Housing Crisis Forces Canadians to Delay Family Plans

Many Canadians in their 20s and 30s are finding it impossible to balance starting a family with securing affordable housing. According to a recent report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, demand for rental housing is outpacing supply, leading to historically low vacancy rates and skyrocketing rents.

A CBC News analysis revealed that less than one per cent of rentals in Canada’s largest cities are both vacant and affordable for the majority of renters. For families seeking multiple-bedroom rentals, the situation is even bleaker. Only 14,000 units with two bedrooms or more were found to be potentially vacant and affordable, constituting just 0.5 per cent of such rentals on the market.

Due to the high cost of housing, many families are forced into smaller apartments, with parents sacrificing their comfort for their children’s needs.

Some, like Smith, have delayed starting families altogether. Others, like 37-year-old Zach Robichaud from Kitchener, Ontario, have had to adjust their dreams of having a larger family due to financial constraints.

Robichaud and his wife, despite both working full-time, have decided to stop at one child because most of their income goes towards their $2,000-a-month rent. “It’s really kind of sad that my daughter won’t have that same sort of support system,” Robichaud expressed.

Canada’s total fertility rate dropped to its lowest point in over a century in 2022, at 1.33 children per woman, as reported by Statistics Canada. Financial concerns are a major factor in this decline, with 38 per cent of young adults (aged 20 to 29) believing they cannot afford to have a child in the next three years.

Randall Bartlett, senior director of Canadian economics at Desjardins, told CBC News that the only way to address the housing crisis is to increase the supply of affordable housing. “The only way to really contend with this is to bring more supply on the market to help ultimately bring down the price of housing and rents and make it more accessible for a broader group of Canadians,” Bartlett said.

A study by Abacus Data and the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) found that 55 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 said the housing crisis had affected their decision and timing to start a family. Among those who wanted children, 28 per cent were postponing due to housing affordability, and 27 per cent were choosing to have fewer or no children for the same reason.

Karen Lawson, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, noted that delaying childbirth can result in fewer children than desired or even involuntary childlessness due to a shortened reproductive window. “They may face fertility problems that result in involuntary childlessness,” Lawson said.

Lawson suggests that society needs to support a more “parallel” life path model, allowing young people to pursue education, career, and family simultaneously. Smith echoes this sentiment, noting that she and her partner secured their current apartment during a COVID-19 price dip but now face prohibitively high rents for larger spaces.

“We were ready to have kids two years ago, but decided to wait until we’d saved up and were a bit more stable. Now rents are so high that if we moved, we’d be even worse off overall,” Smith said. Given their scientific careers, they are also constrained to major cities where housing costs are higher.

The housing affordability crisis in Canada is forcing many young Canadians to delay or rethink their family planning. Addressing this issue requires a multifaceted approach, including increasing the supply of affordable housing and supporting young families in achieving their life goals. Until then, many like Anna Smith will continue to face heartbreaking choices between their dreams and their reality.