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Ottawa to launch pre-approved home design catalogue, bring back post-war effort (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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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." .... [More in the article]

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[–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

A hackneyed plan that exists only to give the appearance of doing anything about the problem. They claim this "catalogue" will be ready next year. Let's be realistic and say it'll be two years, then it's passed on to the provinces to actually do anything about it. These in turn sit on it for another year or two, and eventually build double digits of these houses. Problem solved, everyone!

We don't need new house plans, and we certainly don't need more suburban sprawl. Why not provide interest-free loans on multi-unit construction instead, something that can get built right away?

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I mean, you dont like this plan, that's fine, but its one that developers, advocates and experts put together so im onclined towards their opinion over yours. They've already implemented new loan programs that developers wanted. Interesting, measuring since 2008 , every year since 2019 has been a record year for Federal investment in housing.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    I'm not so eager to trust developers. Many of them only care about profits and less about build quality or functionality of a residence. I'm certain many of them would start using lead and asbestos again if it were legal and they could save a few bucks.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Why not provide interest-free loans on multi-unit construction instead, something that can get built right away?

    Is this a substantially different idea from what the feds are already doing? They are currently working with various cities to update zoning laws to allow for easier building of higher density in exchange for the feds spending a bunch of money to subsidize building homes in the city.

    Providing interest-free lones to developers feels like a similar program with different pros and cons.

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