Archive:000/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 discussion.