Now more than ever, Canadians face unprecedented challenges in finding affordable housing that meets their needs.
According to the most recent data available, the vacancy rate for rental accommodation in Canada was 1.9%, compared to 3.1% a year ago, resulting in a 5.4% increase in rents for 2021 to 2022.
Conditions in property markets are no better – while house prices have fallen an average of 15.4% over the past year, sharp increases in mortgage rates have erased most of the gains in affordability for homeowners, especially first-time home buyers. If this continues, housing problems in Canada will deteriorate further, leading to increased social inequality and broader socio-economic problems that are far more difficult to address. To successfully address these challenges, key stakeholders must come together and commit to taking concrete action. History suggests it is possible.
The pandemic has turned urban housing challenges into a national issue
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a catalyst for the growth of the digital economy, with millions of Canadians working remotely from home. Canadians seized the opportunity to improve their working conditions and reduce their relative cost of living by moving to traditionally less expensive communities outside major urban centres. But it has made the housing problem – previously mainly a phenomenon of large urban centers – a nationwide problem.
At the same time, population growth, spurred in part by necessary increases to our immigration targets, has driven demand for housing soaring, triggering steep price increases for rents and home ownership. To restore housing affordability to levels seen in the early 2000s, CMHC estimates that the pace of housing construction will need to accelerate by an additional 3.5 million units by 2030.
Governments alone cannot solve housing problems
The reality is that no government alone will ever be able to resolve this situation. Even if fully coordinated, federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments would benefit from further support, alignment and coordination with other stakeholders to meet our national housing challenge.
We need a broad mobilization of all local, regional and national forces to get things moving in terms of housing. We need to bring all of these groups together – industry, civil society and governments (including municipal and aboriginal governments) – to participate in a Canadian assembly on housing.
Under the old regime, the King of France brought together the whole of society (then composed of the clergy, the nobility and the people) during the Estates General to advise him on key national and fiscal issues. More recently, in 1966, the Estates General of French Canada was a series of conferences that brought together thousands of stakeholders from Quebec, Acadia and Ontario to help define the future of the country. In 1995, the Government of Quebec convened the Estates General on Education, where a public commission conducted consultations with stakeholders from across civil society in order to reflect and suggest ways to modernize and improve Quebec’s education system. Both marked turning points in history, and a Canadian Estates General on Housing can do the same for our housing challenge.
A generational opportunity to make Canada better
A process of mobilization and consultation at the local, regional and provincial levels would culminate in a week-long national summit where each participant would agree to contribute to concrete solutions to the housing crisis, commit to taking measurable and to report in the short, medium and long term.
Each housing stakeholder would also commit to reporting quarterly on their progress in improving the state of housing in the country. Ideally, the convener of these assemblies on housing would be an organization where the interests are sufficiently diffused to avoid that a single speaker has a concentration of power.
When it comes to housing, the challenges are enormous, but the stakes are even higher. If Canadian housing stakeholders can unite, we will have a generational opportunity to improve our communities and our country, ensuring that every Canadian can reach their full potential, starting with finding a home. This will require compromise and frank discussion, but it could eventually make Canada stronger by improving the standard of living of its citizens.
* The author was also Chief Economist at CMHC and was an advisor for the development of the National Housing Strategy.