Canada’s Housing Supply Shortages: Estimating what’s needed to restore affordability in Canadian provinces by 2030
Canada’s Housing Supply Shortages: Estimating what’s needed to restore affordability in Canadian provinces by 2030
In 2018, the creation of housing supply responsiveness was identified as a challenge. Our 2018 report indicated that demand for housing increased for multiple reasons but housing supply in many large Canadian cities did not respond to demand.
In this report, we have taken the initial steps to estimate how much additional housing supply is required to restore housing affordability by 2030.
If the current rates of new construction continue, we project that the housing stock will increase by 2.3 million units between 2021 and 2030. This will reach close to 19 million housing units by 2030.
To restore affordability, an additional 3.5M affordable housing units are needed by 2030
That means over 22 million housing units will be required by 2030 to help achieve housing affordability for everyone living in Canada. Delivering more housing supply, beyond predicted growth in the number of households, will enable better matching of households with the housing they want.
“… Canada’s approach to housing supply needs to be rethought and done differently. There must be a drastic transformation of the housing sector, including government policies and processes, and an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ approach to increasing the supply of housing to meet demand.”
Affordability has changed over time and not for the better
The last time housing was affordable was in 2003 and 2004. Housing prices during this period implied that housing costs were affordable — what we are calling the Maximum Affordable Price level.
Around 2003 and 2004, an household on average income would have had to devote close to:
- 40% of their disposable income to buy an average house in Ontario
- 45% of their disposable income to buy an average house in British Columbia.
