Future B.C. schools could be built using modular housing, B.C. Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman told Business in Vancouver last week.
“You could build and design an all-day kindergarten with all the amenities in it and deliver it onsite to a school if you didn’t have the capacity within a school,” said Coleman, who has been an modular home enthusiast since he worked at a Penticton manufacturer decades ago.
He said modular school structures would provide the province with more flexibility because the structures could be easily moved if the student population were to drop at one school and swell at another.
Parents and education critics have blasted Victoria for allowing children in fast-growing districts such as Surrey to attend classes in so-called “portable classrooms” year after year.
Modular schools would be different from those structures, which Coleman referred to as “trailers.”
Modular structures can have plumbing and all the amenities that “stick-built” structures have, he said.
The B.C. government spent $20 million to convert 320 units, which were part of the former Whistler athletes’ village, into 156 permanent homes in communities such as Sechelt, Chilliwack, Enderby, Saanich, Chetwynd and Surrey.
Coleman then decided to spend $124 million to build another 1,308 housing units to enable seniors to stay in small communities such as McBride or Valemount. Coleman said about half of those units will be modular.
“I would defy anybody to tell me which [of the 1,308 new social housing units] are modular and which ones were stick-built. They’re absolutely spectacular.”