How Governments Could Actually Help Home Construction

We’re all agreed that there’s a housing crisis in Canada. And there’s a fairly broad consensus on at least some of the contributing factors, including out-of-control immigration and weak construction numbers. But I, for one, don’t think that anyone has yet presented a solid, comprehensive solution - including the Liberal campaign’s truly terrifying proposal to pour billions of dollars into building and managing public housing (on top of the billions of dollars they’ve already fruitlessly sunk into programs like their National Housing Strategy Act).

Part of the problem is that there might not be a solid, comprehensive solution - even taking into account my own survey of smart approaches from a few months back.

But is there any way for governments to make themselves even minimally useful? Given that there isn’t going to be any single magic bullet here, I’m going to suggest that there might just be something fast and cheap where they could make a difference. And the inspiration for this idea came from a recent UK failure.

The people behind the Tract project recently released a valuable postmortem documenting the collapse of their startup. The idea behind Tract involved harnessing software tools and AI integrations to allow developers to:

• Identify and secure land with long-term development potential before it received planning permission

• Identify small, overlooked sites, secure planning permission and, optionally, off-load them to next-stage developers

• Integrate project elements with map layers with planning data

• Assist planning consultants and developers in drafting planning and application documents

• Provide an integrated database of planning information including site constraints, local policies, past applications

In addition, Tract built a free application for landowners to encourage them to reveal their openness to development, thereby generating leads for developers or Tract itself as a tech-enabled land promoter.

The Tract postmortem identified problems that mostly came down to unexpectedly weak consumer demand, existing market segment competition, and overambitious spending. But the technology itself seems to have worked just fine.

The goals driving Tract are actually compelling, and particularly in the Canadian context. For instance, a Tract-like application could analyze aggregated data from MLS, municipal zoning, and land registries to identify underutilized or overlooked sites faster than manual processes. This could unlock land for small and medium-sized developers, who are often priced out of prime markets. Identifying 1,000 viable sites in just the GTA, each yielding 10-20 units, could add 10,000-20,000 homes annually.