Quote:
Originally Posted by GMD
It doesn't help that, because the population of the country as a whole is currently increasing faster than our capacity to build new units, we end up with a game of hot potato, where population moves to any place with more reasonable prices (eg Alberta right now).
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Not only are we not building housing faster than the population is growing, but
the average household size been falling for several generations. Yes, there are anecdotes about people in their 30s working well-paying jobs yet still living with their parents, but in general more Canadians are living on their own or with one roommate (partner, friend, or otherwise) than they were decades ago.
In the 1950s, when Canada added 100k people we needed 25k homes, but now if we added that many people we would need 40k homes. And that effect is even more pronounced in cities like Vancouver.
The Vancouver CMA has an average household size of 2.5, but the CoV has an average household size of 2.1. So while Vancouver grew from 546k in 2001 to 662k in 2021,
because household size fell from 2.3 in 2001 to 2.1 in 2021 Vancouver needed to build an additional 78k dwellings over the past two decades. And Vancouver actually only added 56k.
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