Family-sized dwellings in short supply

The cognitive dissonance could scarcely be more jarring.

- JOHN LORINC

While realtors complain about a glut of unsold condos and a sluggish home resale market, politicians from one end of the country to the other talk endlessly, and correctly, about a housing shortage the likes of which hasn’t been seen in Canada, and many other places, since the end of the Second World War.

There are all sorts of reasons for what seems like a deeply contradictory condition, including unaffordable prices, stubbornly high interest rates, location and so on. But an important factor often seems to be overlooked when it comes to parsing this issue: unit size.

We’re at a juncture as the millennial generation, the largest demographic bulge since the baby boomers, are starting and building families — a period of life when young parents are juggling many costs and building careers. What’s more, increased immigration levels also tend to bring more young families, including multi-generational families, who are seeking homes. Oneor one-plus bedroom condos serve neither of these societal segments. It’s as if the apparel industry had suddenly stopped manufacturing M, L and XL-sized clothing.

The mismatch, moreover, is welldocumented and hardly a recent phenomenon. Statistics Canada’s housing surveys include a category called “suitability,” defined as “whether the dwelling has enough bedrooms for the size and composition of the household.”

The latest figures are bracing, especially in big cities. In 2021, about 9.1 per cent of all Canadian families with children were living in unsuitable housing. For Toronto, that proportion shoots up to 22.6 per cent. And for renters, the proportion is almost half, by far the highest in Canada. Over the past three censuses, the trend lines are all heading in the wrong direction.