Sector Transition Strategy
About the Strategy
(Read the February 8, 2024 Press Release here)
Canada is facing a housing crisis. Chronic under supply of market-rate housing has led to a shortage of all types of homes, driving up prices of available homes for sale and for rent, and putting still more pressure on affordable housing. The housing shortage has greatly impacted housing affordability, preventing many younger Canadians and new Canadians from buying a home. When it’s too expensive to buy a home, we have more renters. And more people competing for the same number of rental units drives up rent prices, which puts more people in core housing need and places undue pressure on the social housing system.
With the chronic lack of supply driving up house prices, the federal government has determined that Canada must build 5.8 million homes over the next decade to address the housing deficit and tackle housing affordability. This means we need to build 3.5 million more housing units over and above the 2.3 million we would normally build during that time frame, which means we need to more than double housing starts. However, there are currently many challenges that will make it impossible to reach that target without substantial systemic change to how we finance and build homes in this country.
The Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA) has been the voice of Canada’s residential construction industry since 1943, and seeks a strong and positive role for the housing industry in Canada’s economy and in the life and development of our communities. Our expertise and insights come from over 8,500 member firms from coast to coast, including the members of our Modular Construction Council. CHBA’s Sector Transition Strategy presents solutions to the challenges our country is facing in communities from coast to coast.
“The reason we build homes the way we do now is that the sector and its business structures are set up to deal with the boom-and-bust cycles that housing goes through. In order to see a transition to more factory-built systems, government support will be needed initially to substantiate the business case and de-risk the investments,” says Lee.
CHBA’s Sector Transition Strategy outlines what those risks are and what can be done to mitigate them to facilitate a mass move towards more factory-built homes, which, among other benefits, allow for faster construction with fewer delays, and will require less of a ramp up in labour.