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A window into the future because, as the , the construction technique relies on modular pieces constructed in a factory then assembled on the site like Lego bricks, rather than being individually custom-built on the site. It’s a method that allows for faster and cheaper mass production of homes — a success story in countries such as Sweden and Japan — and combined with using government-owned land and having the government oversee the project, it promises a way through part of the logjam that constricts our housing supply.

And it isn’t just at city hall that they think so. Prime Minister Mark Carney just got elected with a prominent promise to put this method to work at large scale across the country. A big part of his promise to “get government back into the business of building housing” involves providing $25 billion in financing to scale up the modular and prefabricated home industry, creating a government developer to get the projects done, and building some of it on public land.

This project in Willowdale would seem to be a demonstration of that concept in local action. But here’s the hitch: This project was , with a plan to have the units open and occupied by 2022. If you check your calendar, you’ll see we’re years behind. And if you check the spreadsheets at city hall, you’ll also see we’re tens of millions overbudget.��

It wasn’t any problem with the construction method that caused the problems. It was politics. Local luxury home developers and NIMBY neighbours banded together to oppose the project. Cynically spineless local and provincial politicians joined them. Together they used the SNAFU of regulatory and appeals processes to keep pushing construction further and further down the line.��

And while they did that, the already-completed pieces of that project sat rotting, first on a holding lot and then in a warehouse, causing the cost to go from $14.6 million to $36.3 million.

It didn’t have to be that way, and in other cases it was not that way. A . An earlier project on .��

Those and other city projects (on Dovercourt Road and Dundalk Drive) show the potential for this kind of construction to provide the quick wins that are possible in the Liberal government’s plan — and the cost and construction time frames can only be expected to go down if the number of units goes way up.

But the Cummer project also shows how easily that path can be complicated, in just the way that so many things are complicated: by politics and process. It is easy to say we all want more housing, generally. But virtually anywhere you propose to build it, specifically, the people who live nearby will scream and whine and fight. The bureaucratic process we have in place allows them to drag that fight out. The politicians who represent them often find that they have suddenly misplaced their spines, and they join the NIMBYs in their opposition rather than using their power and influence to help overcome it.

So at the outset, any government looking to take a winning method of building housing that’s worked on one or two sites and replicate it on thousands of sites needs to anticipate the thousands of NIMBYs who will rise up to oppose each and every one of them. And it needs to streamline the process in advance, and prepare the political environment, to scale up the method of overcoming those objections just as much as it scales up the method of physical production.

That the Cummer Avenue housing development is now under construction is a good news story. But like so many in this city, it’s also a story of good news too-long delayed. As our governments prepare to build on its success, they should also learn from its struggles.