The Work Unit for the Implementation of Student Housing (UTILE) is teaming up with a major player in the construction industry to speed up the delivery of its projects. The organization will announce this Thursday in Rimouski a new partnership with Les Industries Bonneville, a local company specializing in prefabricated houses and apartments.
This is what several sources have indicated to The Presson the eve of the announcement. L’UTILE is a social economy enterprise specializing in the construction of student housing.
Founded in 2013, in the wake of the student strikes, the organization has launched 13 real estate projects to date, four of which have already been delivered — two in Montreal, one in Quebec City and one in Trois-Rivières. The others are still in development.
But UTILE now wants to deliver more and faster. To achieve this, the organization is proposing a “modular manufacturing” approach, in order to take advantage of student housing “as a standardized product that can generate high volume,” according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) website.
On its website, this federal agency has made public in the last few days the list of semi-finalists of the fifth cycle of its Housing Supply Challenge competition, of which UTILE is one. Each of these semi-finalists obtained a federal grant of one million dollars to finance their project.
UTILE intends to use these funds primarily to conduct research and development around this new project, the stated aim of which is to “form a consortium of stakeholders to eliminate obstacles and improve processes throughout the modular housing production chain.”
Solutions to the crisis
An alliance with Les Industries Bonneville, which specializes in modular and prefabricated housing, was therefore a natural fit. This family business from Belœil, founded in 1961, had already announced last year its intention to “completely review” its approach to construction in the context of the housing crisis in Quebec.
Prefabricated apartment buildings “are emerging as a solution to this problem,” the company argued at the time, announcing the delivery of a 24-unit building, named Le Cohab, on avenue Carmen-Bienvenue in Belœil.
At that time, Les Industries Bonneville also had several other multi-unit housing projects underway, including one with 48 apartments in Lanaudière and another with 115 apartments in the Laurentians.
As for UTILE, its projects delivered or in progress total some 2,000 low-cost apartments to date, with a total investment of just over $554 million.
Last year, the organization notably rose to the top 100 of the fastest growing companies in Canada, according to the prestigious ranking of Report on Business.