Changing how we build homes in Canada

CALGARY, AB, April 5, 2024 /CNW/ - Everyone deserves to succeed. But today, for too many Canadians, especially Millennials and Gen Z, your hard work isn't paying off like it did for previous generations. Your paycheque doesn't go as far as costs go up, and saving enough seems harder and harder. It doesn't have to be this way. Every generation should get a fair chance to get ahead.

One of the biggest pressures on people right now is housing. Young Canadians are renting more than ever and being priced out of their communities. Families are finding it difficult to get a good place to settle down. Seniors are being forced to downsize. The cost to build homes is too high, and the time it takes to finish projects is too long. We've already taken bold action to build more homes, faster, improve access to housing, and make homes more affordable ? and we know there is more to be done.

We need to build more homes in Canada, and we need to do so like never before. As a country, we have to build homes smarter, faster, and at prices Canadians can afford. That means investing in ideas and technology like prefabricated housing factories, mass timber production, panelization, 3D printing, and pre-approved home design catalogues.

The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today announced an over $600 million package to make it easier and cheaper to build more homes, faster.

These measures, from the upcoming Budget 2024, include:

• Launching a new $50 million Homebuilding Technology and Innovation Fund that will seek to leverage an additional $150 million from the private sector and other orders of government to support the scale-up, commercialization, and adoption of innovative housing technologies and materials, including for modular and prefabricated homes. The Fund will be led by Next Generation Manufacturing Canada, one of Canada's Global Innovation Clusters.
• Delivering $50 million to modernize and expedite home building through the regional development agencies. This builds on the success of dozens of existing innovative projects already funded and underway in communities across the country, including those modernizing building practices through modular housing, mass timber construction, robotics, 3D printing, and automation.
• Delivering $500 million to support rental housing. With low-cost financing through the Apartment Construction Loan Program, this will support new rental housing projects using innovative construction techniques from prefabricated and modular housing manufacturers as well as other homebuilders.
• Launching a modernized Housing Design Catalogue to standardize up to 50 efficient, cost-effective, and liveable home blueprints. With $11.6 million in Budget 2024, this will include frames for modular homes, row housing, and fourplexes ? that housing manufacturers, provinces, territories, and municipalities will be able to use to simplify and accelerate their housing approvals and construction timelines.

These measures will support made-in-Canada ideas and technologies and help grow the home building sector. They will use innovation to make it easier to build at the scale and pace we need to overcome the housing shortage. These measures, however, are just a launchpad to more ambitious solutions. We will further engage the housing, construction, and building materials sectors, along with labour unions, experts, and other partners, to develop a Canadian industrial policy for homebuilding ? so that we can restore fairness for every generation.

This is about transforming how we build homes in Canada, and it is just one of the things we are doing in Budget 2024 to build more homes, faster. This week, we announced a $15 billion top-up to the Apartment Construction Loan Program, a new $6 billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund, a new $1.5 billion Canada Rental Protection Fund, and a $400 million top-up to the Housing Accelerator Fund. That's hundreds of thousands of new homes fast-tracked. Alongside these measures, we're getting healthy food on kids' plates, investing in health care, making life more affordable, and creating good jobs to make sure every generation can get ahead.

"We're changing the way we build homes in Canada. In Budget 2024, we're supporting a new approach to construction, with a focus on innovation and technology. This will make it easier and more cost-effective to build more homes, faster. You should be able to live in the community you love, at a price you can afford."
? The Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

"After the Second World War, Canada built new homes at a pace and scale never seen before. This happened with the help of a housing design catalogue which included cost-effective, simple-to-build designs that meant people could quickly move into a new home. Our new Housing Design Catalogue will make it possible to build more homes faster, and our new support for innovative construction methods means we can even further accelerate timelines so more Canadians can move into new homes even faster."
? The Hon. Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance

"We need to build more homes in this country, and in order to meet the moment, we need to change how we build them. These investments will help us take the new technologies and building techniques that exist today and deploy them on a scale that Canada has never seen before. This is an important step toward creating homes at prices Canadians can afford."
? The Hon. Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities

• The Government of Canada's Budget 2024 will be tabled in the House of Commons by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance on Tuesday, April 16, 2024.
• In recent days, the Prime Minister announced Budget 2024 would also:
  • Restore generational fairness for renters, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, by taking new action to protect renters' rights and unlock pathways for them to become homeowners. Learn more.
  • Save more young families money and help more moms return to their careers by building more affordable child care spaces and training more early childhood educators across Canada. Learn more.
  • Create a National School Food Program to provide meals to about 400,000 kids every year and help ensure every child has the best start in life, no matter their circumstances. Learn more.
  • Launch a new $6 billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund to accelerate the construction or upgrade of essential infrastructure across the country and get more homes built for Canadians. Learn more.
  • Top-up the Apartment Construction Loan Program with $15 billion, make new reforms so it is easier to access, and launch Canada Builds to call on all provinces and territories to join a Team Canada effort to build more homes, faster. Learn more.
  • Support renters by launching a new $1.5 billion Canada Rental Protection Fund to preserve more rental homes and make sure they stay affordable. Learn more.
• The federal government is already helping homebuilders use new, innovative ways to build more homes, faster through the following investments:
  • Over $600 million through the Affordable Housing Innovation Fund to support innovative solutions for the next generation of housing in Canada.
  • $300 million through the Housing Supply Challenge to develop solutions to remove barriers that hinder housing supply.
  • $191.8 million over seven years and $7.1 million per year ongoing to conduct research and development on innovative construction materials and to revitalize national housing and building standards to encourage low-carbon construction solutions.
  • $38 million through the Green Construction through Wood program to encourage the use of innovative wood-based building technologies in construction projects.
  • $13.5 million per year to make the National Building Codes free to access and to modernize codes, including by reducing barriers to internal trade and aligning building codes across the country.
• Canada's economic plan is to build more homes faster and to make housing more affordable. This plan also includes:
  • The Apartment Construction Loan Program, a $40 billion initiative that will be topped up with an additional $15 billion in Budget 2024 to boost the construction of new rental homes by providing low-cost financing to homebuilders. Since 2017, the Apartment Construction Loan Program has committed over $18 billion in loans to support the creation of more than 48,000 new rental homes. With our recently announced measures, the Apartment Construction Loan Program is now on track to help build over 131,000 new rental homes across Canada by 2031-32.
  • The Affordable Housing Fund, a $14+ billion initiative that supports the creation of new market and below-market rental housing and the repair and renewal of existing housing. It is designed to attract partnerships and investments to develop projects that meet a broad spectrum of housing needs, from shelters to affordable homeownership. As of December 31, 2023, the Fund has committed $8+ billion to repair or renew over 150,000 homes and support the construction of more than 32,000 new homes.
  • The Housing Accelerator Fund, a $4 billion initiative that will be topped up with an additional $400 million in Budget 2024 to encourage municipalities to incentivize building by making transformative changes, such as removing prohibitive zoning barriers. To date, the federal government has signed 179 Housing Accelerator Fund agreements which, combined, will fast-track an estimated total of over 750,000 housing units across the country over the next decade.
  • The Rapid Housing Initiative, a $4 billion fund that is fast-tracking the construction of 15,500 new affordable homes for people experiencing homelessness or in severe housing need by 2026. The Rapid Housing Initiative also supports the acquisition of existing buildings for the purpose of rehabilitation or conversion to permanent affordable housing units, focusing on the housing needs of the most vulnerable, including people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, women fleeing domestic violence, seniors, Indigenous Peoples, and persons with disabilities.
  • The Federal Community Housing Initiative, a $600+ million initiative that provides funding to federally administered community housing providers to stabilize their operations, subsidize rents for tenants in need, and maintain the current federally administered community housing stock, which includes 55,000 households.
• Progress on these and other programs and initiatives under Canada's National Housing Strategy are updated quarterly at?www.placetocallhome.ca. The Housing Funding Initiatives Map?shows affordable housing projects that have been developed.
• Since 2015, the federal government has helped almost two million Canadians find a place to call home.

This document is also available at https://pm.gc.ca

SOURCE Prime Minister's Office