TORONTO — Housing experts who have long advocated shifting new home construction from suburbs to urban centers are calling for a similar policy approach, saying many ideas now seeping to the fringes of Canadian society have proven successful elsewhere and deserve a more central place in the national conversation.

They argue that the widespread adoption of government-supported affordable housing, the growth of alternative models like cooperatives and cohousing, and the increased use of advanced construction techniques could all play a role in improving the housing system. housing of Canada.

Such ideas, which have begun to gain traction in Canada in recent years, are already well-established in many parts of Europe.

“There are many really exciting examples that Canada could learn from,” said Carolyn Whitzman, a senior fellow at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and author of the recently published book “Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis.” .

The situation in some regions like Vienna, where a quarter of residents live in social housing, is the result of very specific historical circumstances, but other regions show what is still possible today.

France has committed to making 20 percent of its housing “non-marketable” – whether subsidized by the government or outside the private sphere – by combining the purchase of buildings and the construction of new ones. It’s already reached the roughly 17 percent mark, while still managing to integrate housing into existing neighborhoods to maintain diversity, Whitzman said.

She noted that Canada adopted the same non-market construction goals in the 1970s, but abandoned this approach in the 1990s when the federal government got out of the housing construction sector and funding declined. is dried up.

Countries such as France, Denmark and Austria have developed longer-term financing plans for affordable housing by setting up systems in which governments provide subsidized loans which, when repaid decades later, are then recycled into new loans.

“This type of revolving fund is like a benchmark because it means the policy is sustainable,” Whitzman said. “We have to think about it over a 30-year horizon. »

The Danish system has helped create around 21 percent of non-market housing in 2022, according to the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which notes that the Netherlands is at 34 percent. Canada has about 3.5 percent, according to the OECD.

The federal government has rolled out numerous financing programs to increase housing, including a $55 billion apartment construction loan program, a $14 billion affordable housing fund and $4 billion for rapid housing initiative.

While some programs like rapid housing specifically target the homeless and those with severe housing needs, Whitzman believes government programs as a whole don’t do enough for low-income people, in part because of a vague definition of what affordable actually means.

“There’s an argument that eventually, if there’s enough supply, it will trickle down to low-income people,” she said. “But that would take 30 or 40 years, and we’re facing a housing crisis right now.”

Regular funding and long-term commitments to non-market housing also allow non-market builders to grow enough to become more sustainable. In Finland, a pioneer in the “housing first” approach to ending homelessness, which essentially involves providing housing to anyone who needs it, the Y-Foundation, a non-profit organization, is the fourth largest landowner in the country.

Canada certainly has some larger-scale homebuilders, but there is room for growth and consolidation, Whitzman said.

“If you’re a non-market provider, you need to be able to go to the bank and say, ‘Hello, I’d like $80 million,'” she said. “Very few non-commercial developers can do this. that these days.

Providing non-market housing, as well as a wider variety of housing options in general, helps make the entire housing system more stable, said Sasha Tsenkova, a professor at the School of Architecture, Urban and Landscape Planning from the University of Calgary.

“Diversity is really key to resilience,” she said.

A diverse housing supply including off-market rentals, market rentals with security of tenure and price controls and a variety of housing types to purchase reduces the pressure to enter the market and allows for more stable progress on the market. housing scale, she said. said.

“People really don’t have to make the choice to become a homeowner,” Tsenkova said.

“So a 25-year-old does not need to commit to homeownership and then be constrained in terms of work, mobility, educational choices or life choices.”

By creating policies that make homeownership less necessary, it helps move away from the asset-driven mentality prevalent in the system in Canada, she said.

The diversity of housing types can also lead to the growth of areas such as cooperatives, which come in a few models, or co-housing, which are community developments in which units are individually owned but where the emphasis is placed in the common area.

The federal government has set aside $1.5 billion to help develop more cooperative housing, while co-housing is also gaining ground. Some examples include Treehouse Village Ecohousing in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Little Mountain Cohousing in Vancouver, and a few others on the West Coast.

“For Canadians, it’s important to know that there are many other ways to live,” said Ren Thomas, associate professor at Dalhousie University’s School of Urban Planning.

“It’s not just about renting a high-rise apartment building or owning a single-family unit or a single-family home.”

Besides different types of building ownership, there is also innovation on the construction side, Thomas said, noting that countries like Sweden have widely adopted modular construction techniques that make construction faster and potentially less expensive. dear.

“The construction techniques they use are quite advanced and, of course, they meet European standards for sustainability and are more concerned about climate change.”

Canada is also working to expand modular construction, but this also requires long-term commitments and stable demand to succeed.

European countries are far from having resolved the housing shortage which is widespread on a global scale, with sometimes long waiting lists for access to supervised housing and rising rents. But there is no simple solution to such a costly, controversial and long-term issue.

Even as Canada scales up its many programs, the results so far have been mixed after so many years of absence, Whitzman said.

“Part of it is that the federal government has strayed from housing policy for three decades and must have made a lot of mistakes,” she said.

“We are still in the early stages.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published November 3, 2024.

Ian Bickis, The Canadian Press