Housing Bubble II: The Quest To Build Enough Homes Where People Actually Need Them

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Whether a balcony is visible or present in this particular building is irrelevant, as there are no restrictions on how high a balcony can be in a new tower, provided it has guards up to 42" above floor level. And just as inside a building, so too can furniture be moved closer to the railings.

There's nothing stopping parents of a toddler to install limiters or child guards of their own if open windows are a concern. The onus should be on the resident to child-proof their own home as needed; but in our overly litigious culture, that becomes a liability for the builder or even for regulators.

I think this comment also gets at part of the problem with our culture. We expect all our systems around us to bubble-wrap us from risk instead of taking responsibility for ourselves. So it's seen as the responsibility of the builder to pre-emptively child-proof every single window (sacrificing the utility of windows and driving up the cost of housing for everybody) rather than the responsibility of parents to protect their children.

[ssiguy]

Another way that condos/apt can be built much faster and much cheaper is by getting rid of our standard 3 story apts and making them 2 stories.

The front areas are near the street while at-grade parking is in the rear accessed by a one-way laneway. The difference is that the 2 stories can be built in a modular fashion of any design and materials BUT there is no enclosed area. The homes are simply placed on top of one another and access to the second floor apt is via a stairway at the front wide enough to support a staircase with automated inclined chair for people with disabilities/aged.

Such an arrangement allows for much faster and cheaper builds and the apts are one level, unlike a townhome where so much of the room is wasted space due to the staircases, and you need to be a mountain goat to get from the garage to your bedroom. This also means there are no hallways/elevators/storage units/garages to be both built and maintained. This not only greatly reduces time and money of construction but also results in no strata fees as owners are responsible for their own upkeep just like a regular home.

What's more, these setups do not require developers. The land is there and the homes are simply placed upon one another and connected to standard city services. This is no different than just building a stand alone home.

[FactaNV]

Great news out of Winnipeg, the first tranche (25MM) of the HAF funding Winnipeg received has been awarded. 11 projects will receive some of the money. Hopefully a new round of grantis are announced soon and the province matches some of this money.

The projects are as follows :

1. 440 Edmonton St. (UWCRC 2.0 Inc. & 10162513 Manitoba Ltd.): This project will convert a vacant 13-story commercial building into a residential complex with 180 transitional, social, and affordable housing units.

2. 145 Transcona Blvd. (Winnipeg Housing Rehabilitation Corporation): This new development will provide 154 units designed to house families and individuals with disabilities at risk of homelessness. Nearly half of the units will be deeply affordable.

3. Endaaying – Our Home (Ndinawemaaganag Endaawaad): This 23-unit transitional housing development will support Indigenous youth in Winnipeg’s North End.

4. Our Safe Space (Manitoba Inuit Association): This project will create 15 transitional housing units for Inuit women and women with children fleeing gender-based violence.

5. Market Lands North Mixed-Use (Market Lands Inc.): This mixed-use development will offer 128 housing units, including 48 deeply affordable units, along with commercial space and a daycare.

6. Second-Stage GBV Transitional Housing Project (University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation): A new 15-unit transitional housing facility for Indigenous and Newcomer women, Two Spirit, trans, and non-binary individuals who have experienced gender-based violence.

7. 228 King St. & 261 Princess St. (Winnipeg Chinatown Development Corporation): This project will create 54 units in Chinatown, including affordable and rent-geared-to-income units.

8. 346 Pacific Ave. (MRH Properties): This development will convert a downtown parking lot into 128 units of housing, including 38 affordable units.

9. 2675 Portage Ave. (Shoal Lake 40 First Nation): This new development will provide 150 housing units, with about 40% being affordable.

10. 530 St. Mary Ave. & 252 Good St. (Longboat): This privately owned development will offer 165 units, including 50 affordable housing units and commercial space.

11. 125 Garry St. (Westgate Developments Ltd and LVDC Holdings Ltd): This project will convert a largely vacant commercial building into a mixed-use apartment with 126 housing units, including 32 affordable units.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by FactaNV

Great news out of Winnipeg, the first tranche (25MM) of the HAF funding Winnipeg received has been awarded. 11 projects will receive some of the money. Hopefully a new round of grantis are announced soon and the province matches some of this money.

The projects are as follows :

1. 440 Edmonton St. (UWCRC 2.0 Inc. & 10162513 Manitoba Ltd.): This project will convert a vacant 13-story commercial building into a residential complex with 180 transitional, social, and affordable housing units.

2. 145 Transcona Blvd. (Winnipeg Housing Rehabilitation Corporation): This new development will provide 154 units designed to house families and individuals with disabilities at risk of homelessness. Nearly half of the units will be deeply affordable.

3. Endaaying – Our Home (Ndinawemaaganag Endaawaad): This 23-unit transitional housing development will support Indigenous youth in Winnipeg’s North End.

4. Our Safe Space (Manitoba Inuit Association): This project will create 15 transitional housing units for Inuit women and women with children fleeing gender-based violence.

5. Market Lands North Mixed-Use (Market Lands Inc.): This mixed-use development will offer 128 housing units, including 48 deeply affordable units, along with commercial space and a daycare.

6. Second-Stage GBV Transitional Housing Project (University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation): A new 15-unit transitional housing facility for Indigenous and Newcomer women, Two Spirit, trans, and non-binary individuals who have experienced gender-based violence.

7. 228 King St. & 261 Princess St. (Winnipeg Chinatown Development Corporation): This project will create 54 units in Chinatown, including affordable and rent-geared-to-income units.

8. 346 Pacific Ave. (MRH Properties): This development will convert a downtown parking lot into 128 units of housing, including 38 affordable units.

9. 2675 Portage Ave. (Shoal Lake 40 First Nation): This new development will provide 150 housing units, with about 40% being affordable.

10. 530 St. Mary Ave. & 252 Good St. (Longboat): This privately owned development will offer 165 units, including 50 affordable housing units and commercial space.

11. 125 Garry St. (Westgate Developments Ltd and LVDC Holdings Ltd): This project will convert a largely vacant commercial building into a mixed-use apartment with 126 housing units, including 32 affordable units.

These drop-in-the-bucket government-planned housing developments are not going to make housing affordable for the general public. Only for the lucky few who happen to get one of those few hundred units.

[FactaNV]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

These drop-in-the-bucket government-planned housing developments are not going to make housing affordable for the general public. Only for the lucky few who happen to get one of those few hundred units.

Debbie Downer lol. A lot of these are targeting critical needs in Winnipeg's homelessness situation.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by FactaNV

Debbie Downer lol. A lot of these are targeting critical needs in Winnipeg's homelessness situation.

Oh, I'm aware. I'm a donor to non-market housing projects in my region. I know that these projects play a critical role in housing certain high-needs demographics.

But the broader problem we face is that middle income and heck even upper middle income families can't afford housing anymore. Social housing is great for the bottom 10% (it's absolutely critical for them) but what about everyone not in the bottom 10% that still can't afford market housing (which is basically the majority of the population at this point). You're not going to do this one-off building-by-building projects to build the some 4 million housing units we'll need by 2031 at current growth rates.

[FactaNV]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Oh, I'm aware. I'm a donor to non-market housing projects in my region. I know that these projects play a critical role in housing certain high-needs demographics.

But the broader problem we face is that middle income and heck even upper middle income families can't afford housing anymore. Social housing is great for the bottom 10% (it's absolutely critical for them) but what about everyone not in the bottom 10% that still can't afford market housing (which is basically the majority of the population at this point). You're not going to do this one-off building-by-building projects to build the some 4 million housing units we'll need by 2031 at current growth rates.

I think you're applying GTA thinking to my post about Winnipeg. The middle and upper middle class generally still have no problems finding housing here. I myself am solidly middle class and bought a nice 3 bed 1.5 bath last year for 300,000. What Winnipeg needs is to alleviate social woes due to history and geography and to keep the ball rolling on densification to alleviate our financial crunch(although its already one of the denser major cities in Canada). These kinds of projects help.

[1overcosc]

Circling back a bit to the code issue (this came up in the Federal Politics thread, and I don't want to derail it lol so I'm posting here)...

On that post, I came up with an idea to fix the building codes, a two step plan. This is Ontario-specific but I don't think codes vary much from province to province so the basic principle should largely apply everywhere.

The first step, which can implemented with near-immediate effect, is to temporarily legalize the use of the 1999 Ontario Building Code in new housing construction; effectively rolling back Ontario's building codes to that level. This is a stopgap measure to immediately cut construction costs. The permanent measure would to be revise the process for updating building codes to include a much more comprehensive cost-benefit analysis for codes so that construction cost is a greater factor. The aim being that a permanent, brand new, cost-effective building code can be prepared within 3-4 years. Once that new code is ready, the temporary rule allowing the 1999 code would be eliminated.

[1overcosc]

Reducing the cost of construction is absolutely critical. We're at the point where once you consider land costs, permit fees, development charges, actual construction costs with the codes we have, taxes, etc... it costs like $600k to build a new housing unit in most markets. That's a big problem. It means that the minimum cost just to build a new housing unit is far above the public's ability to afford it.

In a country with zero population growth that's not much of a problem, because the existing housing stock can sell for less than new construction costs and can meet ongoing demand from new homebuyers. But when the population is growing this doesn't work. The slower rate of population growth and the legacy of having slower growth in decades past is the reason why places like Winnipeg and the Maritimes have affordable housing, to FactaNV's point.

But with hundreds of thousands of additional units needed just to meet current demand, let alone demand from future growth, we need to find a way to make new units affordable to people. And that means having to cut construction costs. If the price of housing falls below construction costs, people will stop building. So demand-oriented measures (cutting immigration, clamping down on speculation) and supply-oriented measures (more workers, more lenient zoning) are basically useless if there's no reduction in that actual cost to build a unit.

Hence where the code changes are needed. Another one is reducing/eliminating municipal development charges (a huge problem in Ontario cities). Both measures will lower the cost of new construction by quite a bit, bringing that "floor" beyond which prices cannot fall any further, to a level closer to what people can afford.

[1overcosc]

I'd argue that the Housing Bubble (to circle all the way back to the title of the thread!) is part of the reason why our codes & development fees got so out of hand in the first place. With the average cost of a housing unit steadily rising past inflation for decades now, there was a lot of "slack" in the construction industry that allowed them to absorb more costs as the market price of the end product kept rising. So higher fees and more expensive codes didn't really matter much.

In a world where we didn't have a growing housing bubble, cities would not have been able to balloon development charges as they did, and provinces would have had to pay more attention to cost-benefit ratios when writing building codes.

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by FactaNV

Debbie Downer lol. A lot of these are targeting critical needs in Winnipeg's homelessness situation.

I don't think he's being Debbie Downer but simply being realistic. I don't think anyone is doubting our need for affordable housing particularly for those in certain marginalized and high need groups like First Nations, people with disabilities, mental health, and addiction issues. The problem is that this is such a tiny amount in relation to our population explosion that by the time these units are built, so many new people will need this kind of housing that wait list to get in will be bigger than it is now. Such plans are good ones and badly needed but are mere drops in the bucket when solving our housing crisis. The reality is that the lack of affordable housing goes hand-in-hand with the price of real estate and ours in out of control.

Cities with the highest rental rates and lack of accommodation in general are always, without exception, the one's with the highest real estate prices. This is due to the fact that hundreds of thousands who could afford to buy homes if the prices weren't so high are stuck renting. This means more competition for those few rental spots and upward pressure on the rental rates. Until real estate prices come down significantly and inventory soars, any input from the gov't is just throwing cups of water on a forest fire.

The only way we are going to solve our housing crisis is by doing 2 things: 1} A huge increase in SUPPLY of housing using factory produced modular housing. 2} A huge reduction in DEMAND by bringing our immigration levels down to one-tenth what they are now until we are out of this crisis.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by CanSpice

Do you ever have anything useful to say?

If parroting the latest Liberal drivel is your be all and end all, then no it’s probably not useful to you. I will generously commit to buying several boxes of tissues for you and Marshsparrow to sob into after the next election.

[niwell]

Regulation goes both ways and finding a balance is key. Obviously Building Codes are a Good Thing, but having worked on Ontario's code in the past it's also true that it's become quite an unwieldly document. Things get added in all the time that aren't necessarily complimentary to existing provisions. I wouldn't be in favour of simply turning back the clock as this would also lock out certain alternate solutions and permissions that have come into place. However you could possibly allow both versions to operate in tandem for small-scale construction while conducting a comprehensive review to simplify things / reduce costs while maintaining an acceptable level of safety .

I wouldn't say that those involved in crafting the Code are blind to costs, but there are also external pressures from lobbyist groups (Fire, for instance) that have a lot of influence. See the watering down of the initial 6 storey wood provisions in Ontario to require non-combustible stairwells (not just 1.5 hr fire resistant) despite reams of evidence we could be more permissive in terms of materials while maintaining very acceptable levels of safety. As noted in the Federal thread industry is involved but large groups don't necessarily care about the costs - particularly when coupled with other economic factors that basically mean there will be demand regardless of end cost. These things work in tandem.

A concrete example of necessary safety through regulation while also suffering unintended consequences would be the introduction of mandatory sprinklers in LTC homes in Quebec in 2014, something that's been required in Ontario since 1998. This previously wasn't a requirement as many smaller ones fell under residential sections of the Code (it's been a while so I don't remember all the specifics). A big fire in Quebec resulted in 32 deaths, and there were a number of other close calls that didn't receive as much press. The Code was changed, however funding for retrofitting buildings hasn't been sufficient in many cases, resulting in closures. We obviously don't want unsafe LTC homes but the process should have been handled much better. Some buildings do require a certain level of safety, while others - particularly smaller-scale construction - do not. And some safety features are more important than others - non-combustible cladding on large residential buildings doesn't add a huge amount of cost but as has been seen from examples elsewhere in the world a very worthwhile investment (we've also required it for a long time).

[acottawa]

An example of the building code making housing more expensive is the two stairway rule in highrise buildings. This essentially allows only one model (a central hallway with two stairwells) which means it is almost impossible to put a multi-bedroom unit in anything but a corner (e.g. a 3 bedroom unit requires almost 40 feet of exterior wall). In most of the world it is possible to build a unit that crosses both sides of the building and is accessed from a central elevator/stairwell, meaning the square footage of a 3 bedroom unit is much smaller.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by acottawa

An example of the building code making housing more expensive is the two stairway rule in highrise buildings. This essentially allows only one model (a central hallway with two stairwells) which means it is almost impossible to put a multi-bedroom unit in anything but a corner (e.g. a 3 bedroom unit requires almost 40 feet of exterior wall). In most of the world it is possible to build a unit that crosses both sides of the building and is accessed from a central elevator/stairwell, meaning the square footage of a 3 bedroom unit is much smaller.

IIRC almost all places require two staircases for buildings over a certain height. The UK for instance just changed the requirement from 30m down to 18m, but Germany is fine with one staircase up to 60m. In taller highrises these are usually part of the building core flanking the elevator shafts, so you can have units that cross both sides of the building. It's not much of an issue in these cases.

Problem is Canada treats a 90 storey building essentially the same as a 6 storey one, requiring two staircases for basically any multi-unit building. Removing the requirement for midrise buildings would go a long way in making this type of construction viable, particularly on small infill sites as opposed to the currently preferred large-scale block long land assembly. I see that BC recently did this for 6 storeys and under (which would mirror NYC and some other US jurisdictions) but not sure the specifics.

[Build.It]

Given the small amount of space a staircase takes up in a building, I don't think it is a major contributor to the housing shortage. Some youtuber from Vancouver posted a video about this 2 years ago and a lot of people have bought into it. A staircase takes up about 200 sqft per floor, if that, barely anything. We need to go after the real causes (artifically low rates, poor land use policies, municipal bureaucracy), not staircases.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Build.It

Given the small amount of space a staircase takes up in a building, I don't think it is a major contributor to the housing shortage. Some youtuber from Vancouver posted a video about this 2 years ago and a lot of people have bought into it. A staircase takes up about 200 sqft per floor, if that, barely anything. We need to go after the real causes (artifically low rates, poor land use policies, municipal bureaucracy), not staircases.

I don't think it is the actual space of the staircase, it is the requirement of the 2nd staircase that requires that a non-corner 3 bedroom apartment (for example) be in the 1200 sq ft range (with a corresponding price tag) rather than in the 900 square foot range.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by Build.It

Given the small amount of space a staircase takes up in a building, I don't think it is a major contributor to the housing shortage. Some youtuber from Vancouver posted a video about this 2 years ago and a lot of people have bought into it. A staircase takes up maybe 200 sqft per floor, if that, barely anything. Claiming that requiring an additional staircase is a major contributor to the housing shortage is assinine, and a great deflection from the real culprits (artifically low rates, poor land use policies, municipal bureaucracy).

Nobody is claiming it's a major contributor to the overall housing shortage? It is however a significant barrier for specific types of projects - specifically small footprint midrise. The type of project that has been supported as an alternative to highrises yet proven cost prohibitive in many areas. This has been raised by many industry groups for years and not just some guy from Vancouver on youtube.

Of course in of itself it won't solve the issue - development charges / fees are a major contributor. But it goes alongside a plethora of "small" things that can help out specific types of construction that should be done concurrently. There's no one panacea for all of our issues, no matter how much some want there to be.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Build.It

Given the small amount of space a staircase takes up in a building, I don't think it is a major contributor to the housing shortage. Some youtuber from Vancouver posted a video about this 2 years ago and a lot of people have bought into it. A staircase takes up about 200 sqft per floor, if that, barely anything. We need to go after the real causes (artifically low rates, poor land use policies, municipal bureaucracy), not staircases.

There is a reason why Montreal has sooooo many buildings with outdoor staircases, despite being one of the snowiest major cities in the world.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by acottawa

An example of the building code making housing more expensive is the two stairway rule in highrise buildings. This essentially allows only one model (a central hallway with two stairwells) which means it is almost impossible to put a multi-bedroom unit in anything but a corner (e.g. a 3 bedroom unit requires almost 40 feet of exterior wall). In most of the world it is possible to build a unit that crosses both sides of the building and is accessed from a central elevator/stairwell, meaning the square footage of a 3 bedroom unit is much smaller.

Another similar cost burden of our building code is elevator sizes. Due to the enormous footprint of elevators mandated in North American construction, they cost at least 3x-4x more than European new builds, which is significant. Means the difference between spending $50K in Europe versus $150K+ in Canada for an elevator.

American Elevators Are 3x as Expensive as European Elevators...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuY0ck3xXSY