The warnings to watch out have been echoing within North America’s conventional housing industry. Take the idea expressed in an industry magazine Builder article earlier this year: that successful construction industry players will have to develop an affordable housing capability. “If builders don’t, someone else will.”
With some of the world’s biggest bogeymen lurking along the path to meaningful affordable housing construction, panic is beginning to set in. From Business Insider: Google, Amazon, and Tesla are hurtling into a struggling industry — and it’s a sign the bloodbath is just getting started
The construction industry may well need to change dramatically or become marginalized to serving the one percent who can afford to slooowwly build the ‘old fashioned way.’ As well, builders need to understand that change will not only be coming from some of the world’s largest corporations, but also from smaller, innovative bogeymen who have backers with deep pockets.
One such smaller innovator is ARDN (Alberta Rural Development Network), which is beginning to ramp up a modular, shipping container-based, affordable housing project which will run to thousands of flexibly sized and shaped affordable housing units for those most in need.
Deep pocket backers? The Canadian Federal Government and the Province of Alberta. Read more in this press release from CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation): Rural communities to benefit from innovative shipping container housing model
P.S. The CMHC has a history of homebuilding in massive quantities of affordable housing.
All right, it’s been a while. Perhaps its well nigh time for the sleeping giant to awake!
