Image of the day: BC housing starts per capita, 1955-2024

The post-1970s slowdown

I often refer to this graph by Leo Spalteholz. I figured I should try reproducing it myself, and updating it with the latest data. I wrote up an R script to generate the graph.

Data is from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, housing starts, under construction and completions, all areas, annual.

As you can see, there's a clear slowdown after the 1970s.

What I'm really interested in is housing starts per capita for the city of Vancouver and for Metro Vancouver, but it looks like CMHC's data for Metro Vancouver (that's easily accessible) only goes back to 1990.