Statistic Canada has released the latest figures with respect to housing in Canada. And the findings show how serious the rental crisis is in Canada, in general, and in Ontario in particular.
What StatsCan fails to mention in this report is one of the main causes of reduced housing supply is anti-landlord sentiment in Ontario prompting many small landlords to exit the market and reduce supply, while the demand is an all-time high post-pandemic. Delays at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) are another deterrent to be a landlord in Ontario according to many.
The main finding is that the proportion of Canadian households who own their home is on the decline in Canada after peaking in 2011. In other words, tenants are growing faster than the owners +21.5% vs +8.4%.
It also shows that younger Canadians were less likely to own their home in 2021 than adults in that age range a decade earlier—especially young millennials aged 25 to 29 years (36.5% in 2021 vs. 44.1% in 2011). This pent-up demand for rentals has caused a increase in purpose-built rentals. The agency found that 40.4% of the housing built in the five years ending in 2021 was tenant-occupied, the highest tenant rate next to that of dwellings built in the 1960s post-war apartment boom, at 44.5%. This was mostly condominiums, particularly in big cities like Toronto.
Curiously, StatsCan found housing to be more affordable for Canadians in 2021 because of higher incomes. According to their figures, the rate of unaffordable housing, or the proportion of households that spent 30% or more of their income on shelter costs, fell from 24.1% in 2016 to 20.9% in 2021. However the rate of unaffordable housing in Canada for renters fell from 40.0% in 2016 to 33.2% in 2021, with most of the decline occurring among renters earning below the median household income of all renters (68.4% in 2016, compared with 56.0% in 2021).
Nevertheless, homeownership is on the decline in Canada after hitting its peak in 2011. The agency found that in 2021, 10.0 million households in Canada owned their home, which is more than at any point in the country’s history. However, while the number continues to grow, Canadians overall were less likely to own their home in 2021 (66.5%) than they were a decade earlier, when a record high (69.0%) were homeowners.
Solo Landlords know this all too well, with StatsCan’s findings, the number of renter households grows at over twice the pace of owner households. The consequence is that when the homeownership rate goes down, the rental rate goes up. However, the impact of rent control on the majority of housing stock was not mentioned, nor was the skyrocketing costs of maintenance and financing in Ontario and elsewhere.
