Prepared by: Steve Pomeroy, Industry Professor, McMaster University; Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC)

At a glance

• Canada’s National Housing Strategy (NHS) set an overall affordable-supply target of 162,000 new homes by 2028, implying an average of 16,200 completed homes per year.
• Reported non-market completions reached just over 8,000 homes in 2025. Even with a generous adjustment for smaller centres, the total is estimated at roughly 9,700 homes – about 60% of the annual pace required.
• Since 2021, production has been concentrated in provinces with stronger unilateral programs and greater capacity to stack federal, provincial, and municipal support. British Columbia accounts for 42% of completions; Ontario accounts for 22%.
• Public progress reporting emphasizes approved or committed funding, rather than completed and occupied homes, and does not adequately address double counting where programs are stacked.

Purpose and approach

This brief assesses progress in adding new non-market (affordable) housing supply under the NHS. It complements published federal progress reports with a custom tabulation from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Starts and Completions Survey (SCS). The analysis focuses on completed homes: units that can be occupied and begin assisting eligible households.

The tabulation uses CMHC’s non-market flag to estimate annual non-market completions by province and nationally. It captures centres with populations of 10,000 or more, so the estimates should be read as a minimum count of non-market completions.

Policy context

The 2017 NHS established ambitious goals to preserve existing social housing, assist lower-income households through the Canada Housing Benefit, and create new affordable homes. This brief focuses only on the new-supply objective.

The strategy initially targeted 100,000 new affordable homes through new initiatives, plus 50,000 more homes through the intensification and redevelopment of existing community non-profit housing. The National Housing Co-investment Fund – rebranded in 2023 as the Affordable Housing Fund (AHF) – and the Canada Community Housing Initiative/Federal Community Housing Initiative (CCHI/FCHI) were key delivery vehicles. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) added a minimum target of 12,000 supportive homes and ultimately funded just over 15,000 units.

Setting aside the effects of program stacking and possible double counting, these commitments raised the overall affordable-supply target to 162,000 new homes by 2022. Most units were intended to be modestly affordable, with rents at or below median market rents; RHI units were intended to be more deeply affordable for people exiting homelessness.

Measuring new non-market supply

The SCS provides established data on housing starts and completions for all centres with populations above 10,000. It reports dwelling form and intended market, including ownership, condominium, and rental housing. Before 1995, it also published social-housing completions. After the end of federal funding for new social housing on December 31, 1994, production fell sharply and CMHC stopped publishing that detail, although it retained a non-market flag in the underlying data.

Figure 1. Non-market completions in centres of 10,000+ population, Canada

The custom tabulation makes it possible to estimate annual completions of new non-market homes – including non-profit and co-operative housing – from 1990 onward. Because the series measures completions, it appropriately reflects the lag between project approval, construction, and occupancy.

The historical series shows substantially higher production before the federal withdrawal in the mid-1990s. Completions then declined through the latter half of the 1990s and into the new millennium. Ontario maintained unilateral funding until 1995, while British Columbia and Quebec sustained programs at lower levels. The federal-provincial-territorial Affordable Housing Initiative (later Investments in Affordable Housing) brought a modest increase after 2002, and the higher completions in 2010-12 reflect stimulus funding under Canada’s Economic Action Plan.

Has new supply met the NHS target?

The 162,000-home NHS target implies a decade-long average of 16,200 completed homes per year. By year eight of the strategy, annual completion levels should be at or above that pace to achieve the overall target.

The completion data indicate that production remains well below the required level. In 2025, completions reached a peak of just over 8,000 homes – approximately one-half of the annual pace implied by the NHS target.

CMHC had ceased counting completions in smaller centres, although the coverage has since been reinstated. If centres below 100,000 population contributed an additional 20% – their share of total starts – estimated non-market completions would increase to roughly 9,700 homes. This is a generous adjustment because most non-market development occurs in mid-sized and large centres. Even at that level, annual output would be only about 60% of the desired pace.

The available data cannot determine the share of homes that are deeply affordable versus affordable at CMHC’s threshold of 80% of local average market rent. Given constraints on grant funding and the reliance on concessionary financing, the share of deeply affordable homes is likely limited outside the RHI. Some RHI spaces may also not be enumerated as units where they provide bed-sit rather than fully self-contained accommodation.

Geographic distribution of new supply

The data also show a pronounced geographic skew. Jurisdictions with more generous unilateral programs are better able to stack provincial or municipal support with NHS initiatives, or to supplement the NHS targets. The NHCF/AHF in particular favoured projects with partner contributions, which likely directed more federal funding toward jurisdictions – and often larger centres – with greater capacity to contribute additional assistance. 

British Columbia and Quebec sustained social-affordable programming through the later 1990s and added programming alongside the AHI/IAH, although Quebec’s program activity has more recently subsided. Since 2021, British Columbia has accounted for 42% of Canada’s new non-market supply, making it the national leader in production.

Figure 2. Non-market completions by province and share of Canada total, since 2021

Ontario’s share is 22%, despite its’ substantially larger population. This is a low per-capita level and reflects the absence of significant provincial programming after responsibility for social-affordable housing was downloaded to local governments in the late 1990s. Quebec also records a low per-capita level, followed by Alberta, which has benefited from some new provincial investments.

Opportunities to strengthen reporting and data

The custom CMHC data used for this brief are currently available only at the provincial and national levels. CMHC has indicated that it plans to strengthen data collection and reporting, creating the potential for more granular geography in future releases.

A stronger reporting system would link SCS data with federal and provincial-territorial administrative program data, so that non-market projects funded through cost-shared and unilateral initiatives can be captured once and counted once. It should also disaggregate results by program and report the degree of affordability, including rents affordable to lower- and moderate-income households, as well as targeted vulnerable populations where appropriate.

Improved linkages among the SCS, the NHS-generated Social and Affordable Housing Survey (SAHS), and administrative funding data could provide a more robust foundation for independent research, program evaluation, and policy development. This will be especially important as federal and provincial-territorial housing ministries refresh and extend the NHS, which is scheduled to end in March 2028.

Research and reporting implications

• Use completed and occupied homes, alongside approvals and commitments, as the central measure of supply progress.
• Reconcile project-level program stacking to prevent double counting in public reporting.
• Publish comparable data below the provincial level, with consistent treatment of smaller centres.
• Link supply data to rent levels, affordability bands, and the populations assisted, using administrative data and SAHS where feasible.

Data note

This brief draws on a custom CMHC SCS tabulation for non-market completions. The estimates represent a minimum count because they cover centres of 10,000+ population. The analysis distinguishes completed homes from approved or committed funding and should not be interpreted as a program-by-program attribution of NHS outputs.

References 

CMHC (2017) National Housing Strategy 

Pomeroy, Steve (2020), Review and options to strengthen the National Housing Strategy, prepared for The Federal Housing Advocate, Canadian Human Rights Commission

Pomeroy, Steve (2026, Policy Brief to HUMA: Improving Transparency and Accountability in Federal Reporting on Social and Affordable Housing in Canada.

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How adopting new, collaborative approaches, across multiple orders of government, can support better coordinated and more comprehensive responses to Canada’s housing crisis

On November 27, 2025 at 1pm ET,  please join us for a webinar to discuss findings from a recent research project, conducted by Duncan Maclennan (Principal Investigator) and Jim Dunn (Co-Investigator) and funded by the Government of Canada through the Research and Knowledge Initiative, that explored examples of mechanisms developed in other countries to develop such multi-order, strategic government partnerships to build housing and infrastructure.   This study also examined early experiences with Canada’s Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) which provides federal funding to local governments for housing

Watch a video summary of the project results

Read a draft paper summarizing the results of the international review of strategic government partnerships

Read a draft paper of policy proposals for Canada

Register for the webinar here:

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Perhaps the most frequently used phrase of 2024, across politicians, the media, pundits and consumers was “the housing affordability crisis” The critical question for 2025 is will a crisis persist, or could the housing situations improve? I posit that things may get marginally better, although not so much for those with low income and those currently living in encampments, unless governments make ending encampments the primary policy focus, and invest accordingly. 

Like the term “affordability’, the phrase “housing affordability crisis” is ambiguous and depending on who is speaking has a variety of meanings and degrees of a crisis: 

• To pent-up potential homebuyers it captures the frustration that they may never be able to afford to own;
• Renters, especially those that have to move for a variety of reasons, including evictions and life changes, face dramatically higher rents compared to their previous costs;
• And with an absolute shortage and ongoing erosion of lower rent housing options, lower income renters that cannot find something they can afford either live precariously, at risk of homelessness, or are already in encampments and just trying to survive.

In considering what 2025 and beyond may bring for each of these groups, it is useful to separately examine trends and impacts across these related parts of the housing system. Any prognostications are of course subject to an unprecedented degree of uncertainty created by concurrent political change in both the US and Canada and how these may impact economic conditions that underpin housing markets.

First considering the prospects for ownership, which is a concern from many young families. Home prices became elevated during the Covid period as a result of limited listings (a form of “supply” separate from new construction), substantial cuts to near zero mortgage interest rates, which massively enhanced capacity to lever financing, retained savings, and efforts to acquire more space to accommodate working from home. The upward price spiral then attracted investors, especially individuals levering their accumulating home equity such that expansion of small-scale investors distorted demand. This was especially prevalent in larger higher cost cities where the opportunity to prepurchase condominiums was readily available and this investor demand then encouraged more starts. Since 2020 Toronto (38%) and Vancouver (22%) alone have accounted for 60% of all condominium starts nationally. By comparison they house 24% of the national population.

This investment model has subsequently unraveled, with prices of condo units declining 10-20 per cent from their peak in 2022. An unprecedented increase in purpose built rental completions alongside too many investor condos adding rentals created panic selling of investor condos, especially for those that borrowed on a variable rate and found their mortgage costs unsustainable. And more so when weaker demand from subsequently reformed temporary immigration policy made it hard to find or retain tenants.

This issue and price correction is far more prevalent in larger high-cost cities, because that’s where the majority of condominiums are constructed. But it permeates across the country because Canada’s three largest cities account for more than two thirds of all new condominium starts (and mainly Toronto and Vancouver). So when the investor market in Toronto (GTA) and Vancouver turns sour it heavily influences overall national statistics, both in terms of volume and price effects.

Since peaking in summer 2022 home prices across much of the country have fallen back and stabilized at around 15%-20% below the peak in spring 2022 (with exception of Alberta where renewed interprovincial migration since 2020 has added new pressure and brought prices to a new peak in late 2024, although prices remain 30% below the national average composite price).

Given current political-economic conditions it is expected that mortgage rates have little room to improve further (and could go back up). US tariffs, if imposed, are anticipated to deliver an economic shock with substantial job loss and weak income growth. Coupled with current pressures and panic amongst some investor purchasers this suggests a continued correction and softening in home prices across most markets. Along with more favourable mortgage policies (amortization increased to 30 years and insured loan threshold raised from $1 million to $1.5 million), this may facilitate some young families, especially those with family financial assistance, to enter the ownership market. But this will be at an insufficient volume to add any inflationary pressure on home prices (again excepting Alberta, where lower prices and political encouragement are fueling increased demand). 

So overall a softening in the home purchase market. 

The rental sector is also likely to stabilize, with reduced pressure on rents. While some rent increases may persist, these are more likely to be closer to the rate of inflation than the double digit increases of recent years. The small improvement in access to ownership noted above, will remove some renters and free up units. 

While recorded as condo starts, a substantial number of condos (more than 30% and over 50% in the GTA since 2016) are purchased by investors and consequently act to augment rental supply (especially in Vancouver and Toronto). 

Meanwhile a historically high number of rental starts is now transitioning to completions and large additions to rental supply across many cities, reflected in the national weighted average rental vacancy rate increasing from 1.5% to 2.3%.

Since 2016, purpose-built rental starts have increased fourfold, from less than 10% of all starts for the previous two decades to over one third of all starts (and much higher in many communities outside of Ontario). 

Note that in the higher cost cities rental construction is crowded out by a large condo sector, so these cities contribute much less to the overall national total of purpose-built rental starts. Toronto and Vancouver together contributed only 9% and 13% respectively to rental starts since 2020.

While adding to overall supply, this increase is not addressing the need for affordable supply. These new units are entering the market at higher rents, typically over 150% of the CMHC average market rent. However, the excess supply at these higher rent levels is placing a cap on increases for higher rent properties, and indirectly helps to moderate the overall rate if rent increase. 

Meanwhile many previously lower rent units have already cycled through to a new tenancy with associated large rent increase, so there is less room to increase again in a subsequent vacancy. This results in a slowing rate of increase, as already revealed in the recent yr-yr rent changes in rentals.ca data.

Another key factor in the rental sector is the implementation of quotas on international students and temporary foreign workers (TFW) – two groups which by their nature are almost always renters. 

The very high levels of unmanaged TFW and student permits caused a spike in rental demand and was a significant factor driving up rents in 2021-23. This source of demand has now been reduced and is being more carefully managed. And if expiring visas and permits result in emigration of these individuals this may add to rental vacancies and help reduce pressure on rents. 

The additional rental supply (via both purpose built and condo investor rentals) together with reduced temporary immigrant demand may not result in absolute reduction in rents, although rentals.ca data suggest some cities are reporting turnover rents slightly lower than a year ago. But this reduced demand will certainly help to slow the very large rent increases of recent years. And as the heightened level of new rental construction continues to come onto the market, this should create a more stable and self-correcting rental market. 

So, similar to the ownership sector, conditions are likely to soften in the rental sector, although this may then reduce incentives and the attraction to build rentals.

Finally, in the third component of the system, the prospects for low income and homeless persons and families is less likely to improve. The softening rental market conditions will not be sufficient to see rents fall to affordable levels, but increasing vacancies will create some opportunities to relocate people from encampments, if some form of rental assistance can be provided (this will likely require monthly subsidy in the order of $500-$750, depending on local rents and availability). While not an insignificant cost, given the high numbers of homeless and people in encampments, this would be a sound investment when compared to the costs incurred in the emergency system, (policing, hospitals, and community services, and the monthly cost to rent inappropriate hotel and motel rooms as emergency shelters).

For the chronically homeless, which typically involves both mental health and addiction challenges, a more targeted investment in permanent supportive housing with on-site wrap around supports is critical to stabilizing and managing health and addiction challenges. Again, not inexpensive but critical targeted investment compared to the costs of a business-as-usual emergency response and to address the persisting concerns of citizens impacted by encampments. This cost-benefit has been documented both in earlier research (Pomeroy 2006) and in a recent analysis by Dr Andrew Boozary (2024).

This third leg of the housing crisis stool is the most precariously balanced. Things could be substantially improved with some carefully designed and targeted interventions with appropriate funding. However, if a new government fixates on deficit reduction, as did the Chretien-Martin administration in the mid 1990’s, a lack of investment in this issue will result in persisting encampments and local civil unrest.

Looking at 2025 and beyond, the overall housing situation and conditions for most (except the homeless) should marginally improve. 

That said, investing to help the non-profit community housing sector expand, both via new construction and by acquiring existing private rental properties could accelerate an increase in the number of affordable rental opportunities that can be protected against any resurging and speculative market pressure, and can also create more secure opportunities for those exiting homelessness. 

While the media and headline editors frequently use phrases like a “market recovery” and “strengthening home prices”  this is not what we need or are likely to get. That’s a good thing.

If we want to see improved affordability and move beyond a housing affordability crisis, we need home prices and rents to stagnate, or at most increase only at the rate of inflation, as they did through the 1990’s.

Those homeowners that benefitted with very large price gains and thus accumulated appreciation over the past few decades have this benefit baked into their assets and personal investment portfolios. They don’t need more excess appreciation, at the cost of the next generation being locked out of ownership, faced with unaffordable rents or the persistence of encampments on their doorstep parks. 

With stabilized rents and prices, alongside strategic investments to grow the economy which can provide employment with good incomes, improvements in income and capacity to pay will gradually improve housing affordability.  Hopefully by the end of the current decade the phrase housing affordability crisis will be  only a point of historical reference.

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By: Jim Dunn

Their initiative will fail because they are trying to solve the wrong problem.

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The work will look at the actions needed in the whole system from homelessness, unaffordable rents and planning, to skills shortages and supply-chain issues.

Duncan has had a long and internationally distinguished career as an applied economist specialising in housing, neighbourhoods and cities.

His professional roles have spanned senior positions in both academic and government settings, in the UK, Canada and Australia. At the University of Glasgow in the 1980s he established and led the Centre for Housing and Urban Research, and in the 1990s directed the ESRC Cities and Competitiveness Program and Joseph Rowntree Foundation programs on Housing Finance, Housing and the Macro-Economy and Housing and Area Regeneration.

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The study that the committee has initiated is important and necessary to ensure that in monitoring the impact of the National Housing Strategy (NHS) and Canada Housing Plan (CHP) we do not repeat the mistake of the last two decades – an absence of transparent objective reporting. 

The data also reveal that minimal levels of investment since 1993 are a significant contributing factor in the current and growing housing affordability crisis. Had we sustained the funding and production level that prevailed 1990-1994, representing 10% of all starts,  we could have added over 330,000 additional non-market homes and reached just over one million affordable rent-limited homes.

I’ll come back to some specific recommendations that will help improve data transparency and reporting going forward.

Let me start by answering the three questions posed in the motion:

1. How much federal money was allocated to social and affordable housing;
2. how many units of non-profit and cooperative housing were created; and 
3. how many units of purpose build rental housing were created. 

I have provided the committee with a data brief (appended here) that answers all three questions and provides the detailed numbers, so you can refer to that. This is a result of an ongoing research program at the McMaster University Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC) 

I am using 2001 to 2016 because 2001 is when the federal government re-engaged and established the Affordable Housing Framework, and 2016 is the last year that useable data is extractable from CMHC sources (subsequent data is opaque and less accessible)

Between 2001-2016 federal investment totalled $4.17 billion, a portion of which levered PT cost matching). Over the period 2001-2016 this created: 

• 41,202 new non-profit homes (1.5%), 
• 10,596 co-operative homes, (0.4%) and 
• just over 238,000 new private rental units (8.7%).

Over the same period, Canada built 2.73 million total new homes – so NP and Co-op were just less than 2% and private rental just under 9% – meaning that 90% of new homes were for homeownership (including condo).  This low amount of new rental housing has contributed to current rental supply-demand mismatch (exacerbated by a large and sudden increase in student and temporary immigration)

The funding relates the three distinct funding programs: 

• The Affordable Housing Initiative (rebranded Investments in Affordable Housing in 2011). This provided on average about $125 million annual – with matching requirements from provinces and territories to effectively double that investment; 
• A one-time infusion of $1.4 billion to create three affordable housing trust funds negotiated in 2005 by Paul Martin and Jack Layton and passed in the 2006 budget ($800 to Provinces; $300 to the Territories; and $300 for indigenous). This was a direct payment to PTs from Dept of Finance with no involvement from CMHC, no cost sharing requirement, and no available separate reporting on outcomes (any units created would be captured in completion data, but without attribution). 
• A temporary stimulus as part of the Canada Economic Action Plan 2009-11, which provided just over $2 billion in total if which $1.025 was for social housing retrofit, so is excluded here. This was administered via CMHC and simply added to the AHI/IAH, but with no P/T cost matching requirements.

While the Committee have posed three seemingly simple questions, and one would think it was easy to generate these answers, this is not the case. There is no simple accessible public data set to answer these questions. I spent considerable time assembling this data from an array of data sets. This also included significant effort working with CMHC officials to coach them on various sources of archival data that current officials were unaware even existed.

Historically, we had good data from 1955 to 2016 when CMHC published an annual volume with over 100 tables, Canadian Housing Statistics (CHS). This covered all kinds of details on housing starts completions, levels of mortgage financing, insured, lending and public expenditures investments as well as outcomes of various market and social housing programs. Annual editions are available on the CMHC knowledge centre website for every year from 1955 to 2016. 

After social housing programs were terminated effective December 31,1993 in a decision announced in the final budget of the Mulroney administration, details reported and the number of tables in CHS began to diminish. 

In 2002 for example the table that specifically enumerated annual starts and completions of non-profit and social housing was removed. 

And in 2016, the publication itself was terminated. It was replaced, in part, by web-based interactive data tool, which provides very good data on market information in the housing system. But the previously available data on funds authorized under the National Housing Act (NHA) and number of social housing units or affordable housing units created is absent from this new web-based portal.

As part of a research project at the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative at McMaster University we’ve been trying to reassemble data and re-create a baseline of what was created between 2001, when the federal government re-engaged in investments and affordable housing through the Affordable Housing Initiative (AHI), and 2019, when the National Housing Strategy was implemented. This included working with officials at CMHC responsible for various data systems to try and extract from various administrative files and create new sets to reveal what transpired since 2001.

Pitiful state of reporting on housing outcomes

The state of data reporting and transparency over the post 1994 period, and especially since 2001 is pitiful.

Outside of the diminishing tabulations in the CHS, CMHC failed to publish any detailed information on the units created and households assisted with the over $4 billion of expenditure I have noted above from 2001-2016. While CMHC required detailed reporting from the provinces and territories to adjudicate claims for reimbursement of cost shared programs, this information was buried in accounting files. No annual detailed tabulations were created nor published. 

The only information made publicly available, posted on the CMHC website, was a table of cumulative total federal funds claimed and total households assisted since commencement of the funding program (initially from 2001, then from 2011 when rebranded). Data for individual years and provinces were available only by saving the prior year cumulative table and calculating the difference from current year. This table also conflated all details so aggregated households assisted with rental allowance, assisted ownership, rehabilitation assistance (after 2011) and non-profit and co-op units. 

Here is a sample of the table which I saved from the CMHC site in 2012:

Providing data in this aggregated, cumulative basis does not support detailed research and analysis – it also fails to support sound policy analysis and program development. 

This weak practice and lack of transparency is now being repeated under the National Housing Strategy (NHS) – despite admission by the Minister in 2017 that Canada lags other countries in generating program data, and his promise to do better. 

In progress reporting on the NHS, CMHC simply identifies commitments, with no details on the number of actual homes completed and therefore available to house people, nor the location (CMA/Province) of these homes, or level of affordability. Minimal details are available to support detailed research and analysis. 

When the NHS was introduced in 2017 It included bilateral agreements with the provinces and territories for three specific programs to be delivered and cost-shared. This imposed a very detailed and onerous reporting requirement on the provinces to complete, and submit semi-annually (with a 12-sheet spreadsheet with massive amount of detail on the number of existing social units that would be preserved, the number of households being assisted with rental assistance, the number of units that were being built and some additional information on target groups). Consequently, much detail is delivered to CMHC – but only minimal high level summary data is then released in the NHS progress reports. This data could be used to generate and publish more useful detailed tables, similar to previous CHS tabulations, which were extensively used by researchers. 

While CMHC imposed detailed reporting on PTs under the bilateral agreements (which account for less than 10% of all funding in the NHS)  no similar obligation is imposed on CMHC, who deliver over 90% of the funding. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander – CMHC  should be directed to create similar explicit action, plans and targets for the unilateral federal programs.  And as above, use this to generate and publish transparent data. 

Conclusion and recommendations

Let me conclude with three specific recommendations to direct CMHC to:

1. Reinstitute the practice (terminated in 2002) in the starts and completions survey of recording when any new housing is being funded under a social-affordable program, or specific initiative under the NHS (or any unilateral provincial program), so that these can be explicitly enumerated and tabulated.
2. CMHC should be directed to replicate the same reporting requirements, with targets and action plans for all unilateral federal initiatives in parallel to the reporting obligations imposed on the PTs under the bilateral agreements (although this can be simplified), which now account for less than 10% of all NHS funding.  
3. CMHC should then be directed to create open-source data files and to generate detailed annual tabulations for transparent reporting on all outcomes of federal and bilateral funded initiatives.

Implementing these recommendations will create more robust reporting and transparency and assist parliamentarians, policy advisers, researchers and taxpayers in more complete understanding on the costs and impacts of federally funded housing activities. 

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