Low-cost "third way" housing finds no Canadian market

Former MP among social entrepreneurs offering homelessness remedy - with no domestic takers

By: Margaret Dinsdale

  VANCOUVER: If necessity is the mother of invention, one would think that the current affordable housing crisis in Canada would bring about some innovative ideas. And so it has.
  Two Canadian companies have designed homes that can be adapted from the most basic one-room dwelling to two and three bedroom units and would be affordable to low and modest income individuals and families. The problem is, all of these homes are being sold, so far, in places as diverse as Santiago, Chile to Kampala, Uganda in Africa, but not in Canada.
  In fact, Mexico and Chile, two countries not considered wealthy by Canadian standards, have announced massive social housing programs. Chile is targeting 70,000 new units per year while Mexico is investing in a staggering 750,000 new units per year for the next six years.
 

"In Nairobi, there are no homeless people, everyone has somewhere to go, no matter how humble"

  Canadian Rockport Homes International, a Vancouver-based company that uses an innovative Thin-Wall in Concrete design for its housing that is earthquake-, termite- and rot-proof, is currently inking a deal with Chile for what they hope will be the first 5,000 units that will be constructed in a plant to be built in Chile. And they will be conducting all their business with a corporate social responsibility built into their deals, according to former BC MP Nelson Riis, president of the company. Riis was a long-time finance and business critic for the NDP and has drawn on his international experience to push Rockport into the international business community, including a listing on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
  "All of our plants will have gender parity and on-site child care centres," Riis said in an interview. "And we will donate $100 from every unit sold to a local children's charity."
  Rockport's units are built completely at a local plant, including all plumbing and fixtures and electrical wiring, and delivered to a prepared site for a basic unit cost of $8,000. But Riis' socialist ideals causes him to look further than the bottom line.
  "Of course we would like to have our housing here in Canada," he explained. "The idea of everyone's human right to have a home goes beyond the aspect that it is a safe haven, it's also about human values. To ignore the need for social housing, the fact that so many children in this country are homeless or at risk of being homeless in Canada, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, amounts to child abuse."
 

Toronto company offers build-as-you-go prefabs so cheap they that a single person on welfare can afford the mortgage

  Toronto-based architect John van Nostrand of Architects Alliance is also in the housing-with-a-social-consciousness business and has designed a controversial "build as you go" plan of prefabricated homes, the mortgage of the smallest of which can be paid on a single person's welfare cheque. It is initially aimed at the denizens of the tent city that has sprung up on the city's waterfront, the same place recently touted to International Olympic Committee members as a venue for the 2008 games. Van Nostrand draws upon his 25 years experience in designing units ranging from luxury condos in Toronto, to housing developments in Africa.
  "I can't imagine not having a home," he said at his office in Toronto. "In Nairobi, there are no homeless people, everywhere has somewhere to go, no matter how humble."
  The problem van Nostrand faces is the slow-grinding wheels of bureaucracy and decision-making, finding suitable sites and investors willing to gamble on the venture. Several sites have been identified but they are all former industrial sites with contamination issues and lack of infrastructure. Nonetheless, van Nostrand sees the solution as having initial government support such as supplying land and services with private investors holding the mortgages on the homes.
  However, some remain sceptical of these ideas getting off the ground, such as former Toronto mayor, John Sewell.
  "The Government of Ontario couldn't care less about anyone who doesn't have a lot of money," he said. "What we have is a viable plan that makes a lot of sense but the federal government has only pledged $680 million over five years which isn't a lot of money for the whole country. There is no question that you need ongoing government programs with sizable amounts of money."
  Sewell points to the United States and Europe who do not have the homelessness problems that Canada has because "they are putting their money into housing and there is no reason why we can't do it."
  And then again, there are the homeless themselves, especially the denizens of tent city who, according to one resident, are fed up with reporters and photographers and sight-seers in general coming down to the site to look at them "like we're a show or something."
  A social worker at a funding agency in Toronto is worried that if a housing plan is approved, people will assume that the problem is fixed, especially if the proposed pilot project gets underway and other sites nearer to established neighbourhoods are selected. She anticipates a not-in-my-backyard attitude to surface if that happens.
  "It's all very well and good to think you've solved the issue by getting someone out of a tent and into something more solid," she said. "But many homeless people have mental health or addiction issues. They need long-term support systems in place. And we also need to think about whether this will ghetto-ize people rather than integrating them with society. Then again, we need to think about children who might be living there and the stigma attached to living in such a community."
  According to a staff report from the Mayor's office in Toronto, the ideas for Toronto's tent city are for "transitional housing", which begs the question, what are the long-term solutions?

Related links:
www.architectsalliance.com

www.canadianrockport.com

Margaret Dinsdale is an award-winning journalist based in Toronto.

Posted: April 16, 2001

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