Canada’s new federal housing minister, Gregor Robertson, had barely been sworn in when he was asked a simple question: Do you think prices [for homes] need to go down? He said, “No, I think that we need to deliver more supply, make sure the market is stable, it’s a huge part of our economy. We need to be delivering more affordable housing. The government of Canada has not been building affordable housing since the ‘90s and we’ve created a huge shortage across Canada. That’s where the big need is right now,” and said he was pleased Prime Minister Mark Carney has committed to building more affordable homes.
Let’s look at two parts of answer. Robertson is right, in the latter part of that statement, that the huge shortage of affordable housing is where the real need is. We have about 1.8 million Canadian households in “core housing need,” the government’s official measure that vastly underestimates actual need. In Hamilton, there are about 30,000 households in core need, about 24,000 of whom can only afford rents at various levels below $1,075 a month. That basically means they can’t afford market rent. So yes, we urgently need to overcome that huge shortage of affordable homes, especially rentals.
When he was running for the Liberal leadership, Mark Carney pledged to work with various partners to double the supply of non-market and co-op housing. It is disappointing that, as prime minister, Carney didn’t include that pledge in the Liberal election platform—and his leadership website has mention of the detail of the housing plan he was then advocating.
But doubling the supply of non-profit and co-operative housing is the minimum target most housing researchers propose, which would mean 650,000 to 800,000 more units. Dr. Carolyn Whitzman, who has done the most detailed analysis of need based on income and family size, says we need about 2 million units.
We need to press Robertson, Carney and the whole government to meet that kind of target, starting immediately. Starting now brings the bonus benefit that new non-profit construction can offset job losses in construction resulting from Trump-induced economic uncertainty and layoffs.