Housing/Canada
Does Canada have enough housing? This page is a (somewhat incomplete) housing supply analysis using Canadian census data.
All of Canada
| code | count | definition |
| Supply | ||
|---|---|---|
| st | 132060 | studio unit |
| 1b | 2124485 | 1-bedroom unit |
| 2b | 3829965 | 2-bedroom unit |
| 3b | 4982900 | 3-bedroom unit |
| 4b | 3909525 | 4-bedroom or more |
| Demand | ||
| s0 | 6850005 | Singles with no children |
| c0 | 4286165 | Couples with no children |
| s1 | 1019940 | Single parents with 1 child |
| c1+ | 4290420 | Couples with 1 or more children |
| s2+ | 666400 | Single parents with 2 or more children |
Data source: Canadian Census 2021 https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&GENDERlist=1,2,3&STATISTIClist=1&HEADERlist=0&DGUIDlist=2021A000011124&SearchText=Canada
The Supply includes all types of housing - including apartments, condos, townhouses and houses. Categorized by the number of bedrooms.
The first thing to notice is there are a lot of single adults and also a lot of childless couples, and not very much single-person housing and also not enough housing made for childless couples. Thus, most singles end up either...
- Living with roommates. In some cases, there is no other option but to find roommates on semi-anonymous websites. This comes with safety issues and difficulty trusting whether the roommate will even pay their part of the rent.
- Living with parents, even in adulthood. Some of these single adults may not even be counted "s0" statistic above - some might be counted as "children" in families. The Canadian census defines "child" in a way that has no age cutoff.
- Hastily moving in with someone they just started dating, before really knowing whether it's right.
- Living alone in a bigger, and more expensive place than needed.
The last one also takes away housing from families.
Solutions:
- subdividing apartments into studios
- subdividing suburban houses into duplexes
Nuances:
- Obviously this doesn't mean subdividing ALL the homes - just enough to meet the demand.
- Subdivision would not take housing away from families. It would make more housing available to families. (see why)|Many of today's family-sized houses are inhabited by single adults who would sell their home and move into something smaller (i.e. 1-bedroom condo), but can't find an affordable one (because as the table shows, there simply aren't enough - today's high prices are the market's way of signalling that). By subdividing a few family-sized houses into three 1-bedroom condos, these single adults would move there, freeing up the other family-sized houses for families. Sorry if any of this seems unclear - I'll make a diagram soon.
More considerations
More than 235,000 people in Canada experience homelessness in any given year, and 25,000 to 35,000 people may be experiencing homelessness on any given night.
- [1]
The census data used earlier, doesn't include vacant homes. A quick estimate is that 1.3 million homes are vacant, or 8% of the housing stock. [2] This stat would benefit from having a more nuanced breakdown by type of vacancy, such as investment homes vs cottages etc.
Also not included: office buildings, which could be repurposed into housing as well.
You can help expand this page by joining the discussion.