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Printer Canada Government

Trudeau Pushes 3D-Printed Homes To Solve Canada Housing Crisis (dailyhive.com) 174

Posted by BeauHD from the supply-and-demand dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Daily Hive: It is now the third consecutive day a major housing funding announcement has been made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Friday's announcement entails over $600 million in investments targeted to help lower the construction cost of homes and speed up building timelines, with a new focus on creating new building innovation technologies. This includes a new $50 million Homebuilding Technology and Innovation Fund, which the federal government aims to leverage an additional $150 million from the private sector and other levels of government. Another $50 million will be invested in ideas and technology such as prefabricated housing factories, mass timber production, panelization, 3D printing, and pre-approved home design catalogues -- specifically projects already funded.

As well, $11.6 million will go towards the federal government's previously announced Housing Design Catalogue to create a standardized home structure design for simplicity as well as construction and cost efficiencies. The vast majority of today's announced funding will go into the federal Apartment Construction Loan Program, which provides low-cost financing to support new rental housing projects using innovative construction techniques from prefabricated and modular housing manufacturers as well as other homebuilders. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement: "We're changing the way we build homes in Canada. In Budget 2024, we're supporting a new approach to construction, with a focus on innovation and technology. This will make it easier and more cost-effective to build more homes, faster. You should be able to live in the community you love, at a price you can afford."
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Trudeau Pushes 3D-Printed Homes To Solve Canada Housing Crisis More

Trudeau Pushes 3D-Printed Homes To Solve Canada Housing Crisis

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  • LOL (Score:3)

    by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Friday April 05, 2024 @11:38PM (#64373956)

    Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the SlumPrinter 9000!

    • At the rate that Trudeau is importing people, Canada should build a new city every three years. They are not doing anything and now complain about a lack of affordable homes.

    • https://www.mudbots.com/ [mudbots.com]

      Looks like you can get into this business pretty cheap. A 15x15x15 foot printer is only $39k

  • What about permitting and inspections? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LionKimbro ( 200000 ) on Friday April 05, 2024 @11:47PM (#64373960) Homepage

    My understanding is that the majority of the problem has to do with permitting and inspections. Are they planning to do anything to accelerate and ease permitting, inspections, and other such non-manufacturing related processes?

    • If homes are standardized enough - or at least their major components - then the permit and inspection process should be streamlined as a consequence.

      Not that we all need cookie-cutter homes, but there's no reason you couldn't have standard room layouts made from standard materials so that anything that conformed could be a near-instant sign-off, then all you really need to do is confirm the combination of pre-approved components are suitable for the site. Especially if it's pre-fab and the factory can be

      • I realize we're talking about Canada and I don't really know anything about their permitting system. With that said, in California, a significant, nontrivial portion of the cost of a new structure is the atrocious permitting process. From environmental impact studies that are weaponized by NIMBYs to just the sheer cost of the individual permits themselves. Other US states, it's substantially cheaper to simply build the structure because they have so much less red tape and the tape they do have isn't jacked

    • The problem is "starter homes" costing $300,000 and salaries nowhere close to making it affordable.

    • Careful. Australia has private inspectors with no oversight or enforcement. Dud houses and highrises with cracked support bearings being built everywhere, people loosing their life savings. Can't sue bankrupt builders with $2 companies. Plus no will to deregister shonks forever.

      • Funny comment. Last I remember private inspectors need a government certification which they can readily lose.

        Dud houses and highrises with cracked support bearings being built everywhere, people loosing their life savings.

        No Dud houses are not being "built everywhere". They are being built though, and they continue to be in every country on the planet. Cheap fraudsters gonna cheap fraud, and inspectors catch the majority of them. But the odds of you being affected is vanishingly small. So small it often makes the national news when it happens.

        Can't sue bankrupt builders with $2 companies.

        Of course you can. A builder can't put a spade in the ground without indemn

    • Nope. The majority of the problems is that the land has to be made suitable to build a home on.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's not enough to just make it easier though. We should be building decent houses, not tiny, cheap crap. Detached, room to park and charge.

      And associated services. Schools, clinics, public transport, shops, parks and green spaces.

  • Ugh (Score:3)

    by ZenShadow ( 101870 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @12:03AM (#64373974) Homepage

    They're 3d printing some homes near me. I took a tour. They are horrible, and I would never buy one.

    The walls are ribbed concrete. The interior walls! How do you hang a picture on that? How do you clean that? How do you run wires through that if you want to add new technology?

    On top of which, I'm under the impression that they're very slow to build. I think a stick-built home can be done faster.

    Ugh. No thanks!

    • Re: Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by i_ate_god ( 899684 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @12:07AM (#64373984)

      What's stopping you from attaching drywall to the interior?

      • Nothing. Typically with a concrete build in our climate you'd want to put insulation on the exterior and cover it with siding as this includes the concrete in the thermal mass of your dwelling and keeps the temperature steadier. If you can mount stuff on the outside, you can mount it on the inside. It costs more, but even if it was smooth would you live in a home with bare concrete walls?

        I'm sure there remains work to be done improving the extruders and the designs they follow, 3D printed building is stil

        • Well I've seen many nicely converted concrete industrial places. Granted, it's not ribbed like you get from concrete 3d printing but still.

          I mean in the end, the concrete is replacing wood. If it's cheaper/faster to build up a house with with a giant concrete nozzle than to assemble wood, fair enough. Pour, attach whatever to hide the concrete, probably have to fuss a bit with door and window frames though.

          Personally, I would have thought prefabricated parts would be even better. Just assemble a house with

          • Concrete is great for stability and thermal mass... but making it releases a lot of CO2 while using wood sequesters it. Wood may not hold a straight line as easily, but even the mediocre stuff does well enough for home construction. It's less massive, and easier to assemble or alter. It's unbelievably easier to attach something to it. And it's flexible to a degree that makes it more resilient to minor earthquakes. With regards to the fire risk... a wood frame will often char and resist further burning.

        • I'm not understanding how concrete interior walls work with plumbing and electrical.

          However, the sound insulation should be fantastic. You could convert an unused bedroom into an actual dungeon.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Sique ( 173459 )
            As someone who has lived in such houses (and in a country where the majority of all houses is built with brick or concrete interior walls) I can assure you: It works fine. As a matter of fact: The house I am currently living in is the first one with interior drywall. I start to understand why U.S. houses often come furnished. They are a pain in the ass to work with if you want to mount your own cupboards. And why every room except kitchen and living room is called a bedroom - you can't effectively do anythi

            • I've never of heard of any of my relatives or myself acquiring a property that came per-furnished. I know such places exist, but I've never come across one. Not in rental space nor in purchasing property. Yes, we all live in the US.

              So I wouldn't really call that common unless maybe that's in rich people spaces. Still, we have our own stuff and we move it around.

              If you are talking about cupboards and sinks. Well yeah, every place I've ever lived in came with it's own cabinetry and toilets. Flooring too. (WTF

          • Plumbing and electrical works the same as in a wood frame structure - you have places where wires and pipes pass through.

            Given that creating such things after the fact is a bigger deal with concrete, you generally want to plan ahead rather than having a carpenter solve the issue with a hammer or saw after the initial assembly.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by hawk ( 1151 )

              >Plumbing and electrical works the same as in a wood frame
              >structure - you have places where wires and pipes pass through.

              yeah, but . . .

              my house was built in the sixties, wood frame. Notions of "internet", "cable to bedrooms", and the like, just weren't around.

              I have gone into the attic and can simply drilled small holes to drop cables down where I want them for *today*, and made cutouts in the interior drywall to accommodate them.

              • You can cut concrete too, it just needs a different tool. I've seen conduit installed in offices where the original construction didn't plan for it.

        • The problem is that the concrete is a thermal bridge to the ground above the frost depth. So putting it inside the thermal envelope is going to require foaming up all around below grade too.

          Tldr. The problem isn't housing construction methods. There's been a process for mass producing dirt cheap homes of reasonable quality for close to a century.

          If Canada is anything like Massachusetts, the problem is that the regulatory and permitting requirement makes it damn near impossible to build at the scale needed t

      • The way they build them. If they were building a skeleton and adding drywall it might be workable-- but then they'd probably cost more than a stick-built home.

        Seriously, go tour one. They're awful.

      • Because you would f*** up your wall permanently doing so. At least wood self-heals to a point. Concrete cracks and spalls.

        You would be attaching drywall to a substance that absorbs and retains tons of moisture.

        How would a nail go into the concrete after it pierces the drywall?

    • A lot of the world uses concrete for housing, including interior walls. They seem to get along just fine.

      Well built houses too.

    • Re:Ugh (Score:5, Informative)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @02:07AM (#64374088)

      There is a thing called plaster. At least in Europe, it is quite standard and it results in smooth walls.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The downside is that it's a pain in the arse to retrofit or replace cables and pipes. Need an extra power socket or ethernet port? The plaster will create fine dust mess that gets everywhere, and you have to drill through concrete.

        Plasterboard (drywall) is much better, ideally over a stud wall over something solid.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Depends on how you do it. If you use a diamond cutting wheel on an angle grinder or on a circular saw, sure, that will be a real mess. But plaster is relatively soft and you can a chisel or even scratch things out for shorter distances, with no fine dust. For lager distances there is special equipment that limits the dust and comes with a vacuum cleaner attachment.

          You should not drill through concrete though. What you do with plaster is you embed tubing for the wires. At least that is how it is done here. W

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            We sometimes put tubing in too, but usually only if you ask because house builders are cheap... I'll watch that video though. I want to rewire my house, but it's really expensive and disruptive.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              I want to rewire my house, but it's really expensive and disruptive.

              I rewired a house my parents bought when I was a teen. You can limit disruption with careful planning, but you basically have to empty out the room(s) you are working on. You usually can do it room-by room though and even let the project rest as long as desired.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                That's probably going to be how it's done, room by room. Put plasterboard over what is there and just take the small loss of space.

    • The walls are ribbed concrete. The interior walls! How do you hang a picture on that?

      Dude's never seen the interior of a house before finishing touches on walls are done.

      How do you run wires through that if you want to add new technology?

      Same way you run wires through brickwork, or literally any house in Europe where interior walls are made of aerated concrete blocks.

  • Solving the wrong problems (Score:5, Informative)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @12:07AM (#64373988)
    In Canada more dwellings were made in the 1970s than in the 2010s despite Canada's population doubling. https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] *The lack of building in this country has been entirely politically made. To build a dwelling you first need to raise the capital to buy the land. Then once you have the land you need to get approval to build on it. It might take you 2 years to get approval assuming nothing goes wrong. However more likely you will have to pay for an environmental assessment and a traffic assessment at the very least. If something come up in either of these cases you likely won't be able to build. There goes your investment. Next if you do build anything 3 stories or more you will have to meet standards for disabled people. This adds to the cost of the individual units and means you will need to install and maintain an elevator and have someone clearing snow. Lastly municipalities now want 5% of the area devoted to low income housing. Meaning you will have to be a landlord in an legal environment where poorer tenants don't face any meaningful penalties for destroying the property or not paying rent. Of the few builders that make it to the last step, in cities like Montreal, every last builder has paid the fine in stead of providing low cost housing. None of these regulations existed or were as stringent before 1978.
    If the politicians actually want homes built they need to defend the landlords and builders and explain that landlords need to make a profit and need to have all the uncertainties and risks removed before they will invest.
    *rent controls came in in the largest province in 1978

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 )

      Yeah, because THE GOVERNMENT BUILT THOSE HOMES.

      The Canadian government used to build housing because of COURSE builders want to make a profit, and there's no profit in providing homes for the poor. When the austerity budgets hit in the 90s, the funding to build those homes went away. The responsibility for building homes has been pushed off onto provincial and municipal governments. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunda... [www.cbc.ca]

      Stop giving the capitalists more money to do this stuff. They never will. They don't want to.

    • To add to your excellent list of impedances: All of the largely useless inspections required during construction that can extend construction time itself months. My favorite was the addition of sheet rock inspections following the Chinese sheet rock formaldehyde debacle. By the time the rules were in place (and of course they cover much more than the quality of the raw material), suppliers were already making darn sure they were not receiving unusable sheet rock but now every builder in the U.S. and Cana

    • Seems the government should be paying for those things, if they want to incentivize new building. And insuring the low income properties if they're requiring them to be built. Then they'd deal with the hassles.

      Wonder if AI can perform a low cost first pass over those assessments? Point people to the easy/best places first (or the hot spots to avoid).

      Obviously people want places to live. But they can't afford to start the process of making their own home. Maybe that needs to change? Empower the people

  • Canadian Left Explained (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @12:44AM (#64374028)
    Imagine a political party that was anti vaccine, anti mask, climate change denying, that allows anti abortion and racist supporters. A party with no tangible, coherent economic policy. A party that has a great deal of difficulty with the truth and reality. Now imagine the parties that will be crushed by them.
    The Canadian Conservative party is polling at 42% of decided voters. https://abacusdata.ca/conserva... [abacusdata.ca] The liberals are at 24 and NDP at 18.
    The left will call the conservative voters dumb, ignorant, selfish, temporarily inconvenienced billionaires, racist and try and cancel them at every opportunity. The one thing the left can't do is understand how they are so toxic and scary to the average person that the average voter might decide that the batshit crazy Conservatives might be the better option. The left is completely opposed to any kind of debate or even trying to defend their opinions. The left has descended into anti rich, anti capitalism, tax everyone but me, entitled movement. They have advocated for rent controls and making it almost impossible to evict bad tenants. They believe there is this magical, privileged race or class of evil landlords who must provide housing for the poor. That profits in housing, food, or anything else they want is unethical. They simply can't grasp that if you don't make renting profitable that people won't invest and become landlords.
  • Because he doesn't want to do anything about the actual problem which is large corporations buying up all the houses in cities that have jobs and lack of infrastructure spending due to decades of neoliberal political policy and tax cuts for corporations in the wealthy.

    Canada has to their credit blocks some of the foreign investors but that's not nearly enough especially when you leave gaping loopholes for them.

  • The tech has been demonstrated on some simple designs. It is not yet ready to scale things up or being used on mass-scale and getting there will take quite a while.

  • Look at the speaker (Score:4, Informative)

    by rst123 ( 2440064 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @02:06AM (#64374084)

    Justin Trudeau is a highschool drama teacher.
    Is there any reason to be surprised when bad theater on any subject comes from the government?

    (I apologize if I am being unfair to highschool drama. I know that in many cases the students work very hard to put on a production.)

    • As a drama teacher, Trudeau has had more experience holding a real job in the real world than the current Conservative Party leader or the last Conservative Party leader. The current one has never held a job that cannot in some way be tied to the Tories, and the last one only held one real world, non-political job in his life: mail boy in the oil corporation where his daddy was a vice president.

      The current Tory leader, nicknamed "Little PeePee", has been stealing quotes and policies from Trudeau and tryin

  • Q: "Are there more people than housing?"

    If the answer is "No.", then the "solution" is not build more houses, and even more, houses of low quality, whose price will rise the year after being given recurring in the same problem it "solved".

    If the answer is "Yes.", then the "solution" is not again build more low quality houses with dubious maintenance and no "test of time" on the construction method. Would he take responsibilities (from his own pocket and liberty) if all such houses crumble in 15 years killin

  • The usual cause... (Score:4, Informative)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @03:42AM (#64374152)
    ...of "housing crises" is rent-seeking. The term rent-seeking is often used as an analogy but in this case it's literal. It's where the term comes from & is the original motivation for public housing that goes back centuries. Private rental markets drive up property prices for everyone & make rents unaffordable. It raises the prices of everything else in order to service the unreasonable demands of property owners. Basically, the "landed rich" sit back, do nothing, & watch the money roll in. Most economists regard rent-seeking as a bad thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].

    What we're seeing now are the results of decades of deregulation & governments abandoning public housing responsibilities. Building more houses won't reduce prices because housing doesn't work that way. Supply/Availability isn't the primary driver of price to the renter. Think of rent as more of an additional tax that people have to pay & think about how it should be fairer in terms of who pays how much.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )

      .Private rental markets drive up property prices for everyone & make rents unaffordable.

      The alternative, public or subsidized rental markets are typically called The Projects or Slums. Universally.

      • You apparently have little experience of public & rent-controlled housing. Did you know that the flats in "La Padrera" on Paseig de Gracia, one of the most expensive & upmarket streets in Barcelona, are public housing? It's owned by a bank but by law, they have to abide by the original public housing laws as the existing tenants' landlord. There are many examples of public housing in very well-to-do neighbourhoods all over Yurp. "15 minute cities" have become widespread policy in about 50 cities in

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawk ( 1151 )

          "if" ?

          it's been happening for fifteen years or so, since the mortgage crisis.

    • I love the idea, but disagree... Life "shouldn't" be a zero-sum game, but often is forced into one. Meaning there are aspects of life where for me to get one, you need to lose one. But many parts of the game can be shifted around so much that you can't know where they truly are, and nobody starts from the same situation.

      Meaning 'money' is just paper, or metal. Those can't be dealt with any way other than zero-sum. But 'currency' is another thing entirely.

      I think a lot of our problems come from issues u

  • Backhoes, bulldozers rebar and concrete (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sonoronos ( 610381 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @07:40AM (#64374382)

    $600 million would buy a heck of a lot of backhoes, bulldozers, rebar and concrete. Just sayin

  • I still remember Soviets mass-producing pre-fab housing complexes. They were awful and tiny and started falling apart right after getting built. So zero surprise Fidel Castro's illegitimate son would try something like that.

  • Neat (Score:3)

    by zmollusc ( 763634 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @08:30AM (#64374454)

    Problem: Overpopulation

    Solution: Use technology to enable increased population.

    • Canada has an overpopulation issue due to a common cultural issue - short term greed.

      Like pretty much every other essentially capitalist democracy, we live beyond our means and mortgage the future to do so. Without eternal growth, the system will collapse. We don't make enough of our own babies, so we import to make up the deficit.

      We're doing this to ourselves.

      • I agree with your post but I would say that most of this is being done "to us" as the vast vast majority of us don't have the power or influence to push back. Sure, if the 95% of us AGREED but we're way to easily pitted against each other and get caught up on "cultural" issues when if we were not being fleeced and pitted against each, would all live better overall lives.

        But hey, squabbling over petty cultural nonsense issues is so much more important then the economy and having an affordable lifestyle, righ

        • The problem is democracy is the best governing solution we've come up with, and it still isn't good enough to handle a Tragedy of the Commons type situation until after it finishes blowing up in our faces.

          No politician is going to tell us we can't travel like we used to, can't eat like we used to, and we're going to have to give up more of our accumulated wealth and be poorer in our old age. Because the politician who does that isn't a politician for very long. The one who continues the lie that everythin

          • That's a pretty good way to boil down the problem! Term limits!!! LOL yeah, good luck right.

            • I like term limits a lot. Along with bans on doing business with anyone you had financial influence over during your term for a decade or so. And a promise of a thorough investigation should any of your family or friends suddenly find a job with such a person.

              You could work in the bureaucracy or try another level of government or another locale, but one shot in a political seat in a jurisdiction and that's it, banned from repeating that for life. I'd also add a requirement that you be no more than one si

  • Stop (Score:3)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday April 06, 2024 @11:07AM (#64374702) Homepage Journal

    Trudeau Pushes 3D-Printed Homes To Solve Canada Housing Crisis
    [...]
    ideas and technology such as prefabricated housing factories, mass timber production, panelization, 3D printing, and pre-approved home design catalogues

    When I read the headline, I thought, how stupid. What about prefabs? Then even TFS debunked your bullshit headline, by straight saying prefabs and panelization first.

    3d printing housing is possibly a good idea for temporary housing after disasters or something, but in general it makes little to no sense. If you want to figure out how to get a machine to build a useful extruded structure, you need to determine how to get it to build bridges. Something like a giant wire feed welder, except it feeds rebar and concrete. Rapid set buildings are really best achieved with prefabs, and prefab sections. You get a superior result.

  • "We're 3D printing a giant funnel from government coffers (ie, your money) to Trudeau donors [globalnews.ca] and favored Liberal vendors [nationalpost.com] without even a pretense at mitigating the root housing problem Ottawa has been amplifying since 2015 - that is, unfettered immigration on an irresponsible scale [globalnews.ca]."

  • Maybe Canada has too many 3D-printed people.

  • never solve the source the problem! only patches (Score:4, Insightful)

    by elcor ( 4519045 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @12:12PM (#64374840)
    for example never enforce your immigration policy, only build more home for the illegals

  • This assumes that the shell is the expensive part (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hasaf ( 3744357 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @12:30PM (#64374874)
    While the shell is a large part of the cost of a structure, there is still plumbing, electrical, flooring, HVAC, land . . . I can go on, but the point being, the shell is not the only cost. A shell kit can easily be purchased for less than 50K, but that is just the beginning of the cost. Lowering that shell price is not going to significantly alter the sale price of the resulting structure. This is an example of tech for tech's sake, not because it improves the situation for those whom it was intended to help.

  • All very stupid (Score:3)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @03:09PM (#64375228)

    Sticking up the walls of a house are a fraction of the effort. I doubt if someone compared 3d printing to other forms of construction (e.g. blockwork, icf, prefab) that the 3d printed version would justify itself in time or cost. It's snakeoil being pushed by an industry in search of a problem that doesn't exist. Oh we can solve the housing crisis with 3D printing! Nope. If someone wants to build a house, then just build a fucking house.

  • Structures are relatively easy (Score:3)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Saturday April 06, 2024 @09:03PM (#64375852) Journal

    The structure is the easy part. It's a solved problem. These printed homes will be objectively worse to the extent it might not be as easy to maintain them as other pre-fabricated housing, which has existed for decades and is arguably superior to site built--every pre-fab experiences the equivalent of a massive earthquake during transit, so their kind of built for that except for the mating lines; but I digress.

    Siting is the hard part. Land cost. Foundation. Hook-ups. That's where it gets really expensive and difficult. Best case scenario for low-cost is flat land in an unpopular rural area with under-subscribed water, sewer, and power; but that only happens because nobody wants to live there in the first place.

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