Frequently Asked Questions

Brothers Mitch and Jeff Bloom founded The Bloom Group in 2023 to fulfill their goal of building sustainable and affordable rural communities that would be part of the solution to the fundamental gap in housing in Canada.  Their focus is on developing solutions for rural and smaller communities that lack sufficient housing and are interested in adding affordable multi-single homes in a pocket community format.

Village pocket homes are smaller format homes generally around 800 square feet.  They are built to provincial building code standards with full home amenities.

The Village is a cluster of village pocket homes where there is a blend of private and communal spaces.  The central focus is on neighbours and nature with a form of housing that supports overall individual well being though a shared sense of community.  We ascribe to the model of pocket communities where the layout of the community facilitates the bringing together of people, while creating a layering of private spaces where the environment is part of the living space.

During World War II the Canadian federal government created the Wartime Housing Corporation. Over 6 years during the 1940s it quickly built 46,000 standardized single family homes as rental units. They were between 700 and 1000 sq ft, with the majority of the dozens of pre-approved designs between 800 and 900 sq ft..  If you consider that the average size of a single-family home today in Ontario is almost 2400 sq ft...more than double what is was in the early 1970s, our pocket homes are "small" by today's standards and right in line with the size of the post WWII "strawberry box" homes.

The Village is built on sustainable principles, from initial construction and site development through ongoing operation.  

Factory built homes offers building efficiency with standardization promoting less waste during construction, resulting in less landfill requirements.  Homes are built to high efficiency standards featuring insulation and building envelopes that exceed Ontario building code standards.  Homes are fully electric with heat pump-based HVAC at the centre. Delivering completed homes to the community, also has the benefit of reducing the impact on the local environment at the time of construction.   The entire process of community construction will have a lower GHG footprint than any subdivision could attain.

In situ water and waste management based on communal servicing uses modern/mature technologies to manage services on site, avoiding the cost, time and environmental impact of stretching central urban services and their infrastructure beyond their identified area. 

The communities we are building are based on the concept of "rural densification."  This involves maximizing the number of single-family homes on private communal services per acre, with the same goal as "urban intensification," without the multi-story buildings and the need to tie into central services.  The cost of urban land promotes building vertically, whereas the cost of rural land allows building horizontally, thereby providing a solution based on single family homes.

The rural setting also aligns with the connection to nature, one of the principles underlying the village.

Furthermore, rural, privately serviced villages can be built much faster than homes in an urban setting, where gaining access to municipal central services can involve a long wait for developers.  That wait ultimately increases costs, while not responding to communities' housing needs on a timely basis. 

The communities we are building are based on the concept of "rural densification."  This involves maximizing the number of single-family homes on private communal services per acre, with the same goal as "urban intensification," without the multi-story buildings and the need to tie into central services.  The cost of urban land promotes building vertically, whereas the cost of rural land allows building horizontally, thereby providing a solution based on single family homes.

The rural setting also aligns with the connection to nature, one of the principles underlying the village.

Furthermore, rural, privately serviced villages can be built much faster than homes in an urban setting, where gaining access to municipal central services can involve a long wait for developers.  That wait ultimately increases costs, while not responding to communities' housing needs on a timely basis. 

At this time we are scouring the globe to find the ideal supplier(s) of units for our communities.  Our focus is on sustainable designs that are well laid out to serve the needs of our residents, simple to transport to facilitate the easy movement of these units into our communities, and at a cost that allows us for offer units that meet local and/or provincial standards of affordability.

The regulatory system (Ontario Provincial Planning Statement) was recently changed to facilitate building communities like the Village which flows from the idea of "rural densification".  Official plans across the province are being updated to reflect this.  Every government official we meet is ready to back this effort. Notwithstanding the acute need for (affordable) housing for years, no new solutions have emerged, until now.  Ironically, though our approach is innovative, it is based on mature processes and technology which keep things simple and facilitates progress.

When work started, the initial idea was to build communities of rental properties given the lack of units and solutions in rural areas.  Looking at the government standards of affordability and the costs associated with building the village, the numbers do not work in terms of meeting our affordability objective.  Moreover, we realized that rentals were only keeping people further from home ownership, an important component of generating personal wealth in Canada.  We naturally pivoted to an ownership model with the potential for incorporating a rent-to-own aspect for some communities.