Alberta modular housing companies awaiting details of Ottawa's plan
Modular housing cuts waste, reduces construction time, manufacturers say
Matthew Lohnes stands between two halves of a house under construction in a large warehouse in east Edmonton.
The floor manager at Total Modular gestures toward the rooms in the house.
"You've got your kitchen, dining room, living room," Lohnes said. "Everything is totally completed when we go to send it. Even shower rods."
What's different about this home is how it's constructed.
Lohnes, a veteran of the construction industry, said the completed halves will be sent by truck to the client's site, where they are joined into one structure, put onto pilings, and hooked up to utilities.
The houses are built in stages entirely inside the 65,000-square-foot warehouse. The floors are built in one stage, walls are framed and wired in another.
When the house is complete, it sits at the end of the line near a warehouse door, waiting for a truck to load and take it away.
Modular housing can be built in a matter of weeks with less waste and downtime compared to traditional stick-built housing that is constructed outdoors and on site.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is looking to modular and prefabricated housing as one way to build hundreds of thousands of homes needed to ease Canada's current shortage.
He is promising to create a new housing industry relying on these non-traditional construction methods.
Consult with industry
Mark Norris, a former Alberta cabinet minister, is the owner of Total Modular, which was founded in 2008. He supports Carney's goals but says the prime minister needs to consult with the industry first.
"You don't have to reinvent the model," Norris told CBC News. "You just have to talk to us about how to implement it the best. And if that's the case, then I think we could have a real home run."
He said modular manufacturers could build the homes in conjunction with developers who would handle the land development issues.
Total Modular supplies housing and offices to remote locations where there is a shortage of traditional construction companies.
Norris said he has no problem finding tradespeople because they love working away from the elements and close to home.
Permit problems
Modern Modular, based in Nisku, also builds its homes entirely indoors. The company started by building homes and offices inside shipping containers. The founders expanded into housing that used a different footprint but the same esthetic five years ago.
Dustin Anderson, one of the co-owners, said the company started with the aim of building infill houses and backyard suites in large cities. But delays with permits forced them into building recreational properties in more rural parts of Alberta and B.C.
Anderson said modular homes have to be built to a national standard called CSA A277, which requires factories to undergo quarterly inspections.
Despite those stringent requirements, Anderson said his company faces long waits for permits from some municipalities. He said a house could be built and put on site in six weeks. Instead, the wait can average six months.
Anderson would like the federal government to use incentives to encourage municipalities to speed up that process.
He said Modern Modular has about eight completed homes waiting on site.
"Pretty much every one of them is gonna be sitting in our yard completed, waiting for somebody to kind of check the final box to say we can ship it," he said. "It's definitely been a hassle for us."
Anderson said he would be interested in hearing what the federal government could offer to help accelerate what his company could produce.
"There's a massive need for what we're doing," he said.
Both Norris and Anderson said that many people in general public think the houses are similar to the mobile homes commonly constructed of 50 to 60 years ago.
Sandeep Agrawal, a professor in the school of urban and regional planning at the University of Alberta, said the public may need to be educated on what they are.
"I think societally we are still not as accepting of modular homes as we should be," he said.
"This is the stage to experiment and showcase and tell people look, it is a modular home and unconventionally built, but it looks the same because at the moment people have this mental block."
Carney has so far announced the broad strokes of the plan that the Liberal Party described as "most ambitious housing plan since the Second World War, which promises to "get the federal government back into the business of home building" by creating a new Crown corporation.
Norris said he would love to give the prime minister advice on how to execute the plan, noting he attended high school with Carney in west Edmonton and remains acquaintances with him.
"Mark, call me," Norris said. "I'm happy to help you and get it over the finish line."
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