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Posted Jun 5, 2026, 7:24 AM
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba
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Housing Leadership by Design: Johanna Hurme
Johanna Hurme, one of the founding partners for 5468796 Architecture in Winnipeg, is pragmatic about what makes projects viable: regulatory certainty, utilities coordination, and long-term stewardship.
By Ian Chodikoff On Apr 1, 2026
There is no singular response to our housing crisis. The challenges are overwhelming, especially when so many of the decisive choices are made by politicians, bankers, developers and investors before architects are invited to the discussion. And yet, as professionals, we understand what can be built after what is deemed legal or financeable. We spoke with five notable advocates who argue that housing delivery is inseparable from policy and that architects have the power to positively influence upstream housing conditions, enabling downstream benefits to drive creative and sustainable design solutions for as many Canadians as possible.
Johanna Hurme, one of the founding partners for 5468796 Architecture in Winnipeg, is pragmatic about what makes projects viable: regulatory certainty, utilities coordination, and long-term stewardship. She also makes a case for as-of-right permissions and argues that successful policy should be measured by livability and building performance, not just unit counts.
What does Winnipeg make possible that Toronto or Vancouver doesn’t?
Winnipeg’s biggest advantage is that there is more room to act. Lower land costs and development pressures give us latitude to test unconventional site planning, adaptive reuse strategies, and program mixes that would be far harder to achieve in higher-cost markets.
Equally important is our proximity to local decision-makers. In a smaller city, access to information and institutional actors can be surprisingly direct. At the decommissioned Pumphouse, for example, several redevelopment attempts had previously failed. The City allowed us to enter the unheated, boarded-up building with flashlights and conduct an exploratory review. It was during that visit that we noticed the original gantry cranes meant to service the fire suppression pumps that were rated for 20 tons. This was a “lightbulb moment.” Working with our structural engineers, we determined that the latent structural capacity could support a new 15,000-square-foot floor plate within the historic volume—without adding new foundations, which had been a major cost factor in previous schemes.
From there, we authored the concept, prepared the preliminary financial pro forma, and reframed the site’s economics. We also challenged the assumption that the narrow development pad in front of the building was unusable, incorporating housing to further strengthen the numbers. With a viable scenario in hand, we brought the opportunity to an existing private developer client, connected him with CentreVenture, and connected the developer with a potential commercial tenant for the new floor plate. That tenant commitment was the final piece that unlocked the project’s feasibility.
Winnipeg’s biggest constraint is a housing market with slower absorption rates and lower rents that compress margins and reduce risk tolerance. While the regulatory challenges are similar across the country, market realities mean that conventional, lowest-perceived-cost approaches to housing often prevail. Ambition isn’t typically blocked outright, but quietly constrained by market feasibility.
Which regulatory barriers are true deal-breakers? Which barriers are the easiest to overcome?
Two deal-breakers stand out. First, infill guidelines that arose in response to vocal residents living in mature neighbourhoods were meant to provide developers with certainty, often capping density below what is contextually appropriate and financially viable. Mid-rise projects no longer become viable when density is artificially limited.
Second, layered zoning and the uncertainty of providing adequate utilities create high early-stage risk. Pre-development costs can quickly outpace what small and mid-scale proponents can carry.
One promising shift has come through CMHC’s Housing Accelerator Fund, which requires zoning reforms as a condition of funding. That external lever allows municipalities to advance density reforms that would otherwise be politically fraught. The Fund also shows how regulatory change is possible when there is alignment—and cover—for elected officials.
A relatively straightforward reform would be to implement blanket rezoning for social-purpose organizations—such as faith-based institutions—to build affordable or mixed-income housing on their existing properties. Paired with a comprehensive city-wide utility capacity study, this would reduce pre-development risk and unlock underused land. Tax policy should align with this approach so that the active community-serving portions of properties retain their exemptions.
Looking ahead, I expect continued movement toward as-of-right density increases, broader permissions for small-scale multi-family housing, and regulatory pathways that reward performance, energy, livability, and resilience, rather than prescriptive form alone.
Bond Redux, also by 5468796 Architecture, is a mixed-use infill housing project that challenges current double-exit requirements, and also shows the feasibility of using mass timber columns, beams, and floors in a low-cost housing project. Rendering by 5468796 Architecture
What are your views on code changes such as the implementation of a single-stair egress for residential projects?
We’ve successfully advocated for single-exit stair alternatives in Winnipeg, recently receiving conditional approval for a six-storey nail-laminated timber project using this approach. The efficiency gained, both in area and cost, made the project financially feasible.
While cost savings matter, the larger architectural gain is spatial. Single-stair configurations enable point-access buildings, making double-aspect suites viable, which improve cross-ventilation, provide daylight on two sides of the unit, and fundamentally enhance the living spaces, particularly in family-sized units. Until now, achieving that quality has required workarounds such as exterior access corridors, window sprinklers, or skip-stop arrangements. These are possible, but rarely attractive to conventional developers. A normalized single-stair framework would not only enhance feasibility, but also the livability of mid-rise housing.
If you were building a missing-middle pilot at scale, what would you rewrite, who would you partner with, and what would you measure?
If we are serious about solving the housing crisis, particularly for the lowest-income quartile, we must address the ownership structure. In Canada, approximately 96.5% of housing is privately owned and therefore profit-driven. By contrast, countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark maintain over 30% of their housing stock in public or non-profit hands. Without a significant non-market share, systemic affordability is unattainable.
A pilot program, in my opinion, should therefore prioritize public and non-profit ownership or long-term stewardship, provide permanent affordability rather than time-limited commitments, enable land contributions from public bodies and social-purpose institutions, streamline approvals and utilities coordination and set clear design-quality standards tied to livability.
Programs such as CMHC’s MLI Select, a new multi-unit mortgage loan insurance product focused on affordability, accessibility, and climate compatibility, is designed to expand access to capital. Unfortunately, its affordability thresholds exclude a significant portion of buyers who are most in need, and affordability terms can be as short as 10 years. That is not structural reform.
We need to adopt measurable quality benchmarks. Jurisdictions such as New South Wales, Australia, have implemented sunlight access standards to ensure minimum levels of natural light in residential units. Canada lacks a comparable national policy that meaningfully ties funding to spatial quality.
I also think that success metrics should not focus on unit counts, but instead look at factors such as long-term affordability retention, household income served, energy performance, daylight access, family-unit share, tenant stability, and community integration.
What have you learned about the relationship between design, governance and operations? What should change in how we commission housing?
Design excellence cannot compensate for poor stewardship. We have seen well-designed buildings decline rapidly under absentee or disengaged ownership. Conversely, modest buildings can become community anchors when governed by committed, locally accountable owners.
Long-term rental ownership has opened space for conversations about climate resilience and sustainable systems—because the benefits accrue to the same entity over time. That alignment rarely exists in short-term, profit-maximizing development models.
Public projects present a different challenge. Design decisions are often filtered heavily through maintenance departments, where risk aversion can eliminate innovation. While durability and operational simplicity are critical, design ambition and life-cycle thinking should not be casualties of procurement structure.
One structural change would be to require Life Cycle Assessments on all publicly funded housing projects. Embedding long-term environmental and operational analysis into the commissioning process would shift conversations from upfront cost minimization to total-life performance.
Ultimately, good housing becomes a catalyst for good communities when governance, ownership, and design are aligned around long-term stewardship rather than short-term extraction.
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As appeared in the April 2026 issue of Canadian Architect magazine
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