The great housing debate continues: Are we building enough housing, or are we not?

Right now the media is talking about a new report from the Union of B.C. Municipalities, which is claiming that cities in British Columbia are actually building enough housing to keep pace with population demand.

Between 2016 and 2021, the province's population grew by 7.6% and the number of new dwellings grew by 7.2%, according to the report. So supply appears to be lining up with demand.

One problem with this robust analysis is that many people, including the Housing Minister, don't agree. Here's an excerpt from the Globe and Mail:

“The overly naive analysis comparing housing to population growth to declare the adequacy of our housing supply fails to understand that housing and population growth are intimately related,” said statistics analyst Jens von Bergmann, a regular decoder of housing statistics for Vancouver and Canada. “It’s a slap in the face of those who have been pushed out, or those who failed to move here, because of the unavailability of housing.”

And on a related note, here is a recent piece by Shawn Micallef (Toronto Star) talking about why the left can't get Toronto's housing right.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) recently published its latest data on housing starts, housing under construction, and housing completions. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Canada saw 271k housing starts last year (2021). This includes single-detached housing and multiples, which captures semi-detached housing, row housing, and apartments (and other unit types). This is the highest number of annual housing starts that we have seen over the last five years. The range for the prior years has been between roughly 209-220k.

• Ontario saw 100k (~37% of the country), Quebec saw 68k (~25% of the country), and British Columbia saw 48k (~18% of the country).

• What I was curious about when I first saw these numbers was the split across the various housing types. Single-family homes, for instance, came in at 82k for all of Canada. So that's about 30% of total housing starts. If you add in semi-detached and row, which I believe would also be all grade-related, you get to 124k or 46% of all housing starts.

• Apartments and other unit types make up the balance at about 147k or 54% of all housing starts. This is kind of interesting because they now represent a majority.

• Looking at Ontario, the percentage of apartments actually drops to 50%. But the numbers are much higher in both Quebec and BC at 69% and 63%, respectively. Again, this is kind of interesting.

Despite all of our deference to single-family housing, the numbers suggest that we are actually in the midst of building a different kind of country -- one that entails people living in "apartments and other unit types." Maybe it's time we got more granular with this line item.

Note: CMHC defines "apartment and other unit types" to include not just apartments, but also stacked towns, duplexes, triplexes, double duplexes (whatever this is), and row duplexes. A number of these will, of course, be grade-related. But they still represent more intense forms of land use.

The great housing debate continues: Are we building enough housing, or are we not?

Right now the media is talking about a new report from the Union of B.C. Municipalities, which is claiming that cities in British Columbia are actually building enough housing to keep pace with population demand.

Between 2016 and 2021, the province's population grew by 7.6% and the number of new dwellings grew by 7.2%, according to the report. So supply appears to be lining up with demand.

One problem with this robust analysis is that many people, including the Housing Minister, don't agree. Here's an excerpt from the Globe and Mail:

“The overly naive analysis comparing housing to population growth to declare the adequacy of our housing supply fails to understand that housing and population growth are intimately related,” said statistics analyst Jens von Bergmann, a regular decoder of housing statistics for Vancouver and Canada. “It’s a slap in the face of those who have been pushed out, or those who failed to move here, because of the unavailability of housing.”

And on a related note, here is a recent piece by Shawn Micallef (Toronto Star) talking about why the left can't get Toronto's housing right.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) recently published its latest data on housing starts, housing under construction, and housing completions. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Canada saw 271k housing starts last year (2021). This includes single-detached housing and multiples, which captures semi-detached housing, row housing, and apartments (and other unit types). This is the highest number of annual housing starts that we have seen over the last five years. The range for the prior years has been between roughly 209-220k.

• Ontario saw 100k (~37% of the country), Quebec saw 68k (~25% of the country), and British Columbia saw 48k (~18% of the country).

• What I was curious about when I first saw these numbers was the split across the various housing types. Single-family homes, for instance, came in at 82k for all of Canada. So that's about 30% of total housing starts. If you add in semi-detached and row, which I believe would also be all grade-related, you get to 124k or 46% of all housing starts.

• Apartments and other unit types make up the balance at about 147k or 54% of all housing starts. This is kind of interesting because they now represent a majority.

• Looking at Ontario, the percentage of apartments actually drops to 50%. But the numbers are much higher in both Quebec and BC at 69% and 63%, respectively. Again, this is kind of interesting.

Despite all of our deference to single-family housing, the numbers suggest that we are actually in the midst of building a different kind of country -- one that entails people living in "apartments and other unit types." Maybe it's time we got more granular with this line item.

Note: CMHC defines "apartment and other unit types" to include not just apartments, but also stacked towns, duplexes, triplexes, double duplexes (whatever this is), and row duplexes. A number of these will, of course, be grade-related. But they still represent more intense forms of land use.