Who Are Homes For?
Who are homes for? This isn’t a trick question. Who are homes for?
People.
We build homes for people. It sounds obvious, almost silly to say it out loud. But it’s worth repeating: homes exist because folks need places to live.
What’s not simple is the process it takes to actually build a home. It’s so complex, so tangled in competing priorities, that it’s easy to forget the person at the center of it all. Yes, in the end, a person may move in, but that home often wasn't built for them.
There are countless interests at play: policy, zoning, financing, parking, and design constraints. Yes, each of these elements can be justified. They’re meant to serve people, too. But taken together, the system they create doesn’t prioritize people, it prioritizes process.
Think about cars as an example.
Yes, cars are for people and supposed to make our lives easier and better. The convenience and choices cars provide people can’t be denied, but cars also take priority over people all the time
We’ve structured our entire approach to housing around the needs of cars. In many cases, if a development can’t accommodate enough parking spaces, it can’t be built at all. It doesn’t matter if there’s room for people to live if there’s no space for cars, people don’t get to move in. We don’t ask, “Is this a good place for someone to live?” We ask, “Where will the cars go?”
Then come the property line setbacks, density limits, neighbourhood character guidelines, and countless other regulations. Again, these rules weren’t created with bad intentions. Each had a logic when it was introduced and in a vacuum can make sense. But now, layered together, they often create a barrier to building the kinds of homes people need today.
And that’s before we even talk about money.
It’s not a secret that lots of condo development was driven by investors. That means that what was being designed and built was not what people wanted to live in, but what could make the return on investment that an investor was looking for.
The cost of construction is high. Investors expect a return. Developers, understandably, lean toward what's familiar. Building projects that have worked before, designs that have been approved before, units that meet market expectations are easy to determine cost. It’s possible a different approach could be cheaper but doing what’s been done means known cost. Innovation is risky, especially when delays can sink a project. So we get more of what’s already been built, homes shaped by financial predictability, not by livability.
This isn't about blaming any one group. Architects, engineers, planners, they’re all trying to deliver within the constraints they face. Everyone is doing their job. But the system itself has evolved into something that serves everyone except the person who will actually live in the home.
By the time a home is complete, the car has a parking space, the setbacks are checked, investors are satisfied, neighbourhood concerns are addressed, and the design is safe and familiar. What often hasn’t been prioritized at any point in the process is the lived experience of the person who will call that place home.
So we have to come back to the original question—who are homes for?
Because if we don’t start designing and building with folks at the center, we’ll keep getting housing that ticks every box except the one that matters most.
-Philip Mills
Philip Mills, CEO Habitat Waterloo Region
