A home described as the first of its kind now stands in the Nak’azdli Whuten community near Fort St. James, B.C.
The home is a prototype for an Indigenous-led housing system that uses low-grade locally-sourced wood to produce prefabricated housing kits for northern communities.
The concept is to take trees from the local territory, mill them locally, and then have local workers use that lumber to build panels, which are then used to construct a house in a matter of days.
“You can build the panels through the winter months, and then in the summer you can erect the houses a lot quicker. The idea would be instead of producing two or three houses, we could maybe do 10 houses in this area with our construction crew and local contractors.”
For many places, this could cut to costs of a lot down where places are allowing lot splitting. I’ve noticed its common for a family to build a smaller house in the backyard, where zoning laws allow it, so that their kids/parents/in-laws/best friend can live there.
Is it as great as having your own lot? Probably not but it would cut down a lot of costs, keeps you close to family and beats the hell out of living in the basement instead.