It really doesn’t seem like an available labor shortage.
From my observations in Newfoundland it’s a combination of the most profitable product being huge single family homes and outdated (and car-centric) zoning policy that makes it difficult to construct anything else even if it was profitable.
Our issue is there’s no incentive to construct affordable housing and because of years of lobbying by the automotive industry they have to be extremely low density to accommodate the large front lawns, driveways and streetside parking required for car centric living. All of this adds additional cost.
I think step one would be to fix our zoning policy and step two would be to incentivize construction of low margin high density housing. This isn’t to say that single family homes should go away just the they shouldn’t be the only option.
I think step one would be to fix our zoning policy and step two would be to incentivize construction of low margin high density housing. This isn’t to say that single family homes should go away just the they shouldn’t be the only option.
Hike property tax and you’ll lose the mayorship. But that’s the way: make the comically-inefficient mcmansion-with-hoarded-greenspace something only the super-rich can afford again.
Do you have a source for this? From my discussions and research, most of the contractors we work with on a large scale basis complain about a lack of labour (though that’s always a complaint from businesses).
Incredibly stupid, but I’d expect nothing less from a big bank that’s complicit in the country’s economic woes. There’s no shortage of people who know how to build homes.
There’s a shortage of people who will do it for starvation wages though. And that’s what the big banks really don’t want.
I’m not certain about your neck of the woods but we were looking at a bathroom reno in BC and the wait lists started at a year out. Now the organizing contractors might have been stiffing the actual labor but the quotes we were getting were quite high.
That’s a reno not a new build. Renos can charge like crazy because you’re a captive audience, unless you move your only option is them and they set the price.
In new construction the faster and cheaper it goes up the more profit they make per unit.
Cool - but whys the wait list so long. If renos are free money spigots why aren’t companies lining up to snatch prospective renoers in a shorter time window. I’m not in this industry but your comment makes no sense - there’s a severe shortage of renoers in the lower mainland and tens of thousands of households with book valuations that are all north of a million on paper.
Alberta had over 200k immigrants last year. There’s a huge shortage, not just a shortage of good pay.
I don’t argue with your basic premise (companies pay the cheapest contractor, etc), but it is worth noting that because of those pressures, many experienced people leave the industry, thus creating the lack of workers they are talking about. Reversing that change is slow, even if wages rise, and there is no instant fix. Getting people who have left for another industry to return can be difficult, especially in the case of people selling off tools, etc. where the cost to re-enter is often too high to justify.
Add on to that, developers have no incentive to construct everything at once, thus stalling future growth for their company and over saturating the market, driving down housing prices and their enormous margins.
What we need is for CMHC to start building houses instead of leaving it to developers. Developers will only make the most profitable houses, which are the McMansions you see going up like crazy but no one can afford.
The CMHC isn’t a constructor, they have no way of building houses themselves. They need to pay people to build it through their funding, except them providing funding comes with issues too.
I am a designer on a low-income apartment building being constructed by a non-profit organization in Niagara Region and it is 100% government funded (through CMHC I believe). The government took nearly 9 months to approve the funding after all the bids by constructors were received around April 2022 and given the rate of inflation at the time (and construction inflation was higher than the general rate) no subtrades held their price. The government refused to increase the funding to cover the extra cost due to inflation and as a result this building is being value engineered to high heaven and will probably be pretty terrible build quality.
What you’re asking for is effectively a blank cheque for subtrades (and to an extent, designers… even if CMHC uses generic plans everywhere they need local professionals to take responsibility for the permitting process of each individual build, which includes regular inspections and reports) because none of these people trust that the government is competent enough to actually do it properly so they price high to account for fuck ups. (Ex. If CMHC handed me plans to be used I definitely would not blindly sign things off for the local AHJ and put my professional license at risk)
I work on the linear infrastructure side as a consultant - any particular reason that they took so long to award the tender? That seems extreme given that I regularly work with municipalities and tendering processes, and its a pretty well oiled machine - 1 month is about as long as I’ve ever seen the award be stretched, unless the engineering cost estimate was waaaay below the bids and they had to secure additional funding.
They needed the government funding approved in order to award the contract and the approval process (which required all bids to be submitted, not just the planned awarded one) unexpectedly took 9 months with the feds. It wasn’t a municipal project either, it was a local nonprofit org.
I work a lot with the architect that is overseeing the project and not once did they complain about having to submit extra info to the fed (and I have a pretty solid relationship with them so while not completely professional to complain like that it’s the type of thing that would have come up in side conversations in-person when meeting up for other projects)
The government can be efficient and competent if it wants to be. The fact that it isn’t when controlled by people who are ideologically opposed to the government overshadowing organizations with a profit motive is not an argument against the government doing things.
It’s an argument for the government actually being focused on meeting residents’ needs, rather than business owners’.
The government can be efficient and competent if it wants to be.
See, this is the problem with the typical mindsets of people who support the parties that make in into the HoC (and many people who support parties who don’t): you can’t count on the government (or anyone or any organization for that matter) being benelovent all the time, especially when it doesn’t align with their own interests. You need to design a system where benevolence is always a byproduct of acting in one’s own interest, and what is described in the comment I replied to isn’t it.
The government took nearly 9 months to approve the funding after all the bids by constructors were received around April 2022 and given the rate of inflation at the time (and construction inflation was higher than the general rate) no subtrades held their price.
Barring the case where companies reneged on a quote and still earned further business, is it illegal to say “$15million plus inflation of 0.x%/mo” or “$20mil which is $15mil plus adjustment for inflation over typical 9mo review process” ?
One of those two have to give.
Not sure it’s illegal but I’ve never seen it done. Every front end specification I’ve seen says the contractor must hold their price for 30/60 days and many of them stipulate by what date the contract is expected to be awarded.
If the type of pricing you say was submitted when it wasn’t asked for the bid would be tossed for not conforming to the required format. If that type of pricing was asked for you’d have pricing all over the place and you’d probably end up with a shitty contractors who bud extra low and bank on a drawn out approval process getting the job for less than they can actually do it for (and cutting corners like crazy)
The issue is that nobody really expected the approval to be that drawn out.
I know a bunch of out of work framers. No one wants to pay their rates… The megacorp developers rather wait for a few to get desperate enough to take the poverty payouts.
RBC needs more mortgages.
Won’t someone please think about the corps and the rich !
