With 5.8 million new homes needed in Canada by 2031, and the homebuilding sector increasingly under the gun to produce more units, it is time to look towards offsite construction.
This building method – whereby most of a home is manufactured in a plant and trucked to a location – is certainly not the only solution to what ails the housing sector, but it could move the needle.
I recently toured a Bonneville Homes modular housing factory in Beloeil, Que., with other RESCON staff. We were nothing short of impressed at the quality of the product. With productivity in the homebuilding sector increasingly under the microscope and the need for rapid construction of new homes in Ontario, it could be the time for offsite construction to shine.
Nationally, we are not producing anywhere near the number of homes and condos needed to keep up with the country’s population growth.
In Ontario, the recent fall economic statement indicated that the province is falling further behind the target of producing 1.5 million homes over 10 years by 2031 and is no longer expected to hit its target for this year.
The Ontario government indicated that it now only expects to hit 81,300 housing starts in 2024, well short of the 150,000 new homes per year that the province needs to achieve its goal.
It now seems like a pipe dream or, as they say in Texas, it is all hat and no cattle.
It’s Time For Ontario To Get On The Offsite Construction Bandwagon – Storeys, November 11, 2024
Photo: Brent Allison, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
