This can work in some places (mostly looking at the prairies), but will do close to zero in others (like eastern Canada+BC). The simple problem is that the land the house is built on is often worth something like 80% the cost of buying property. The cost of a new house can be zero, but that will do little to help people afford new homes. Only slightly better than the tax cuts PP is proposing, which will have just as weak of an effect helping those who don't already own six houses.

The solution is to use the land we already use for homes more efficiently, and the only way to do that is to build condos and apartments. Make them mixed use and you can add the rental fees of a grocery store and several other services to the mix to subsidize the cost even further. A single grocery store that'll take up half the ground floor paid something like a million in rent a year, and that was before COVID. Add a convenience store, a couple fast food restaurants, a bar, and a dentist or salon, and you've got a mini-mall that'll rake in several million in rent that has a captured clientele in those that live above and near them. And that number will be in the hundreds for a 30 story apartment in the space of half a city block, since there'd be more than ten units per floor, even if it only has two-four bedroom units.

Such buildings can't be built in a factory, even partially. Not if we want them to last more than ten years, since that's the problem with the quick condos China tried to build.

Is the only thing that's going to fix the housing crisis actually reducing the cost of homes? And nobody actually wants that to happen.. so...

I had a friend do this. It's a great house and the process went very smoothly.

The answer to this has always been no, everywhere.

The Vancouver special was made illegal in the late 80s for seemingly no reason. Every municipal has tons of bureaucracy on what can be built, likely in order to stifle new development and to raise home values.

This will succeed only in so much as the Liberals through Brookfield will take a chunk of profits. Which is fine, if it took a bit of corruption to wipe out municipal bureaucracy then its still a win for the poor.

I was also in favor of Doug ford getting kickbacks for opening up greenbelt, I don't see how we do 4% annual population growth without actions like that.

I'll save you a click. Because they're poorly and cheaply made, limited in design, and generally small. Also the savings aren't what they should be for the reduction in quality