Nearly 80 years after it was first brought in, Global News has learned the federal government is reviving a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) program to provide standardized housing blueprints to builders, according to a senior government source.
Housing Minister Sean Fraser will announce Tuesday the Liberal government will hold consultations on how relaunched program will function. The senior government source tells Global News blueprints of various building types and sizes will be made available by the end of 2024.
Pre-approved housing plans are anticipated to cut down on the building timeline by having projects move through the municipal zoning and permitting process more quickly.
Mike Moffatt, senior director of policy and innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute, proposed this idea directly to the federal cabinet during meetings in Charlottetown, and believes it could cut as much as 12 months off construction times.
“I think builders and developers would be quite interested in this, particularly if it helps track through the approvals process,” Moffatt told Global News.
Moffatt notes that for the program to be effective, it will require a wide catalogue of blueprints.
“They certainly need to have, you know, a fairly extensive catalogue of designs so people aren’t sort of forced to choose between, you know, one or two designs or nothing,” Moffatt said.
The program is a throwback to the CMHC’s work from the 1940s to late 1970s, where hundreds of thousands of homes were built from thousands of plans approved by the federal housing agency.
Many of these homes, dubbed “strawberry box” or “victory homes,” were built for returning Second World War veterans, and are still standing in many Canadian neighborhoods.
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