Cities across Canada are rapidly losing affordable housing. Provincial and federal governments aren’t helping, so it’s up to cities to start taking action themselves.
In order for Canada to overcome the housing affordability crisis, individuals, families, the real estate industry and government all need to work together.
Young adults are among the groups most adversely affected by the housing crisis. Foreign-born young adults, in particular, are disproportionately more likely to live in unaffordable housing.
Despite a common belief that councils won’t approve tiny houses and modular and container homes, early findings from a national survey suggest planners are increasingly open to these housing options.
In a housing crisis, publicly owned land should never be sold to private developers and should instead be used to build the kind of housing the market is unwilling and unable to build.
Our study reveals that the housing affordability crisis is having a pervasive impact on Canadian society. It is imposing constraints that alter the structure and composition of Canadian families.
Ensuring visible minorities have equitable access to affordable housing is an important step in fulfilling the National Housing Strategy’s goal to make affordable housing available to all Canadians.
Canada’s current economic growth model is currently dependent on the conversion of housing from a human right into a financial investment tool, leading to an ever-worsening housing crisis.
The need to manage long waiting lists for social housing, rather than serving the best interests of tenants and prospective tenants, is a major driver of policymakers’ approach.
With Australian city rents too high for low-income earners, increasing numbers are forced to share houses or rooms or to live in options like ‘beds in sheds’ and other illegal dwellings.
Affordability is a problem across Sydney for prospective home buyers. But if they are able to become owners, new research shows affordability becomes much less of a problem over five to ten years.
While share houses are more a matter of financial necessity than choice, many older Australians are discovering it has unexpected social benefits for them.
Professor; School of Economics, Finance and Property, and Director, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Curtin Research Centre, Curtin University
Professor of Social Epidemiology and Director of the Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne