I live in a condominium. I find it extremely desirable. I don't yearn to live anywhere else. And I think of it as my home. But there is of course truth to this Globe and Mail article:

Canadians, by and large, continue to think of condos and apartments as housing, not homes. That’s hardly surprising given the way Canada builds them: small units in tall towers clustered in downtown cores or near busy transit hubs. They’re the one- and two-bedrooms young people rent in their 20s (and, increasingly, their 30s). The starter homes. The initial landing spot for newcomers. But they are not desirable homes for two large swaths of the population. Young families need multiple bedrooms and proximity to parks and schools. Retirees looking to downsize often say they want to remain in the same neighbourhood. A dearth of higher-density homes for these two groups has dire consequences for cities.

The problem is twofold.

Our land use policies are too restrictive, though that is slowing starting to change for the better. And it is simply not economically feasible to build larger, family-sized apartments at any sort of meaningful scale. This is not a developer unwillingness problem, it is a math problem.

Toronto, for instance, would be far better off if we had European-scaled apartment buildings all across the city and a lot more family-friendly housing. I believe this to be true at least. But in order to achieve this, we need to get serious. This is not serious.

We need to dramatically reduce development charges and other government fees. We need to get rid of the site plan control process for smaller buildings. We need to remove required amenity areas (the city is the amenity for small-scale neighborhood apartments). And the list goes on.

So if anyone in government is reading this and is truly serious about building more affordable housing in this country, please give me a call. I will gladly come into your office and run you through a development pro forma so that you can see what it's going to take. We can fix housing.

Here is an interesting chart (source) showing housing starts in Canada, by type, between 2000 and 2023:

As recent as 2000, single-family houses accounted for 61% of total starts and multi-family housing accounted for 39%. This flipped somewhere around the financial crisis and, last year in 2023, the percentages were 23% and 77%, respectively. This is a meaningful inversion which has helped our cities become more vibrant and more conducive to non-car modes of transport.

But in this recent article about Canadian housing, Donald Wright more or less argues: so what? We've been densifying our cities for all these years, but it hasn't helped our affordability problem. Supply must not be the answer to our housing crisis.

I'm not exactly sure what he believes to be the solution, but I don't think this problem is as simple as "we've built some housing, we made our cities denser, and yet housing is still expensive -- more supply must not be the answer. Let's move on."

Among many other things, it's important to understand what kind of density we've been building. Because up until very recently, we've basically taken the position that single-family neighborhoods should never be touched, and that density should only go in very specific areas -- and only after a lengthy and expensive rezoning process has been completed.

We've designed new housing to be expensive.

But attitudes are changing all across North America. We are now starting to do two very important things: (1) we are opening up more of our cities to intensification and (2) we are now allowing more multi-family housing on an as-of-right basis. Meaning, no lengthy rezoning exercises and no risk of community opposition.

These are two fundamental changes that should alter the kind of density that gets built. And in my view, it's going to be a positive thing for Canadian cities.

Last week, the Canadian federal government announced that it will be developing a catalog of pre-approved housing designs in order to accelerate the delivery of new homes.

This is not a new idea. A similar approach was taken after the Second World War in order to quickly house veterans returning home. But in this current iteration, the catalog is expected to be focused on missing middle housing such as small multiplexes and student housing, and then later on higher-density construction.

We have also spoken about this idea before in the context of ADUs in Los Angeles. And at that time, I wrote that the way to encourage more of something is to reduce friction. I continue to believe that this is the case, and so I do think that pre-approved designs are a positive thing, especially for smaller projects.

However, it's important to keep in mind that this is not the biggest barrier to new housing supply. The problem is not that developers and builders are all sitting around thinking "if only I had a design for a 5-unit multiplex." The problem is that they're sitting around thinking "if only I could make some money building a 5-unit multiplex."

So while reducing the barriers to entry is a good thing, the really important question for the designs in this upcoming catalog is: Can developers actually make any money building them? Because if the answer is no, it doesn't matter that they're pre-approved and ready to go. They won't be built.

Hopefully somebody is thinking about this because it will take some work. Every market is different. What works in one place, may not work in another. On top of this, what works today, may not work tomorrow.