The Urban Reform Institute and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy recently released a new report for Demographia comparing the cost of housing in metropolitan municipalities from eight nations — Australia, Canada, China (Hong Kong only), Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
Wendell Cox, senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute (Houston) and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Winnipeg), authored the report and finds that affordability is an increasing concern amidst the pandemic.
“In this year of the global pandemic and lockdowns, it is not surprising that housing affordability — given the large influx of new buyers, particularly in suburban and outlying areas — has continued to deteriorate. As a result many low-income and middle-income households who already have suffered the worst consequences from housing inflation will see their standards of living further decline.”
A few key findings relating to housing in Canada:
- Canada’s housing affordability rating ranks as “severely unaffordable” overall, and above the median market range for the eight countries listed.
- Canada has two of the top-ten most unaffordable housing markets of the 92 markets ranked: Vancouver (second-most unaffordable) and Toronto (fifth-most unaffordable).
- Virtually all of the markets with severely unaffordable housing have urban containment policies that severely restrict building on the periphery.
- Alberta’s two major metropolises net out more favourably than any other Canadian city, with Edmonton coming in as the 17th most affordable city and Calgary as the 29th most affordable city out of the 92 ranked markets.
