B.C. First Nation Tackles Rural Housing Crunch with Prefab Design, Locally-Sourced Wood

The two-storey Timber House model home in the Nak’azdli Whuten community near Fort St. James in northern British Columbia may help solve the housing crunch on regional First Nation reserves and northern communities at a time when the federal government is pushing for more modular and prefabricated housing.

It grew from a partnership between Nak’azdli Development Corporation and Deadwood Innovations that upgrades damaged wood fibre into a usable and saleable product. As well as integrating traditional knowledge and practices into sustainable housing development and sustainable forestry, the partnership is helping a regional forest industry meet major challenges.

The Timber House uses the low-grade, locally-sourced wood to produce prefabricated housing kits for northern communities.

“It is really timely,” says architect Neil Prakash. “The house that we’re just finishing… it’s in the same spirit of what the government sees as solutions to our housing crisis.”

The show home, which has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a loft, and an open-concept kitchen and living room, uses prefabricated mass timber panels that are made locally at the former Tl’oh Forest Products finger-joint plant, which forestry startup Deadwood Innovations is now using to upgrade lumber. It will be used as a model home for the next 18 months, then given to a Nak’azdli family or Elder.

“Why we wanted to go about doing this, primarily it was to figure out if we can do something that’s self-sustaining for housing, where you can use Nak’azdli forest licences and Nak’azdli workers and the construction company,” said John-Paul Wenger, CEO of Nak’azdli Whuten Development Corp. “Repurpose a facility [Tl’oh] that’s been down for years and create a product that is beneficial to the community.”

“The idea here is to commercialize a company that will produce mass timber houses within the region,” he explains. “You can build the panels through the winter months, and then in the summer you can erect the houses a lot quicker. The idea would be instead of producing two or three houses, we could maybe do 10 houses in this area with our construction crew and local contractors.”

Through a Mitacs-supported collaboration with the University of Northern British Columbia’s Wood Innovation Research Lab, Deadwood and Nak’azdli are developing a first-of-its-kind prefabricated mass timber housing system designed specifically for rural communities. By enabling housing kits to be created in controlled facilities during winter months, then assembled onsite in a matter of days, they are improving construction timelines, quality, and cost efficiency while strengthening the regional forestry supply chain.

“Because all the panels are pre-designed and prefabricated in the factory environment, the quality control can be much better compared to an onsite build,” says Jianhui Zhou, UNBC associate professor in wood engineering, who helped connect the project with Mitacs.

“Housing demand across Canada is real and, no matter where you live, everyone is looking for solutions,” says Deadwood CEO Owen Miller. “This Mitacs-supported research is allowing us to check all boxes when it comes to providing affordable, sustainable housing.”

DIGITAL, one of five Global Innovation Clusters funded by the Government of Canada via the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, gave several reasons for supporting the mass timber project.

For one, densifying aspen introduces a less expensive, faster-growing species into the mass timber market, which has been dominated by more expensive and slower-growing spruce, pine, and fir, and helps regenerate healthy, resilient forest ecosystems. For another, mass timber home kit production cuts housing construction time by 10 to 50% and offsite construction reduces construction costs by 10 to 20%.

By relying on high-grade logs and sawlogs, traditional lumber production limits use of low-grade logs, deciduous logs, and broken lumber, which is currently being used for pulp or pellets or left in slash piles. Deadwood’s proprietary technology provides a way to turn large amounts of underused fibre into saleable products.

“The technology presents an additional supply chain stream for the current low-end, off-spec fibre market,” says Miller.

With support from the B.C. Ministry of Forest’s Indigenous Forest Bioeconomy Program and the federal Investments in Forest Industry Transformation program, the Deadwood technology supports Indigenous leadership in the forest sector and reduces carbon emissions through its sequestration in wood products.

“A cornerstone of the project is a partnership between the Nak’azdli Whut’en community, private business, and public institutions that aligns with the values and priorities of the Indigenous peoples on whose land the project takes place,” said DIGITAL. “A commitment to sustainable and responsible forestry practices in Central British Columbia, an area increasingly prone to wildfires, is foundational.”

Establishing a comprehensive supply chain within the region will cut down on the carbon footprint from transporting materials, boost the local economy, and ensure stable, sustainable supply of aspen mass timber panels, while tapping into the First Nation’s resources and capabilities. It was groundbreaking for Nak’azdli to support a forestry technology start-up, Miller says.

Things tend to come full circle in Fort St. James. Owen Miller’s grandfather, Conrad, was plant manager at the old Northwood Pulp & Timber sawmill in Princeton, B.C., and his great-uncle Don was instrumental in designing the Tl’Oh Forest Products finger joint plant that provided steady employment for about 40 people between 1995 and 2015, when it closed due to market forces and fibre source uncertainties.

Timber House was a learning experience for the partners and the Nak’azdli construction crews who had never built prefabricated housing. “For them to be able to produce it themselves and also do it in a panelized system means that we can also partner with other First Nations and ship these panelized houses to other nations,” said Prakash.

The longer-term hope is to sell into Fort St. James itself, neighbouring Vanderhoof, and beyond, he said.