We're gonna have to eat a lot less avocado toast.
Statistics Canada painted a bleak picture in its latest housing <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/dai-quo/index-eng.htm?HPA=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">data release</a>. Fewer people own homes than in previous years. Millions of people are stuck in inadequate housing. And hundreds of thousands of units are too small for the number of people living in them.
The real numbers could be even worse.
Cherise Burda, the executive director of Toronto Metropolitan University's City Building Institute, noted that the data only goes up to May 2021 — when interest rates were low, CERB was still in effect, housing prices weren't at their peak and inflation hadn't skyrocketed.
"In the world of housing, that's a lifetime," Burda said.
"You’re not richer than you think."
The increasing share of people renting instead of owning their homes stuck out, Burda said.
Just over two-thirds of Canadians owned their home in 2021, down from a peak of 69 per cent a decade earlier.
Nearly 1.5 million Canadians were in core housing need in 2021, StatCan reported. That term refers to people in an unsuitable, inadequate or unaffordable place who can't afford to move out.
One in five renters fit the description, compared to 5.3 per cent of homeowners.
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.qpbriefing.com/2022/08/18/amo-2022-doug-ford-says-hell-defeat-the-housing-crisis-with-more-homes-full-stop-experts-say-thats-not-enough/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Doug Ford says more homes will end the housing crisis ‘full stop.’ Experts say that’s not enough.</a>
While home prices in many spots are levelling off or decreasing, rents are only going up, Burda noted. More people are competing for fewer units. And landlords are passing on increased costs from higher interest rates to their tenants, she said.
Young millennials are feeling those effects the most. People aged 25–29 had a 44.1-per-cent ownership rate in 2011, compared to just 36.5 per cent last year, per StatCan.
The agency found renters' costs rose faster than those of homeowners in the latest census period. One in five renters still spend more than 30 per cent of their income on shelter costs, the report says.
The number of renter households grew at twice the rate of owners last year, according to StatCan. And newly built homes are more and more likely to be occupied by renters, with 40.4 per cent of new homes built between 2016 and 2021 now rented out.
Just building more housing supply isn't enough, Burda said. Canada is "obsessed" with lowering home prices when it should be targeting affordable, purpose-built rentals, she said.
In places like Europe and South America, renting for life is normalized and affordable. To get there, Canadian governments can't just set a target for new home builds and hope the market will "trickle down" affordable units, she said, noting that the country is losing affordable housing stock every year.
Canada built lots of apartment buildings in the 1960s and '70s through favourable taxation, Burda noted. Since then, subsidies for home ownership have far outpaced rental subsidies, leaving the most vulnerable in the dust, she said.
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.qpbriefing.com/2022/01/14/ontario-is-far-behind-the-rest-of-canada-in-per-capita-housing-supply-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ontario is far behind the rest of Canada in per-capita housing supply: report</a>
There are glimmers of hope in the report. The core housing need rate fell from 12.7 per cent in 2016 to 10.1 per cent in 2021. Household income gains and more housing affordability drove that improvement.
Economist Mike Moffatt, a senior director at the Smart Prosperity Institute, noted that the crisis is essentially driven by Ontario, British Columbia's Lower Mainland, and Halifax. Housing prices in the prairies, for example, have remained relatively flat while those areas saw spikes.
Ontario's Doug Ford government has its work cut out for it, Moffatt said. It's targeting 1.5 million homes over this decade, but it's unclear how it will achieve that, based on the lack of skilled tradespeople and municipalities' estimates showing much lower housing targets.
A lack of strong rent control in provinces like Ontario — where the Ford government ended it for units built after 2018 — means more people will be renovicted and forced further down the ladder, forcing many to leave cities, further draining workforces, Burda said.
Statistics Canada also found that core housing needs are highest in downtown areas (18.4 per cent) and lowest in the suburbs (6.8 per cent).
And the share of homes that are condominiums continues to rise, with most being built in large cities.
With files from The Canadian Press

‘You’re not richer than you think’: StatCan finds steep decline in home ownership

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