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🏗 How densification can fix the housing crisis

If you believe Aled ab Iorwerth, Canada’s top housing researcher who is better known for writing the foreword to our 2024 Outlook, we need to build 3.5 million new units of housing by 2030 to return housing costs to affordable levels.

How did Canada get to a point where it needs to invest $1 trillion just so Canadians can spend less than 30% of income on housing?

Long story short, we stopped building. In the late 1980s, provincial governments took over housing policy from the feds, leading to unbalanced investment into different types of housing.

It’s one of the reasons why a quick look around your city shows dated apartment buildings that all look about the same age and style.

Without policies to encourage construction of new dense housing, cities turned to urban sprawl to handle population growth, building out single-family home communities and creating suburbs. New legislation across the country has started to peel back our car-dependent lifestyle in favour of the more sustainable 15-minute city model.

At least until this past week, when Doug Ford and Ontario announced a plan to restrict bike lanes. This… unique announcement directly contradicts the kind of urban lifestyle that students said they wanted in our research — we wrote about this last week.

15-minute cities are heavily reliant on walkability, public transit, and bike networks to enable mobility. Most, but apparently not all governments are aligned on this future and the kinds of housing that support it.

What a city looks like is changing rapidly. Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, Halifax, and others have passed legislation that allows conversions of single-family homes into middle housing, which can mean anything from a duplex to a small apartment building.

Middle housing provides a denser alternative to single-family homes, helping to transition sprawl into thriving walkable communities.

Today’s market rate housing acts as the affordable housing of the future. If we don’t build enough today, we’ll be even further behind in the future. Think back to all those older apartment buildings you see for a second. For the most part, these are our affordable housing options.

When we stopped building new dense housing in the 1980s in favour of sprawling single-family home communities, we limited the number of affordable housing units we would have in the future. This is one of the reasons why we don’t have enough below market housing, and why we need 3.5 million new homes by 2030.

It’s not enough to just build market rate housing. We need a broad mix of social housing, affordable housing, for sale housing, and even hotels to meet demand and bring down cost over time, for good.

Densifying existing single-family home communities to create middle housing for diverse users is one popular approach.

A Calgary-based group called mddl have created a community to help homeowners learn how to convert their single-family homes into multiple units. They just launched a tool that lets you search any address in Calgary and play around with the different kinds of middle housing you could create there.

If your parents or family members are looking to downsize but want to continue to own a home, this is an option worth considering. This isn’t sponsored by mddl, they just have a really interesting tool that helps homeowners make the most of their home equity.

As cities continue to evolve, single-family homes in the urban core will turn into a more units of smaller sizes. Densification will be crucial as Canada advances towards the target of 3.5 million new homes and housing affordability by 2030.

👏 Good news in housing

B.C. and First Nations agree to sell 2,600 homes at 60% of market value

The province and the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations will sell the condos ranging in size from studios to three-bedrooms in a long-term lease of First Nations land, bringing capital to the MST Partnership. Buyers must have a household income below $132k plus other eligibility rules meant to keep out those trying to profit off the initiative. 540 of the 2,600 homes are expected to be social housing. Keep reading…

Toronto makes progress on targets set by housing action plans

In the City’s annual housing progress update on its major initiatives, it highlighted:

• Passing the provincial housing supply target by 51%

• Securing 368 affordable homes

• Preventing 2,200 low-income household evictions.

Toronto also launched a survey for the post-secondary community to help shape a new Academic Housing Strategy. It’s a huge positive to see a city focus on the young perspective. Keep reading…

Canada Lands promises 600 new affordable homes near Halifax

A former military site in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia will be turned into 3,000 housing units by the Canada Lands Crown Corporation, 20% of which will be affordable. Construction on the massive site is expected to begin in fall 2025. Residents of the area are hoping for community ownership models and deep affordability in the new development. Keep reading…

🙋 We’re giving away another $500 at CapU!

We just wrapped up a 200 student survey at SFU in six days, made possible by our amazing campus ambassadors. Do you think you have what it takes to get students involved or want to earn a dollar for every response? Reply to this email to learn more.

Capilano University is next. Do you or someone you know go to CapU and want to help? Fill out the quick survey below for a chance to win a $100 rent rebate! We’re giving away five rebates at CapU. This $500 brings our total giveaways to date to $9,000!

Find the CapU student survey here.

🗂 Resources for new renters

Whether it’s your first time living on your own or you’ve been renting for years, this is the time of year that lots of young people move into new places. We’ve compiled resources from provincial advocacy centres to get you started. Many university student societies have their own list of resources as well.

Ontario

Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario: Tip sheets, free legal advice, and reform updates.

British Columbia

Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre: Free legal education for BC tenants, template letters, and access to free legal advice.

Alberta

Laws for Landlords and Tenants in Alberta: Information on disputes, notices, responsibilities, and everything else you could ever need.

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