NRCan’s Jonathan Wilkinson released Canada’s Green Building Strategy—to transform Canada’s building sector. The Forest Product Association of Canada’s Derek Nighbor welcomes Canada’s strategy—notes room for improvement. In related news: Simon Fraser University looks to mass timber for housing; Mercer will supply timbers for Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library; and the latest on BC Wood’s Global Buyers Mission.
In Forestry news: Ottawa’s caribou plan will cut 4.1% of Quebec’s ‘forestry land’; Weyerhaeuser’s herbicide spraying to be closely monitored; Minnesota looks to employ Indigenous forest knowledge; and prescribed burning said to enhance Nevada and California’s forest resilience. In Wildfire news: Oregon’s governor declares state-wide state of emergency; BC First Nation issues evacuation order near Spences Bridge; and Ontario firefighters are sent to assist in BC and Alberta.
Finally, California’s wildfires are burning far more land so far this year than in 2023.
Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority says a new four-lane overpass crossing the rail lines at Holdom Avenue in Burnaby will increase rail capacity for Port of Vancouver terminals, supporting the reliable movement of goods through the region. Construction the overpass crossing the rail lines at Holdom Avenue in Burnaby will begin later this year. The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is delivering the Holdom Overpass project in partnership with the City of Burnaby, CN and the Government of Canada. …The rail corridor through Burnaby is the only rail connection to transport goods and commodities to and from port terminals located in North Vancouver, a vital link in the national supply chain. …The rail corridor moves more than 40 million metric tonnes of export cargo, accounting for more than 40 per cent of the port’s total international exports in 2023.
New US home construction picked up in June, though a decline in single-family housing starts to an eight-month low underscored a real estate market challenged by high interest rates. Total housing starts increased 3% to a 1.35 million annualized rate last month, driven by a 19.6% surge in multifamily construction, according to government data released Wednesday. Starts of one-family homes fell for a fourth straight month. Building permits, a proxy of future construction activity, rose 3.4% to a 1.45 million annual rate, also driven by a pickup in applications for multifamily projects. Authorizations for single-family homes decreased 2.3% to the slowest pace in more than a year. The strong pace of single-family construction seen at the end of last year is fading. The report also showed the number of homes under construction dropped to the lowest level since the start of 2022, suggesting builders are focused on keeping inventory more in line with demand.
NAHB analysis of the Survey of Construction shows that 72.4% of new single-family homes started in 2023 were built on slab foundations, 16.6% were built with full or partial basements, and 9.9% with crawl spaces. The share of new homes built on slabs has risen steadily from 45.8% in 2000 to 72.4% in 2023. The largest increase occurred from 2022 to 2023, with a jump of 3.9 percentage points (pp), compared to an average increase of 1.93 pp over the previous five years. Conversely, the share of homes with full or partial basements decreased by 3.0 pp from 19.6% in 2022 to 16.6% 2023. In colder areas where building codes require foundations to be built below the frost line, most homes are constructed with full or partial basements. The divisions with a majority share of full or partial basements in new homes are West North Central (63.9%), followed by New England (62.1%), Middle Atlantic (48.1%), and East North Central (48.0%). 
