How much more housing do we need?

A recent estimate from CMHC.

Okay, so we need more housing. How much do we need?

CMHC calculated how much housing would be needed to get back to 2003-2004 levels of home-ownership affordability by 2030, taking into account both population growth and income growth. (As people get richer, they want more space.)

CMHC’s estimate is that BC needs more than 2X the current rate of homebuilding between now and 2030. The business-as-usual rate is 400,000 more homes by 2030. We need about 600,000 additional homes on top of that.

References:

• CMHC, Housing Shortages in Canada: Solving the Affordability Crisis, June 2022. In 2003-2004, the average cost of home ownership in BC was 44% of after-tax income. It’s now 60%. And that’s across the entire province, not just Metro Vancouver.

• TVO interview with Ontario economist Mike Moffatt. Ontario faces a similar challenge: the business-as-usual rate is 750,000 more homes over the next 10 years. The Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force estimated that Ontario needs 1.5 million homes by that time. The CMHC report estimates more like 2.5 million to get back to 2003-2004 levels of affordability.

• How many new homes are needed in Metro Vancouver? The number is shocking, by Lori Culbert in the Vancouver Sun. A summary of bottom-up housing needs assessments from 12 municipalities. In the city of Vancouver, 85,000 households are struggling with inadequate or unaffordable housing. That’s more than 1 in 4.