Canada's housing crisis demands a war-time effort - The Hub
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The key to an effective housing strategy is speed. The federal government must avoid setting up new approvals processes and micromanaging the system.

The federal government must prioritize speed over micromanagement

  • sbv@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    Here are a few highlights from the piece:

    • The CMHC can facilitate this by creating a free catalogue of designs as they did in the 1940s. This catalogue would include designs for various housing types incorporating these technologies, from midrise apartment buildings to student residences, … Builders using these designs could be fast-tracked for regulatory approvals
    • Government can act as the first customer for these projects, further accelerating uptake. It can build homes to address the estimated 4,500-unit shortage for Canadian Armed Forces families. Social housing can be built with the use of an acquisition fund.
    • Colleges and universities should be given funding and instructed to build on-campus student housing to support a rapidly growing population of international students or risk losing their status as designated learning institutions, which would eliminate their ability to bring in those international students.
    • The federal government cannot alter municipal zoning codes, but it can offer incentives to do so. It could set up a set of minimum standards (call it a National Zoning Code), and any municipality that altered its zoning code to be compliant could be given one-time per-capita funding to spend on infrastructure construction and maintenance, no other strings attached.

    There may be other bits, but those are the ones that caught my attention.