By Cheryl Jahn

Homebuilders have plans moving through 2025

Jan 7, 2025 | 4:03 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Housing and home building are two very hot topics of late and there is now a new face running the local Homebuilders Association. Kathrine Carlson.

“Kathy comes with a wealth of experience as well, and so she has all the basics and she’s used to being in a self-driven role with the role that she previously held,” says Angèle Heinrichs, President of CHBA Northern BC.

And Carlson has some plans of her own. Her background with the Railway and Forestry Museum means heritage is near to her heart. But there is a more immediate plan.

“Some of the things that I’m going to bring include collaborative work advocacy, which is a really significant. And looking at different ways that we can address issues about fire mitigation, specifically around residential homes.”

It’s an interesting time for homebuilders with things like legislated housing expectations to new energy efficiency requirements. A new requirement is coming down the pipe in the BC Building Code. Currently, the Province requires new homes to be thirty per cent more energy efficient than those in 2018. But that will change in less than two years.

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“Step Four is a fairly significant jump. It’s 40 per cent more [energy efficiency] than 2018,” explains Heinrichs. “It’s just such a much higher percentage jump than just going from a code to the 0 to 20 per cent. It’s is much easier to achieve than the 20 to 40 per cent.”

The local Homebuilders Association represents builders all over Northern BC; from 100 Mile House to the Yukon border, Haida Gwaii to the Alberta border and half of the Association’s job is convincing the government that one size doesn’t necessarily fit all.

But she says the good news is that those policy-makers are listening and it makes a huge difference in how many of the decisions are being crafted.