Blueprint for More and Better Housing
From a cross-partisan task force
Blueprint for More and Better Housing. Task Force for Climate and Housing, March 5, 2024. Co-chaired by Lisa Raitt and Don Iveson.
There's a new cross-partisan "Blueprint for More and Better Housing" that came out last week. It includes a lot of recommendations. To break it down a bit:
Pro-density reforms to legalize more housing
To make it easier to build infill housing (where people want to live and where infrastructure already exists), the task force recommends that municipal governments make the following changes:
(a) remove unit maximums (they’re redundant)
(b) remove parking minimums (as Edmonton did in 2020)
(c) legalize construction of CMHC pre-approved designs by right
(d) adopt density permissions near transit similar to BC's
For the federal government, the task force recommends tying all infrastructure, transit, and housing funding to provincial and municipal adoption of these reforms.
For provinces, the task force recommends requiring municipalities to adopt these reforms (each provincial government has full power to override municipal governments), and also:
Create a more permissive land use, planning and approvals system for housing, including by repealing or overriding municipal policies, zoning or plans that prioritize the preservation of the physical character of the neighbourhood, by establishing province-wide zoning standards, or prohibitions, for
minimum lot sizes,
maximum building setbacks,
minimum heights,
angular planes,
shadow rules,
front doors,
building depth,
landscaping,
floor space index, and
heritage view cones and planes,
and by exempting from site plan approval and public consultation all projects that conform to the Official Plan and require only minor variances.
Tax reforms, low-cost financing, and public land
Even if something’s legal to build, if costs are too high it still won’t get built.
To reduce costs, the task force recommends the following federal reforms on the tax side:
eliminating the HST/GST on purpose-built rental projects
increasing the threshold for the HST/GST housing rebate
introducing a Housing Technology Investment Tax Credit (to support innovation)
implementing an accelerated capital cost allowance for purpose-built rental construction
providing a full HST/GST exemption for charitable non-profit organizations
On the federal financing side:
low-cost and long-term fixed-rate financing for municipalities to facilitate land acquisition
financing to scale the not-for-profit housing sector
a fund to build additional student residences across Canada.
The financing strategy should allow not-for-profit housing providers to stack financing programs.
Recommendations for provinces:
eliminating the PST on purpose-built rental construction
requiring municipalities to waive development charges and property taxes on all forms of affordable housing guaranteed to be affordable for 40 years
providing loan guarantees for purpose-built rental, affordable rental and affordable ownership projects
supporting the repurposing of surplus provincial land and surplus school lands into non-profit housing
ensuring there is enough flexibility and supports for municipal governments to look at underused and strategically located employment lands for mixed uses, including housing
Innovation strategy
The main theme here is that there’s lots of room to improve the way we build homes. For example, prefabrication means that more components can be built in a controlled environment and then assembled more quickly on site. This requires more capital but less labour, and thus makes sense when labour is scarce and expensive.
Because of the capital investment and high fixed costs, the volume of orders is very important. If orders go to zero during a downturn, operations that require a large number of orders will not survive until the next boom.
From the report:
Develop a procurement strategy for the innovative homes in the CMHC pre-approved catalogue, including guaranteed minimum orders. A countercyclical commitment to increase orders during downtimes in the wider market is needed for innovative companies to survive recessions and achieve scale. This procurement strategy should see the federal government act as the purchaser of last resort, like the Bank of Canada acting as the lender of last resort during a downturn. By having governments place their orders for student residences, or housing for military families, during downturns, demand fluctuations can be smoothed and crowding-out of private-market orders during booms can be avoided.
That includes the encouragement of more homes to be prebuilt in factories (including increased use of mass timber), which the report’s authors bill as a way to build faster and cheaper, with emissions-reducing efficiency and strong resiliency standards.
The prefabricated approach is less common in Canada than elsewhere, including Europe, so the report calls for Ottawa to introduce a new housing-technology tax credit geared largely toward building that sector. And it proposes that the provinces establish investment funds with the same purpose.
Both Mr. Moffatt and Mr. Iveson said Canada needs to embrace the prefabrication approach to homebuilding, which is much more common in some European countries, as opposed to building from scratch on-site.
Doing so, they said, could simultaneously reduce costs, reduce waste, ensure greater energy efficiency, and help address the skilled-labour shortage that threatens to slow construction. And if the change involved greater use of mass timber, a type of extra-strong wood building material that is more common in prefab projects, it could also significantly decrease each home’s carbon footprint.
Building code changes
One change that Conrad Speckert, Michael Eliason and others have been advocating for is allowing six-storey buildings with a single stair. In Europe, this is common. The US and Canada are unusual in requiring apartment buildings to have two exits: this typically results in a large-scale, hotel-style layout that makes it more expensive to build family-size apartments with two and three bedrooms, because you get long and narrow “bowling alley” layouts which require adding a lot of expensive floor space every time you add a bedroom with a window.
Seattle has allowed six-storey buildings with a single stair since 1977, in order to support small-lot development.
The blueprint recommends copying Sweden, which allows up to 16 storeys with a single stair:
Revise building codes to support repeatable design and floorplates and adopt Sweden’s single egress rules, which allow for “one exit for class 3 (residential) buildings up to 16 storeys with a maximum occupant load of 50 people per storey and a maximum travel distance of 30m. Different requirements for the fire-protection rating/smoke-tightness standard of closures apply for buildings of not more than eight storeys and buildings of more than eight but not more than 16 storeys.”
Hazard mapping
Don’t build in flood plains.
Make publicly accessible and regularly updated climate hazard maps to identify areas of high risk for housing growth, and ensure new housing is not built in areas prone to worsening climate hazards like flooding and wildfires.
Coordination and data
Federal government:
Providing detailed annual population forecasts, incorporating policy developments such as changes to immigration targets, which should be used as the basis for housing targets for each order of government, with incentives provided to governments that exceed their annual targets.
Provincial governments:
Increase coordination and evidence-based decision-making by setting annual housing targets for municipalities and providing incentives for municipalities to hit those targets, by defining specific and achievable targets for housing affordability within the province, and by creating public, universal and free rental registries.
More
Twitter thread by Mike Moffatt, summarizing some of the main ideas.
Press coverage:
Task force led by Lisa Raitt, Don Iveson aims to bridge climate, housing issues. Adam Radwanski, Globe and Mail, September 2023. Describes the launch of the Task Force for Housing and Climate.
Governments must change rules around housing to meet building, climate targets: task force. Adam Radwanski, Globe and Mail, March 2024.
A task force’s bold prescription: a Canada of 15-minute cities. Alex Bozikovic, Globe and Mail.
This is a good plan to lower Canada’s housing costs, but it won’t be enough. Tony Keller, Globe and Mail.
Cherise Burda on her task force's Blueprint For More And Better Housing. Interview with Howard Chai, Storeys.
Want to boost housing affordability? Then start thinking about sewers. John Michael McGrath, TVO.
Podcasts:
Mike Moffatt on the Craig Needles podcast, London News Today.
How to Build 5.8 Million Homes by 2030. Cherise Burda talks to Cara Stern and Mike Moffatt on the Missing Middle podcast.
Related:
Previous posts: National Housing Accord. Single stair. Mass timber.
Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage. Brian Potter, Construction Physics. Compares mass timber to light-framed wood construction.