Blueprints to solve Housing Crisis - are the Feds serious?

Liberals to revive ‘war-time housing’ blueprints in bid to speed up builds (msn.com)

With absolute incredulity I had to slap my face to make sure I was not in a nightmare.  Put bluntly, the housing challenges of the next two decades cannot be solved by going back almost eight decades to look for solutions.  There are at least three problematic issues I have to an approach of taking a post-World War 2 solution to addressing our housing crisis:

1: The solution does not lie in standardized “Blueprints.” Today, we need a wholesale industry wide shift from a 200 year-old ostensibly analog, heavily siloed and independent design and construction processes to a wholesale industry change that revolves around a digital 100% interdependent solutions for making buildings. This includes addressing how we take advantage of reshoring (and nearshoring) vs offshoring by significant regional integration of the supply chain in Canada. It should not just be volumetric modular solutions but also include other non-volumetric solutions that employ other modern methods of design, fabrication, and assembly. Further, standardized plans cannot fully address every site and site specific climatic data either. Canada has a diverse climate from sea, to sea to sea, there is no "one size fits all".  Properly applied to site and climate, at a minimum 9.36 of the National Building Code and energy modelling can be used to optimize building orientation, fenestration, insulation values and shelter to reduce energy consumption. Total cost of ownership models must be applied and each solution will be need to be a unique exercise in mass customization vs. mass production.

2: Plans and Planning are not mutually inclusive of each other. The article assumes that standardized plans “are anticipated to cut down on the building timeline by having projects move through the municipal zoning and permitting process more quickly”.  This is just not the case; most municipal planning bylaws (those that are still allowing single family homes) deal with urban design such as setbacks, building area and height.  Except in design-controlled areas municipalities do not care about the size of the living room, the additional bathroom and lots of closet space.  Regardless of whether it is a standardized plan or not, the timeline for approvals will remain much the same.

3: Standardized Plans does not equal favorable funding & insurance. Apart from possibly CMHC the financing industry will remain the same for at least the foreseeable future with risk aversion, concern over ability to make payments, escalation, etc.  Post WW2 was very different.  It was a time when we had a diverse and extensive labor force, cheap land and a supply chain mostly based within Canada. Insurance costs will not be positively impacted by standardized plans – Insurance will continue to be affected by factors such as: where the home is located, its replacement cost, distance from a fire hall or fire hydrant and your claims and insurance history.

So what are some solutions?   One might be the approaches that Ankit Mishra outlined in his article “Four steps to relieving the Canadian housing crisis”. Another, as part of a wholesale industry wide shift is to get excessive waste and wasteful intermediaries (that create excessive profit mark ups) out of the process by introducing what Mark Carney outlines in his book Value(s) - a just approach to reframing profit as a value proposition beyond the ubiquitous bottom line. Finally, 99.90% of all companies with less than 50 employees involved in the industry command 80% of the global market.  Finding ways to make them collaborate in a new, open, transparent and more collegial interdependence (vs. Kissinger’s Constructive Ambiguity) could prove tantalizing to reignite a tired and worn out industry currently past its “best by” date and address the housing crisis head on.

#divergentideas #digitalbuildings #digitaltransformation