The uneven geography of housing affordability stress in Canadian metropolitan areas

Abstract

Housing in‐affordability is a growing problem within Canadian urban areas. This research asks an as‐yet unanswered spatial question: where do those suffering high rates of housing affordability stress reside and what do the spatial patterns imply about policies intended to address this housing problem? This paper tabulates and maps the spatial distribution of households that pay excessive amounts of their income for rent in order to identify locations within metropolitan regions where housing affordability stress is greatest. It is found that significant unevenness characterises the spatial distribution of housing affordability problems in major Canadian census metropolitan areas (CMAs). Only a minority of places conform to the North American stereotype that concentrates this problem near the city centre. Where some CMAs have concentrations of the problem in the inner city or, alternatively inner suburb, other metropolitan areas exhibit a more diffuse pattern of housing in‐affordability. The locus of the problem is also variable depending on whether the household is of the family or non‐family type. The interpretation of the uneven patterns relates broadly to features of supply and demand that have been identified in previous research. From both a policy and theoretical perspective this work demonstrates that greater attention needs to be paid to the spatial aspects of housing affordability and to the related, economically‐induced risk of homelessness in Canadian metropolitan areas.