The Alliance for a Liveable Ontario wanted to know how bad Ontario's housing deficit is. People are living in a "housing deficit" if they are living in the wrong sized home and/or paying more rent than they can afford.
New Data Provides a Snapshot of Ontario’s Affordable Housing Needs -and it’s bad.
Toronto: Today, the Alliance for a Liveable Ontario (ALO) released new data that shows the deficit of affordable housing in Ontario by unit type and income.
“Size wise, the biggest need is for about 300,000 one-bedroom units renting at about $1,100 per month,” said Franz Hartmann, ALO Coordinator. “More generally, there are almost 640,000 households in Ontario that are living in homes that are the wrong size and cost way more than what people can afford.”
The data was compiled by the Housing Assessment ResearchTool (HART) team using 2021 Federal Census data. They looked at household and dwelling size, household income, and how much money people were paying for shelter costs (rent, mortgages, etc….). People living in a home that wasn’t the right size and/or paying more than 30% of their household income on shelter costs were considered living in a housing deficit.
“We need governments from all levels to make it a priority to get these different housing types built and keep them affordable,” said David Crombie, ALO Founder and former Toronto Mayor who oversaw massive housing construction in the 1970s. “Unfortunately, this isn’t happening in Ontario.”
“The Province is still pushing for more sprawl style housing that is too expensive and not suited to meet Ontario’s real housing deficit,” said Crombie. “Every big house that gets built out in the suburbs diverts labour and construction material from building the types of housing we need where people already live.”
“The data confirms that building ‘McMansions’ on the Greenbelt or prime farmland is not the answer to our affordable housing crisis,” said Anne Golden, ALO Founder and former head of the Conference Board of Canada. “We need government policies and incentives directed at solving the real housing deficit. We need governments to work with both non-profit and private housing developers and providers. And we need to ensure the building industry has a streamlined and shortened approvals process that allows them to put shovels in the ground for the housing we need.”
