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Andrea Adams, executive director of nonprofit developer St. Clare’s, said she “daydreaming” about what could be built on the yard next to 20-unit buildings on Ossington Avenue.
Eventually, she was introduced to Assembly Company, which built large-scale timber modular housing, about the city was looking for suggestions for “shovel ready” affordable housing projects.
St. Clare owns the land, the contractor and, more importantly, the willingness to complete the project.
The result is a striking three-story building that now has homes for more than twenty homeless people.
“It’s a very confident project,” Adams said in the office next to the L-shaped motel-style structure. Its residents will be people who live in shelters, sofa surfing or live in tents, she said. ”
According to the Ontario Municipal Authority Association, the project is a small step to addressing the cost of living in a homeless province in 2024.
Advocates and experts say that while there is no solution to the homeless crisis, which exacerbates mental health and addiction issues, prefabricated housing may play a major role in addressing the shortage of affordable and supportive housing.
“Modularization will certainly help because faster structures are the cheapest,” Adams said.
The 25-unit complex in Osington was built in just 21 working days, and the overall construction took 8 months.
Each small studio is approximately 220 square feet in size and has a bathroom, kitchen and living room. The modern, light brown exterior has large windows and shadow fins that have attracted the attention of passers-by.
The structure “uses every square inch of property available but still looks pretty.”
She said there is more to do given the urgency of homelessness. “We need to do everything, think more, and do these things.”
Lack of housing is a Canadian-wide problem, and by some estimates the country needs millions of new homes to increase its growing population.
During the federal election campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney promised a housing program that would generate 500,000 new homes each year and provide $25 billion in loans to companies that manufacture factories to build homes.
Carney said in his first press conference after the vote on April 28 that his goal is to create a “new Canadian housing industry” around modular housing using Canadian timber, skilled workers and technology.
During the provincial elections in February, Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford also promised $50 million to modular housing technology.
Experts say modular homes have several advantages, including faster construction schedules, cost-effectiveness and the opportunity to build them in an environmentally friendly manner.
Carolyn Whitzman, a professor and researcher at the University of Toronto City College, said the key to unlocking potential is creating a stable demand for modular homes so that factories can invest and hire workers with confidence.
She said the new government’s investment in factory-built houses is a welcome move, but more measures are needed to make the plan successful.
“The trick is how Canada reaches scale,” she said, noting that modular structure is not as fast or cheap as it has the potential, and that if production gradually increases, that structure may change.
“In order to build these factories and provide factory work for people, you need to have a level of demand. We simply don’t.”
She said the federal government could order the construction of a specific number of modular homes for annual support, students or other types of social housing to help stimulate the market.
A report co-authored by Whitzman says that although modular housing accounts for only 4 to 6% of construction, it is becoming increasingly popular in Canada.
Whitzmann said Sweden is an example of a country that has successfully turned to modular housing to solve the housing crisis, with nearly 45% of its homes being built in factories.
In Canada, where industry labor shortages and longer winters can delay construction schedules, Whitzman said, prefabricated homes could alleviate some of the uncertainties.
But despite its many advantages, modular housing is not the “magic” of affordability. She said a lot of government financial aid and participation is needed.
For the Osington Avenue modular building, the federal government provided about $4.8 million in funding, and the city of Toronto contributed about $1.7 million with incentives, fee waivers and tax waivers. St. Clair shares are estimated to be around $900,000.
St. Clare’s executive director Adams said rents for each unit in the building are about $500 a month.
Modular units are an important part of Toronto’s affordable housing program. Doug Rollins, interim executive director of the city’s housing secretariat, said the goal is to build 18,000 supporting housing units by 2030, some of which will be prefabricated.
Rollins said the city recently built a five-story, 64-unit prefabricated building on Kingston Road in the East Side, with rents based on income per tenant.
“It will remain affordable and as income changes, their rents will change.”
Other modular housing projects ongoing elsewhere in Toronto, builders say they are seeing increased demand for prefabricated homes.
Luke Moir, who manages the Ossington Avenue project, said it was a “good example” of how to change unused land in the city center.
“It’s a difficult problem,” he said of prefabricated housing as a solution to housing shortages.
Moir, who works as project manager for Assembly Corp., the contractor who builds homes for St. Clare, said the destructiveness of such construction projects is not that disturbing, because most components are made out of wood and assembly offsite, meaning “much less nailing and explosions, then no dust and grinding.”
In Ottawa, Theberge Group’s company is working on a home built at its first factory near Westborough. Production began in early February. The modules were brought to the site in mid-March and were established in just three days.
The project is scheduled to be fully completed by the end of June and the first tenant is expected to move in on July 1.
Jeremy Silburt, the company’s director of planning and development acquisitions, said Theberge is expected to start some more for-profit modular home projects by the end of the summer.
He said the nonprofit has contacted the company to build affordable homes, adding that modular homes have cut construction time by one third.
“So it allowed us to be cheaper, but it was also very quick, which saved us a lot of money and time,” he said.
Smaller cities in Ontario also feature modular buildings to quickly build small houses.
Peterborough built a 50-unit complex in 2023, London built a 61-unit building in 2022, and Marathon, a town 300 kilometers east of Thunder Bay, plans to carry out a similar 20-unit project.
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Housing construction Housing affordability Modular housing real estate
Last modified: May 17, 2025
