B.C. experiments with ‘Lego block’ housing to fight homelessness

Stack them up. Take them down. Move them around. Repeat.

What could easily pass as a description of the children’s toy Lego could also be a portrait of British Columbia’s latest tool in the fight against homelessness.

The province is turning to modular housing to help with a critical lack of short-term accommodation. Temporary modular housing involves the construction of small, self-contained living quarters, which can be shipped directly from a factory and quickly assembled. Proponents applaud the technique not only for its cost savings, but also because it slashes delivery time from years to months.

“I liken it to being six months from idea to occupancy,” said Luke Harrison, CEO of the Vancouver Affordable Housing Agency.

Harrison’s organization has assembled 40 units, each about 23 square metres, in Vancouver as part of a pilot project.

Up to 600 more units are planned for the city with the help of $66 million from the provincial government. Another 2,000 modular units are planned across B.C. over two years.

Permanent housing can take years to get approved and built, but prefabricated modules can quickly be moved to new locations and reassembled in new configurations depending on local needs. As a result, vacant sites waiting to be developed are suddenly candidates for temporary complexes that can house 50 or more people.