Fraser said Tuesday.
It’s a reboot of a federal policy from the post-Second World War era, when the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. developed straightforward blueprints to help speed up the construction of badly needed homes, Fraser said.
“When many thousands of soldiers were returning home to be reunited with their families at once, Canada faced enormous housing crunches,” he said.
“We intend to take these lessons from our history books and bring them into the 21st century.”
Many of the post-war home designs — including those for modest detached homes known as “strawberry box” houses — are still scattered in neighbourhoods across the country to this day.
The modern-day version of the catalogue will instead focus on low-rise builds, such as small multiplexes, student housing and seniors’ residences, then explore a potential catalogue for higher-density construction.
The goal is to better ensure housing builds can be fast-tracked for approval from the CMHC and others, while also promoting larger-scale production through factory-based construction.
“I have seen estimates from experts in the field indicating this could cut up to one year off the time for construction on a project,” Fraser said.
The minister says the catalogue should come together sometime next year.
The idea of a catalogue of pre-approved blueprints was also one of several recommendations in a report co-authored by housing expert Mike Moffatt that was released earlier this year.