Gord Rattray
The Factory-Built Housing Industry for Town and Country
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anufactured home, modular home, trailer, mobile home, trailer park, mobile home park, manufactured home park and/or community, off-site construction, secondary home, on-site construction, land-lease community . . .
Those terms are loosely, and in many cases incorrectly, used to explain homes built in factories and the locations to which the homes may located. The Canadian factory-built housing industry is working diligently to bring consistency to the terminology and provide further education on the origin, evolution, and the future of this innovative and growing industry.
The Canadian factory-built housing industry is working diligently to…provide further education on the origin, evolution, and the future of this innovative and growing industry. sustainable solutions and innovative designs that meet discerning homeownership needs. The original travel-trailers and mobile homes were, by design, never
intended to be long-term structures, because of the materials used and the specific construction practices. Looking to move beyond the original short-term accommodation intent of those homes, the industry built a relationship with the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) in the early 1970s. Under the leadership of the CSA, the CSA Z240MH standard was created, essentially stipulating building requirements that must be met, ranging from steel-frame construction practices to the types of electrical, plumbing, lumber, insulation products, and more.
The intention of this article is not to resolve the terminology matters— although it can hopefully provide some rationale for the basis of many of those terms, but to speak to the many factory-built housing products being utilized in urban and rural areas in British Columbia. Factory-built housing today has evolved a long way from its postwar travel-trailer beginnings. Today’s factory-building methods are continually undergoing adaptation to remain on the forefront of providing Volume 27 Number 3 Fall 2018
Modular Laneway Home CSA A277 Project constructed near UBC The Scrivener | www.notaries.bc.ca/scrivener
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