Families Face Daunting Task Finding Affordable Rentals in Canada
Canada is grappling with a severe rental housing crisis, as affordable homes disappear at an alarming rate across the country. A CBC News analysis of over 1,000 neighbourhoods in Canada’s largest cities reveals that less than one percent of rentals are both vacant and affordable for the majority of Canadian renters.
Declining Availability: CBC News combined 2021 census data with the latest findings from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) October 2023 rental market survey, revealing a stark decrease in rental availability.
Soaring Rents: Since 2018, the average rent for a two-bedroom home has increased 70% faster than wages, severely impacting low-income Canadians. In October 2023, only 1,400 bachelor or one-bedroom homes were vacant and affordable for full-time minimum-wage workers across 35 metropolitan areas, representing just 0.09% of all such rentals.
Family Struggles: Families face a daunting task in finding affordable housing. Only 14,000 two-bedroom or larger units were potentially vacant and affordable for median-income families, and just 7,200 for single-parent families, translating to 0.5% and 0.3% of all such rentals, respectively.
Rents in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Alberta have surged nearly twice as fast as wages over the past five years. All provinces report vacancy rates below the housing shortage threshold.
Steve Pomeroy, executive adviser at the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative at McMaster University, attributes the crisis partly to Canada’s rapid population growth, fueled by temporary immigration. He notes, “The federal government is now trying to manage the situation by putting quotas on visas, but we’ve got three or four years of trying to build enough housing to accommodate all the people that already came in.”
Kevin Hughes, deputy chief economist at CMHC, emphasizes that immigration is not the sole factor. He explains, “In some markets, the supply has increased, but more on the upper scale. For affordable rentals, that’s where the biggest problem lies.” The construction industry also faces a labor shortage and high inflation, driving up material costs.
Jean-Philippe Deschamps-Laporte, assistant director at Statistics Canada, highlights the dramatic cascading impacts on vulnerable groups. He warns, “The increased cost of housing is one of the biggest driving factors of homelessness.” Indigenous and racialized communities, primarily renters, are disproportionately at risk of housing insecurity.
Catherine Leviten-Reid, an associate professor at the University of Cape Breton, calls for a massive investment in affordable rental housing and new regulations. She suggests landlords should report rent information annually, which would help address significant gaps in rental market data and facilitate inspections of housing conditions
