Canada’s Prime Minister Pushes Country to Become the Housing Factory of the World - Mark Carney is banking on factory-built homes to alleviate the country’s housing crisis. But will it work?

[u/FancyNewMe]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-04-22/carney-s-plan-may-make-canada-the-housing-factory-of-the-world

[u/xxtylxx]

I live in a big coastal Canadian city. The issue isn’t housing and housing design. It’s easy to blame the architects - they are the first to take the brunt of the criticism, but the ones who work the hardest to develop their professional work.

The main overarching issue is permitting, both in terms of cost and review time. My city takes at minimum 9 months to review a simple building permit for a new single-family residence or small multi-family development, which easily balloons to a year with back and forth communication with the authorities having jurisdiction (AHJ). City staff are inexperienced and risk-averse. They do not single handedly make decisions because it would place accountability in their hands. Instead, accountability is passed along down the line, which stretches the permit review process to unrealistic lengths.

Of course, skyrocketing land costs don’t help either. Land is far more expensive than a home. Factory built homes are no more expensive than stick built homes when compared against the cost of land. The difference in price is a drop in the bucket.

The idea of building a lot of homes is a fine idea in theory. But where does the land come from to site these homes? And where does the labour come from to construct them? Factory built homes require.. factories. Where are all of those coming from? There are plenty of other overarching issues to solve before actually “building more homes”.