Could a massive investment in modular homes help solve our country’s housing shortage? Mark Carney sure thinks so.
On the campaign trail, the Prime Minister repeatedly championed his party’s plan to invest billions of dollars in factory-built, pre-fabricated homes in a bid to speed up affordable housing construction across the country.
Carney reiterated that promise last week during his first post-election press conference. “We will create an entirely new Canadian housing industry,” he said.
Three days before the election, during an exclusive interview with our Inside the Village podcast, Carney spoke more about the Liberal housing plan.
“We’ve got a homelessness problem in this province, and we have an affordable housing problem in this province,” he said. “So what are we going to do about it? Well, basically, government is going to build some of those homes. But we’re going to build it in a way that helps kick-start an entire industry of a much more efficient way of building homes: modular, pre-fabricated homes, multi-unit housing as well.”
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Carney said a soon-to-be-created government agency — Build Canada Homes — will invest $25 billion in the private industries that will drive the construction.
“If you’re a developer on housing, this is going to be a great time,” he continued. “We’re going hard, hard, hard on this. And secondly, if you’re younger and you want to get into the trades, we are going to build this country for the next quarter century-plus and it is going to be a great time to be in the skilled trades. We’re literally going to create hundreds of thousands of not jobs, but careers.”
You can watch the full interview HERE.
Hosted by Scott Sexsmith and Michael Friscolanti, the Editor-in-Chief of Village Media, Inside the Village is a news and current affairs podcast that provides a weekly window into some of the best local journalism from across our chain of Ontario newsrooms. Produced by Derek Turner, the program also explores bigger-picture issues that impact people across the province.
Every episode can be found HERE.
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