24 Sussex’s fate should be tied to solving Canada’s housing crisis.

The reasons for this rat-infested mansion and Canada’s housing crisis are the same.

From afar, the official residence of the Prime Minister of Canada looks like the picture of Laurentian elegance - a stately, imposing manor on the banks of the river that flows through the nation's capital city.

Reality is a different matter entirely. 

This week, reports emerged that the residence was in such a state of decay that the walls were stuffed with the carcasses of dead rodents, asbestos, mould, and unsafe wiring. A recent report by the National Capital Commission suggested that it would take the federal government an eyewatering $40M to repair the residence. And even though it's vacant - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lives in the nearby Rideau Cottage - it still costs taxpayers an arm and a leg to keep utilities running.

But even as 24 Sussex has been left to crumble and moulder, Canada is experiencing a historic affordable housing supply crisis, which is the root cause of most social inclusion issues. 

In 2021, an average household would have had to spend nearly 60% of its income on housing. With interest rates soaring, a record number of Canadians report having given up on the dream of ever owning a home. The Toronto Star reports that the country needs to double its home-building pace to match the rate of sorely-needed immigration. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation calculates that Canada needs to build nearly 6 million new homes in just seven years to address the issue.

However, despite the federal government throwing billions at the issue, little progress has been made in building more homes. Complex issues like the cost of construction (lack of and cost of skilled construction labour, rising costs of home building materials), outdated zoning regulations, NIMBYism, rigid bylaws on the type of homes that can be built in a neighborhood, and myopic thinking about neighborhood layout have all contributed to the dearth of supply. 

Perhaps most importantly, a lack of political will to change the status quo underlies everything.

And this is where the fate of 24 Sussex and millions of Canadians who cannot afford a home are intertwined. 

If our federal government can't come up with enough out-of-the-box thinking to come up with a politically palatable path to restore the most prominent residence in the country, how in the hell is it going to build nearly 6 million homes in seven years?

To solve the national housing crisis, all levels of government need to begin with a mindset of radical change to overcome the inertia of bureaucracy and status quo thinking. It requires a moonshot-type approach where "we can't do this because…" becomes verboten when building more homes.

Wild ideas should be encouraged. 

Take, for example, the 24 Sussex problem. Why not tie rebuilding the nation's official residence to reaching Canada's 2030 housing supply target of six million new homes? 

Even assuming the National Capital Commission's ridiculously bananas claim that it will cost $40M to get it back up to snuff are true, that amount divided by the 6 million homes Canada needs to build by 2030 is $6 per new home. Every time a new home is built between now and 2030, the federal government could put $6 away for the repair/rebuild of the residence. 

Whichever home builder built the most homes during that time could be granted a lucrative contract to build the place within a set time, with 25-year naming rights and no bureaucracy to get in the way. 

This approach could solve the political problem of rebuilding the Prime Minister's residence at a time when millions of Canadians can't afford housing and create an incentive for the nation's top leader to get the job of building more affordable homes done. 

The point of this example is that there are solutions to address seemingly unsolvable complex problems like the housing crisis. The government should be looking for them, but they aren’t. The magnitude of the housing crisis requires our government to embrace big, non-obvious ideas with a can-do attitude and an agile and motivated bureaucracy that acts as an enabler as opposed to….dare I say it….a pearl-clutching gatekeeper.

In 2030, I'd much rather attend the grand opening of the Cardel or Claridge Centre for Housing Prime Ministers at 24 Sussex in honour of Canada building 6 million homes than deal with the social injustices the current rat-infested, social poverty trajectory our government's lack of innovative thinking has set our country upon.