Image of the day: doubling up

A measure of how much more housing we need

Housing shortages and doubled up households. Nathanael Lauster and Jens von Bergmann, Plan Canada, vol. 64 no.4: 16–21 (Winter 2024). Plan Canada is a national magazine for planners.

When we have lots of jobs and not enough housing, prices and rents have to rise to unbearable levels to reduce demand for housing: people are forced to move away, to crowd into housing, or worst of all, end up homeless. We can think of crowding as a kind of “doubling up”: living with your parents or with roommates instead of living on your own.

Comparing Quebec City (at the bottom of the graph) to Toronto and Vancouver (at the top of the graph), we can see that in Quebec City, there’s still some people who are doubled up, but it’s less than 15%, and declining. In Metro Vancouver, it’s 40% and increasing. If we use Quebec City as the baseline, then Metro Vancouver needs at least 25% more homes than we actually have right now.