It’s no secret Canada has a housing supply problem that is particularly acute in the affordable sector. So, prominent construction firm and development manager EllisDon has released Base Design, a new tool to help alleviate this problem.

“Base Design specifically is EllisDon’s standardized housing design and delivery platform, and we aim at making high-quality, affordable housing faster and more cost effective to develop,” Nick Gefucia, senior vice-president, EllisDon Community Builders told RENX Homes.

The Base Design set of templates is “designed to reduce soft costs and shorten timelines to find approvals by offering pre-vetted architectural engineering, as well as integrating energy-efficient systems into compact building forms,” Gefucia explained.

The tool is focused on buildings of up to 10 storeys for smaller communities, representing the “missing middle,” he said.

“We’re offering a big, scalable solution for higher density, thinking about bigger projects and looking at different delivery models. The same delivery models we’ve seen in social infrastructure, with a bit more ambitious view to have more units built per year because supply really is a huge issue here.”

The genesis of Base Design

The effort to create a development fast-track was conceived in 2019 when EllisDon was working with BC Housing and other non-profits. 

“But really, the phase that we really worked hard is when we developed a pretty stable pipeline over two or three years during the pandemic, and started looking at various design components that could be integrated into a final solution," he said. "So that was about four or five years of research and development to get us to where we are today."

It provides templates for design so builders can “remove the friction and guesswork in early-stage development. That’s the key piece.” Having approximately 60 per cent of the initial, pre-construction design planning already done shortens this process, Gefucia said.

“We want to get a clear pathway to shovel-ready, code-compliant designs that work across various regions in Canada.”

EllisDon’s Base Design initiative should make it easier for development to happen, according to an affordable housing expert.

“When you’re looking at the non-market, affordable units being built by non-profit organizations, (Base Design) does give them the opportunity then to have a product they know is going to be accepted by the local building codes and it would be accepted and approved quickly by municipalities," said David Amborski, director of the Centre for Urban Research and Land Development and professor emeritus at Toronto Metropolitan University.

"It also meets standards for energy and green standards that CMHC has, so that makes sense,”

Tool targets non-profit housing providers

The tool is aimed at non-profit housing providers, Gefucia said, including “municipalities, indigenous communities, co-ops, mission-driven developers who are focused at creating long-term affordable housing.”

Providing this potential solution mirrors some previous efforts by governments to build affordable housing, such as post-World War II house-building efforts.

“We still need more family housing, purposeful rental housing for families, and we need more housing in all locations," Amborski said. "We have to build across the board. We have to build infill. We have to build in urban areas. We have to build also greenfield sites. We need to provide a range of housing types."

Housing has been a key issue in the federal election.

“They’re talking about trying to make available surplus or government sites as well, because one of the problems non-profits have is acquiring land at reasonable prices. If governments are willing to give them surplus land to reduce the price, you can make the numbers work much more efficiently than having to go and buy market, or compete with developers,” Amborski said.

“In the long haul, there’s been a history of senior governments making infrastructure funding available. So that’s a contribution that they can make in terms of trying to address the some of the charges through development charges and other kinds of fees.”

Government-funded solutions were also discussed during the recent Ontario provincial vote, said Gefucia.

“I think what’s encouraging is that housing affordability has been a top — if not the top — issue in both of these elections so at least the attention from the political parties, they’re focusing on it. They’re trying to come up with big solutions that we haven’t seen since the end of World War II.”

EllisDon working to set pricing

While the tool is currently available for anyone to access via a pro forma web site that can provide pre-estimates and configuration, pricing has not yet been finalized. 

“There’s been a lot of interest in this right now for us to spend the next month or two collecting the different projects and figuring out," Gefucia explained. "It really comes down to how it’s being delivered: whether it’s by a license basis, or if we’re going to be participating in a development, we want pricing to be as efficient as possible, because the whole point of our group is to build as much affordable housing as possible.”

EllisDon’s role can take a number of forms. 

“At the bare minimum, what we will do is offer Base Design to anyone who’s interested in building affordable housing across Canada. We don’t need to be involved as a development manager.," Gefucia said. "We don’t need to be the constructor.

"We want as many people to use this as possible. We created it in such a way that it could be transferred as a non-exclusive basis, as a starting point for any project and EllisDon’s involvement can end there. But at the other extreme, we will be using this in our EllisDon-sponsored project(s)."

Base Design is also compliant with CMHC criteria.

“In terms of the energy standards, there’s different tiers of CMHC they prescribe based on levels of grants at different times. We’ve taken all that and incorporated into the pro forma tool and into the design to make sure that you’re starting with something that’s going to be compliant with CMHC financing from the start, so you don’t have to re-engineer those types of systems."