One of the two homes we rescued from Anthem Properties’ site in Coquitlam, up on steel beams and timber cribbing with the new building envelope going on before the move to Haida Gwaii. August 2026.

Renewal Development is rescuing two high-value homes from an Anthem Properties development site in Coquitlam and moving them to Old Massett — G̲aw Tlagée — on Haida Gwaii. Our Renewal Team is modernizing them here in Metro Vancouver first. Then they go north by road and barge. Along with a third home we rescued from another Coquitlam site earlier this year, each one becomes a triplex when it lands: three homes, three triplexes, nine units of on-reserve below-market rental housing for Old Massett Village Council. Renewal Development is the project lead, general contracting the whole thing from the site in Coquitlam to the foundations in Old Massett.

Old Massett has a critical shortage of good housing, and every new home has to cross open water to get there. Building new in a remote community takes longer and costs more, because trades, products and materials are hard to come by. Modular has to be built and assembled in a factory before it makes the same crossing. We take a third route: rescue good homes — well renovated, well maintained and structurally sound — from a growing urban area, do the modernizing where the trades and materials are, and ship finished homes. In our experience that saves the communities we work with 20-30% compared with new construction or modular, and it keeps the embodied carbon already built into these homes in use instead of sending it to landfill and starting over with new materials.

Eleven homes on the site, two rescued

Eleven single-family homes stood on Anthem’s site in Coquitlam. Renewal Development provided Anthem a one-stop-shop site clearing service — abatement, demolition and debris removal — leaving the site ready for redevelopment under a single contract. Our team picked out the two homes in the best condition — well maintained, structurally sound, with decades of life left in them — and priced the job accordingly: demolishing nine homes instead of eleven let Renewal Development underbid a traditional full-demolition contract. Anthem got its site cleared for less than conventional demolition would have cost, and kept as many good homes and good building materials out of the landfill as possible. Old Massett Village Council, as the receiving community, covered the cost of moving the two best homes off Anthem’s site. The other nine homes we took down responsibly, with the concrete, wood and metals sorted for recycling.

“There is a critical shortage of good housing within Old Massett,” said Donald “Duffy” Edgars, Chief Councillor of Old Massett Village Council. “Our Band sought fast, cost-effective, climate resilient housing that demonstrates resource leadership. We take pride in providing solutions for our members while also demonstrating our commitment to sustainability and climate change leadership. We are grateful to Renewal Development for bringing forward a plan that works for our community here in Haida Gwaii and to Anthem Properties for their collaboration and support.”

Modernize first, then move

The homes are mid-century houses. The work that would normally wait until they arrive — new siding, roofing and windows — is happening right now in Coquitlam, where Renewal Development has a deep bench of trades and a ready supply of products and materials. On Haida Gwaii those are scarce, and anything you order arrives by barge. Doing the modernizing here and shipping finished homes is the innovation at the heart of this project, and it is where most of the time and cost savings come from. Relocating a home as-is and modernizing it after it lands is how the industry has typically done this; Renewal Development flips that order. We also aren’t running a modular factory — we modernized these homes on Anthem’s own site, at no facility cost, and we’re now working with local governments on leasing bare land for the same purpose, so this model can scale beyond one site at a time.

The third home, which we rescued from a Coquitlam site earlier this year, with roofing and envelope work underway before it heads north.

The route north

Once the envelope work is done, we lift each home onto a trailer, truck it out of Coquitlam and load it onto a barge for the run up the coast. Our Renewal Development team has taken on all of the logistics: the permits, the structural and marine engineering, the barge loading plan, and an offload at Old Massett that has to happen near slack tide, because the currents there set the working window. The move is scheduled for late September.

What arrives in Old Massett

Old Massett — G̲aw Tlagée — is a Haida village on the north coast of Graham Island, one of the two Haida communities represented by the Council of the Haida Nation. When each home lands, we set it over two new-build garden suites on a single foundation. In our concept design the renovated home keeps its three bedrooms and open living area upstairs, and each garden suite at grade gets its own entrance, a bedroom, a full bath, a living room and a kitchen. A 1,400 sq ft rescued home becomes roughly 2,800 sq ft of housing in three self-contained units. Final layouts will follow the sites and the Nation’s direction.

Concept for one triplex: the rescued home above, two new-build garden suites at grade. Draft concept by Kasa Design for Renewal Development; final layouts will follow the sites and the Nation’s direction.

What the numbers show

The project in numbers:

11 single-family homes stood on the Anthem site; we rescued 2 and took down 9 responsibly, with concrete, wood and metals sorted for recycling
3 high-value homes rescued by Renewal Development in total, including one from another Coquitlam site earlier this year
9 units of on-reserve below-market rental housing — one triplex per home
20-30% saving compared with new construction or modular
2,800 sq ft of housing from each 1,400 sq ft rescued home in our concept design

Why it works

This is a housing project that Old Massett Village Council is directing, with relocation as the means — not a relocation project the Nation was invited to join. The Council set the brief: fast, cost-effective, climate resilient housing that shows resource leadership. Anthem was willing to try something other than the default on a site where demolition was the easy answer. And Renewal Development brought forward a plan that works, and we are general contracting it from concept to completion.

Too many good homes are ending up in our landfills. Every year thousands of high-value homes are torn down across British Columbia because moving them looks harder than knocking them down. It isn’t an engineering problem. It’s that nobody has done it here yet, so nobody does it here. As far as we’ve been able to determine, modernizing rescued homes at their point of origin and shipping them finished to a remote community hasn’t been done before in Canada — and maybe not anywhere. Every home we move off a redevelopment site intact and deliver as housing to a community that needs it makes the next one easier. This fall, we are taking three more across open water to do exactly that.

Much appreciation to Old Massett Village Council and Chief Councillor Edgars for the direction and the trust, to Anthem Properties for their collaboration and for choosing diversion over demolition wherever it was possible, to the City of Coquitlam, and to the trades, movers and marine crews working alongside our Renewal Team to get three homes to Haida Gwaii. Many more to come.

If you’re a developer with good homes headed for demolition, or a community that needs housing delivered faster and for less, get in touch. We’d like to make this the normal outcome, not the remarkable one.

Coquitlam to Haida Gwaii: Three Rescued Homes Become Nine Units of Housing for Old Massett Village Council