An old Canadian housing idea is getting a 21st-century reboot, and municipalities that received Housing Accelerator Fund money are being asked to decide whether they want to help put it into action.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has relaunched its Housing Design Catalogue, offering standardized designs for accessory dwelling units, fourplexes, sixplexes and townhouses. The goal is straightforward: shave time and some upfront design costs from the development process and ultimately get more homes built faster.
And CMHC isn’t knocking on Carleton Place’s door alone. The federal housing agency is seeking endorsements from all municipalities participating in the Housing Accelerator Fund, although municipalities are not required to sign on.
The idea reaches back more than 75 years.
Carleton Place Director of Development Services Niki Dwyer told Committee of the Whole that CMHC’s original housing catalogue emerged after the Second World War, when Canada needed to dramatically increase its housing supply. The modern incarnation followed a national architectural design competition and offers plans intended to be almost, but not entirely, permit-ready.
For Ontario, the catalogue includes two detached accessory dwelling units, two fourplexes, one sixplex and two street-fronting townhouse designs.
Although the plans are fairly comprehensive, users would still need an engineer or designer to adapt them to an individual property and its specific features.
For Carleton Place, however, the bigger question isn’t whether the houses can be built. It’s what they look like.
“My concern is that we could end up with a situation which is gradually losing the architectural character that makes Carleton Place recognizable. I don’t want us to become a town where you can drive down one street and see the same catalogue house repeated over and over again,” said Coun. Linda Seccaspina.
Coun. Dena Comley pointed out that municipalities have already seen much of their authority over development whittled away.
“I feel like at the municipal level, we have lost a lot of control when it comes to development and what we can and can’t do within town and design standards is one of the few things we still do have some say over. And I’d like to keep it that way.”
Coun. Jeff Atkinson saw the other side of the equation.
“I think an endorsement is worthwhile because this is part of the project to build more homes faster through pre-approved designs. So I would be in favour of an endorsement of the catalogue itself, at the very least for an endorsement of the accessory units.”
However, as Dwyer pointed out, accepting the CMHC catalogue as is will make it harder for the municipality to uphold its current design principles.
“I think it’s a slippery slope because if you allow new infills to have side yards that aren’t oriented into the street, it’s going to be very hard to say no when somebody else comes to the table with another design. Things like the clear prominent front entrance on the front of the house, usable front steps, traditional and symmetrical gable and hip roofs, and percent of glazing on the first and second stories, are very concrete and measurable performance standards. We have been successful in upholding them at tribunal hearings and they are considered to be key urban design principles,” said Dwyer.
Dwyer also made it clear that saying no would not put Carleton Place’s federal funding at risk.
“If you choose not to endorse it, we still get all our HAF money, which is good, we have confirmed that.”
Committee members ultimately chose not to endorse the catalogue. However, the CMHC catalogue designs are publicly available, and property owners can still download them and bring them forward for municipal review, where they will be evaluated according to the property and the town’s design principles.
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I absolutely agree! Keep CMHC out of CP.