Gentrification in large Canadian cities: tenure, age, and exclusionary displacement 1991-2011

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the gentrification literature by asking how tenure changes, housing stock changes, and generational shifts might be related to gentrification as identified by household income growth in the inner cities of Canada’s three largest metropolitan areas. We use a modified shift-share analysis of changes in tenure, housing stock, and age-tenure cohorts between 1991 and 2011 to examine these questions in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, Canada’s largest metropolitan areas. We find that in each case, gentrification is associated with an absolute decline in non-condo private-sector rental units, and that construction of non-market/social housing units has not been sufficient to compensate for the private-sector units lost to gentrification. Our analysis demonstrates that changes in the class structure of households, more than generational or age-cohort composition shifts, are at the heart of inner-city transformations in tenure and income among households. The big story is the absolute loss of affordable rental units in each inner city, and the concomitant exclusionary displacement of lower-income households that has resulted.