Hinesh Chauhan speaks about his passion for building and affordable housing, rooted in his public-service experience and family background as the child of immigrants. He explains that his work overseeing federal infrastructure stimulus programs shaped his focus on getting value for taxpayers and understanding where housing initiatives fall short. Chauhan critiques current incentives—municipal revenue losses from smaller/faster housing designs and permitting barriers—which he argues discourage industry from building lower-cost, quicker-to-deliver dwellings despite the housing crisis.
Chapters
Do you think that is what led you to seeing, you described seeing that devastation and being able to rebuild, which is an amazing thing to be a part of. Do you think that's why you're so passionate now about building, because you spoke of housing that you were planning on? Yeah. After, after full time service, I moved into our federal public service and getting Canadians value for money was something I, I took a lot of pride in doing and understanding what the government did, what it provided, why provided what it did or does, and meeting with stakeholders and understanding challenges. And as time went on, I just really took the time to understand what the challenges were, how our tax dollars are best spent, what communities or what initiatives need that support. And I think there's always been this drive in me to, to do something that's, that, that's meaningful. I want to wake up every day knowing that I'm making an impact and not just making money for some corporation. So where that comes from, probably those values came from my parents as well. They, they immigrated here. They came from very limited means and, and just living in a family that had limited means, understanding other challenges socioeconomically. I just became really curious about it and, and what I studied and what I read. I don't read fiction. I read non fiction because I just has have this immense thirst. And part of that is looking at patterns over history to understand why we are where we are. So looking at that, looking at the trends going forward, looking at how the marginalized segments of our population and other initiatives that lack grit or the ability to really deliver on then drove me into that space. So having overseen Canada's infrastructure stimulus programs last two rounds at the federal level, looking at how certain initiatives provide good to the country and where those things are lacking have moved me into the space of desiring to change or create solutions for affordable housing or housing in general. Because we've been doing things the same way for decades, there's time to look at how we do differently. How can we build better, faster, stronger, cheaper dwellings to resolve our crisis? Because even the initiatives that are coming out, for example, there's an initiative right now where Post World War II housing, the designs established, getting the approvals to create faster housing, it's not getting traction. And we have to ask ourselves why. And my, my question is always follow the money. When you've got a dwelling or a design that doesn't need approvals, is going to pay less property taxes, requires less materials, where's the incentive for industry to actually step in? Municipalities are losing revenue with these. The smaller design and a lack of permitting approvals that are required. Not that they're not required, that you don't have to go through the standard planning process where they collect these fees. So why would anybody be incentivized to build smaller housing faster to solve the crisis?
