Northern Ontario First Nations create DIY housing kits to tackle housing crisis

Faith Greco · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 10, 2025 3:14 PM EDT | Last Updated: 11 hours ago

In bluish Ontario, First Nations communities person watched modular homes arrive, lone to deteriorate and beryllium condemned wrong 2 decades.

Frustrated with impermanent solutions, 3 First Nations successful the Chapleau country launched a non-profit inaugural successful 2019 to physique homes utilizing do-it-yourself gathering kits.

The One Bowl Housing Corporation was named aft the Dish with One Spoon wampum, a awesome of shared resources and corporate responsibility, according to concern improvement manager Candace Larsen.

"If we're each eating from 1 bowl, and if we're each utilizing 1 spoon and lone taking what we request astatine the end, we'd beryllium ensuring the sustainability and the equitability of everything other astir us," said Larsen.

Thermal log technology

One Bowl's attack is built connected what Larsen refers to arsenic a "tree-to-home proviso chain." 

These kits see doors, windows, a prefabricated frame, and thermal logs — a worldly designed specifically for acold climates. The logs dwell of achromatic conifer connected the exterior and interior, with expanded polystyrene insulation successful the middle.

Those logs are presently made from achromatic conifer harvested in Québec, but One Bowl hopes to soon beryllium producing that worldly successful bluish Ontario. 

"You stack [the thermal logs] like you would Legos, and astatine the extremity of the day, you past person a precocious quality, culturally and climatically due ammunition for your home," Larsen said.

When assembled, the effect looks similar a accepted log cabin, but with improved thermal ratio that tin trim heating costs during the region's harsh winters.

Cost effectual and self-sufficient

One Bowl's homes outgo an mean of $350 per quadrate ft for afloat turnkey construction, with ammunition costs betwixt $100 to $130 per quadrate foot. In comparison, accepted lodging successful distant Ontario regions typically costs astir $650 per quadrate foot.

So far, One Bowl has helped physique 22 homes successful Ontario — astir 20 successful the Chapleau country and 2 off-reserve. Most of the homes are duplexes. 

One Bowl besides precocious shipped 15 kits to the James Bay Coast, wherever Larsen said grooming is present underway successful Kashechewan First Nation, to thatch assemblage members how to conception the homes themselves, without relying connected extracurricular contractors.

"That 15-day grooming programme truly is that cardinal portion that volition guarantee that section capableness has the self-sufficiency to physique their homes agelong word and summation the magnitude of homes that they're gathering arsenic well," she explained.

By the extremity of 2025, the institution expects to person trained implicit 50 individuals and invested much than $500,000 into First Nations communities crossed the province, according to Larsen.