This text is taken from the Courrier de l’économie of October 17, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
How can we plan to welcome, all political parties combined, 40,000 to 70,000 immigrants if there is already a shortage of housing and this contributes to aggravating the situation? We will never see the end! Perhaps we contribute to impoverish the population and to be in an inflationary spiral?
This question that Alain Carpentier asked during the last election campaign concerns the possible link between immigration and the housing shortage in Quebec.
According to the Association of Construction and Housing Professionals of Quebec, there is currently a shortage of 100,000 housing units to meet demand. In its most recent portrait of the situation, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimated in June that 1.1 million additional housing units would be needed in 2030 for the Quebec real estate market to be affordable, i.e. more double that the current trend would allow. CMHC sets this affordability threshold in Quebec at average housing costs equivalent to 32% of disposable household income, compared to a proportion of just over 39% at the end of 2021 and compared to 56% in Ontario. and 58% in British Columbia.
In a rapidly aging society like Quebec, immigration will assert itself more and more, over the decade, as the main source of population growth and, by extension, of the growth in demand for housing, explained in a telephone interview to To have to Francis Cortellino, Economist at CMHC. Their number almost doubled from 2016 until the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks in particular to the reception of more temporary immigrants. This increase in the number of immigrants coincided with a sharp drop in the vacancy rate despite a significant increase in the number of housing starts, particularly of rental units.
Concentrated in the Montreal region, the foreign-born population accounted for a quarter of Montreal households and a quarter of home sales in 2016. Immigrants who arrived in Quebec less than five years ago were then 84% tenants, compared to almost 90% for temporary immigrants. But 20 years after their arrival, this proportion drops to 30%, which is the equivalent of the Quebec average for the same age groups.
Although increasingly important, immigration is not the only factor at play in the difficulty of the market to meet demand, notes Francis Cortellino. It will be remembered, for example, that the pandemic and containment measures triggered a rush for larger homes away from urban centers to which the market could not respond. We also see that more and more households are enjoying having second homes and that the aging of the population is leading to a change in the type of housing sought.
Moreover, immigrants do not only influence the demand for housing, argues Francis Cortellino. They also have the power to come to the rescue of the construction sector by providing it with an additional workforce that it sorely needs.
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