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

The Urban Haida Dance Group — Tagwan Xaadaa — opens our pre-move reception on Anthem’s site at 545 Appian Way in Coquitlam, with one of the rescued homes loaded behind them. September 22, 2026.

Renewal Development is rescuing three high-value homes from Coquitlam and moving them to Old Massett — G̲aw Tlagée — on Haida Gwaii. Two come from an Anthem Properties development site on Appian Way; the third we rescued from another Coquitlam site earlier this year. Our Renewal Team modernized all three here in Metro Vancouver first. On September 22 we gathered on the Anthem site with Old Massett Village Council, Anthem, the City of Coquitlam and the family who once called one of these homes theirs, to send them off. Each home 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.

Sending them off

On the morning of September 22 we hosted a pre-move reception on Anthem’s site at 545 Appian Way, with the homes up on steel beams and ready for the road. The Urban Haida Dance Group — Tagwan Xaadaa — opened the gathering. Chief Councillor Donald “Duffy” Edgars of Old Massett Village Council, Mark Kopinya of Anthem Properties, Coquitlam City Councillor Craig Hodge and our CEO Glyn Lewis spoke, and Global News, CTV News and the Vancouver Sun came out to cover it. As Glyn put it on the day, it takes a village to rescue, relocate, modernize and repurpose good homes from growing urban areas to non-urban communities in need. This project has one.

“Our goal is to provide safe, affordable, climate-resilient homes for our people while respecting and protecting the land we call home,” said Chief Councillor Edgars. “The Renewal Homes concept aligns with our governing values of respect and responsibility.”

“Anthem is always looking for practical ways to reduce construction and demolition waste and extend the life of materials and buildings where it makes sense,” said Mark Kopinya, Senior Vice President, Development, Anthem Properties. “By providing these two homes to Renewal Development, we’re helping keep valuable materials out of the landfill while supporting the creation of much-needed housing in Old Massett.”

“When a house still has decades of useful life left, demolition shouldn’t be the only option we consider,” said Coquitlam City Councillor Craig Hodge. “Here, two homes that would have disappeared from this site are instead going to Old Massett, where they’ll become six below-market rental homes. That’s exactly the kind of practical reuse we need to see more of.”

Former homeowners Ashley, Julie and Gary (front, from left) at the September 22 pre-move reception on Anthem’s Coquitlam site.

“I am elated and ever so grateful that our former home of sixty plus years has escaped the wrecking ball,” said Julie Falcon, whose family once owned the home at 545 Appian Way. “I felt such relief when I heard the house would be moved and filled with life once again. We are grateful to Anthem Properties, Renewal Development and the Old Massett Village Council for leading with such thoughtfulness and stewardship. Our whole family is incredibly excited and look forward to visiting our former home once it’s in its new community in Haida Gwaii.”

The Falcon family home at 545 Appian Way in Coquitlam, in an early photo from the family album.

From left: Glyn Lewis, CEO, Renewal Development; Craig Hodge, Coquitlam City Councillor; Donald “Duffy” Edgars, Chief Councillor, Old Massett Village Council; and Mark Kopinya, Senior Vice President, Development, Anthem Properties, at the September 22 pre-move reception on Anthem’s Coquitlam site.

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.

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.

“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 homes are on their way. Two of the three are already at Kiewit’s marine yard on the Fraser River, moved overnight on September 22 and 24, and the last leaves the Anthem site on September 27. On September 28 our Renewal Team loads all three onto a barge for the 439-nautical-mile (813 km) run up the coast — about three days — arriving in Old Massett around October 1.

One of the rescued homes on the move overnight through Coquitlam, on its way to Kiewit’s marine yard on the Fraser River. September 25, 2026.

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

  • 439 nautical miles (813 km) by barge from the Fraser River to Old Massett — about three days on the water

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.

In the news

The send-off drew coverage across Metro Vancouver:

A few points from the coverage are worth repeating. Chief Councillor Edgars told the Vancouver Sun that about 450 people live on reserve in Old Massett, out of a membership of about 4,500, and that Indigenous Services Canada has committed to 101 new lots. Looking ahead, he said: “We talked about maybe 17. We’re going to start with three just to see how they are.” The Sun also reported that roughly 2,500 houses are demolished in Metro Vancouver every year. Every one of them is a home that could be doing what these three are about to do.

Much appreciation to Old Massett Village Council and Chief Councillor Edgars for the direction and the trust, to Anthem Properties and Mark Kopinya for their collaboration and for choosing diversion over demolition wherever it was possible, to Councillor Craig Hodge and the City of Coquitlam, to the Falcon family for sharing their home’s story, to the Urban Haida Dance Group — Tagwan Xaadaa — for opening our gathering, to Kiewit for the use of its marine yard, 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.

Affordable Housing, Partnerships, Renewal Homes, SustainabilityGlyn Lewis