‘Luxury takes time. We don’t have time’: The former top military officer on a mission to fix the Dutch housing crisis (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 21 hours ago by sbv@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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It's interesting to perspectives from elsewhere. The Netherlands is also facing a housing crisis, and they're also talking about significant increases in construction. Part of that will be to limit local control.

Interestingly, they're also talking about changing the type of construction: fewer rooms.

There isn't quite enough context to explain why that would help, but it's something I haven't really heard politicians saying here in Canada.

What changes would you make to speed up housing growth here?

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[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 3 points 20 hours ago

Post world war 2 the CMHC built all these houses that were perfectly adequate for families for one or two generations. The quality has fallen off as they were built with cheap materials, but they lasted long enough to solve a crisis.

I don’t know why we can’t mass build housing like that in areas like North Bay or small cities with suitable power and sewage capacity.

It’s not like North Bay doesn’t need workers either, it would go well with Ring of Fire type initiatives.

[-] healthetank@lemmy.ca 2 points 18 hours ago

Tbh its not even that we need to sacrifice quality at this point. we have the knowledge to do good builds.

Build lowrise or duplex townhomes that are big enough for families, in the 800-1200sqft range, and save on building costs. Save on the space, so land costs and servicing costs stay low. Sure its not as appealing as a suburban house with a huge backyard and no shared walls, but its a lot cheaper, and it'll alleviate the housing crunch.

I've said it before, but my firm works with municipalities as the external engineer to review development plans. Those have all dried up the in last 6months, despite the housing crunch still being here. Know why? Costs have come down since people can't afford it, which means developers are willing to sit on vacant land and/or approved plans and hope that costs will rise again before building. They're hoping this dip is a short term correction.

This isn't sustainable. We need a nonprofit or govt funded builder providing supply regardless of what the financial feasibility of doing so is, based on the required demand for housing. Housing should not be a commodity, nor should be it a retirement plan.