One of the fastest growing municipalities in Ontario is offering free, pre-approved housing designs to try and spur the development of low-rise rental housing in their communities. “What we’ve done is with the help of the Housing Accelerator Fund and some funding from Bruce Power, we’ve developed these ready-to-build housing designs. So, we have three designs that we’ve developed with some partners for designs for additional dwelling units, and three designs for higher density type units. So that’s duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes,” explained Saugeen Shores Mayor Luke Charbonneau. Created with the help of Invisij Architects and Tim Welch Consulting, the initiative offers a catalogue of 14 pre-approved housing designs. Builders and homeowners would still need other approvals, but the pre-designed homes are meant to match Saugeen Shores’ current subdivisions, while ultimately speeding up the approvals process. “All we’re really doing here is taking one step out of the process, the design of the building itself. You get a floor plan, you get something you can take to somebody to layout the site, and take to the building department to get approval, so you don’t have to do that,” he said. “It speeds up the process with that regard. It takes a bit of cost away from somebody looking to build an additional dwelling unit or a triplex or a duplex.” 60 ARUs or “additional dwelling units” have been built in Saugeen Shores in the past couple years, but there’s room for many more as the community tries to increase the mix of low-rise rental options in their fast-growing communities of Port Elgin and Southampton. “We’ve doubled the number of purpose-built rental units in Saugeen Shores, just in the last two or three years, over 600 of them built. So, we’re making good progress on this, but no question that we need more diversity in our housing stock,” said Charbonneau. The pre-approved housing designs are available online. The initiative just launched in mid-December, but Charbonneau says they’ve already had plenty of interest and would be happy to share their free designs with any municipality or property owner or builder in Ontario. “We’re glad to frankly share them with whoever needs them, to make sure we’re building housing. The housing we need, not only in Saugeen Shores, but across Bruce County, and right across Ontario,” said Charbonneau.
