CMHC released their annual report today reviewing their 2022 housing needs gap for Canada. I was surprised to find I have been reporting on our housing needs and shortage incorrectly. If you’ve seen any of my previous reports (rants) where I’ve show calculations of how many housing units we needed, all that is wrong. In my calculations, I looked at the projected needs, so for Ontario 1.5 million homes, then deducted the projected housing starts, to determine what was needed, then divided that by time left to 2030, to calculate how many new houses were needed each day.

Watching CMHC’s video explaining their gap assessment, I found that what they have calculated as the Gap, or what we will be short come 2030, is after they have factored in current and future builds. So where I had deducted projected new development, thereby reducing the shortage, the shortage stated for 2030, is actually the projected shortage after everything is built!

  • So here we are in 2023, projecting a shortage on 1.48 million housing units in Ontario by 2030, down from 1.85 million units, and the only positive is people have emigrated out of the province, reducing the shortage. BTW I don’t focus on Ontario without acknowledging Canada as a whole, but simply as the place with the biggest issue and as an example location. I want to share our housing plan across Canada.
  • They have also said that higher interest rates, along with other factors have slowed development, which will potentially increase these shortage figures.
  • They have not included immigration levels continuing at the present pace, moving forward. If they did, the shortage of housing units in Canada would increase by 4 million. (Does this mean to 7.5 million units? I’m not sure.)
  • The only positive point mentioned is that pressure in major centers like Toronto has eased somewhat do to emigration. While this may help Toronto, people are moving to Eastern & Western Canada, so increasing the projected gap in those areas. Not an actual positive IMHO.

Here is the CMHC video talking about the report and where I found out how wrong I was…