When my family immigrated to Canada in 1978, teachers, bricklayers and professionals all lived side-by-side in the highly desirable suburbs of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. The average Canadian house price was around $67,000, approximately three times the average household income of $21,000. Owning a home wasn’t easy, but it was within reach for middle-class families.
Today, that reality has changed profoundly. The average home price has surged nearly 1,000 per cent to around $750,000, while household incomes have only risen to approximately $86,000. Homes now cost nearly nine times the average household income — and significantly more in Toronto and Vancouver, where average home prices exceed $1 million.
Despite the severe housing shortage, the national conversation remains heavily focused on homeownership. But housing isn’t just about ownership — it’s about ensuring people have access to stable, high-quality places to live in thriving neighbourhoods. Canada needs more housing of all types — rental and for-sale, affordable and market-rate, high-rise and low-rise — because without enough supply at every level, affordability will never improve.
Almost 10 years ago, developers identified the need for high-quality, purpose-built rentals in Toronto’s downtown core. It took nearly a decade and several new thriving rental communities to gain the necessary policy support to construct new apartment buildings and increase the supply of market-rate and affordable housing. If it takes this long to turn ideas into action, we’ll always be reacting to crises rather than driving meaningful progress.
While zoning reforms and addressing the skilled-labour shortage are important steps, we need solutions that go beyond these obvious fixes. The federal and provincial governments have taken meaningful steps, such as waiving the HST on new purpose-built rentals and making surplus land available for development. But these efforts have largely been reactive, coming only after crisis conditions forced action.
Equally important, all three levels of government must align their priorities to meaningfully remove barriers to new housing. While federal and provincial governments waive taxes on purpose-built rental housing, municipalities continue to increase development charges and property taxes on these very same projects, thereby creating opposing forces that undermine efforts to generate meaningful housing supply.
The recent resignations of our prime minister, minister of finance and minister of housing mark a pivotal moment to rethink Canada’s housing strategy. This leadership transition offers a rare opportunity to implement proven solutions that could transform how we build and finance homes throughout Canada.
One of the biggest obstacles to affordability is the soaring cost of infrastructure — roads, utilities and transit. These costs are paid upfront by housing providers and passed on to renters and buyers. A better approach is tax-increment financing, where municipalities fund infrastructure through bonds repaid by future property tax revenues from new housing and commercial development.
Tax-increment financing has been successfully leveraged in Dallas and Houston for decades and, more recently, in Calgary’s East Village, to finance infrastructure for new communities. Applying tax-increment financing broadly across Canada, alongside municipal development charge reform, could reduce the cost of new home construction by hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit.
Financing purpose-built rental housing at scale is another critical piece of the puzzle. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has been a major force in supporting new rental housing supply. The continued expansion of programs like CMHC’s Apartment Construction Loan Program (ACLP) would allow more affordable rental housing to be built. Recently completed apartment communities such as Maple House in Toronto, designed with 30 per cent affordable units, demonstrate how the ACLP can address affordability, even in Canada’s most expensive markets.
Lastly, we must look beyond our major urban centres to the untapped potential of Canada’s periphery cities if we want to solve our national housing crisis. Why not invest in emerging cities that could grow into vibrant alternatives to our largest metropolitan areas, offering more affordable options and economic opportunity?
Places like Kingston, Ont. — with its educational institutions, healthy downtown core and emerging technology sector — offer a blueprint for sustainable growth. By investing strategically in these communities, we can create thriving cities that offer affordable housing and give Canadians more choices about where to live, while easing the housing demands on our largest metropolitan areas.
There are innovative yet straightforward and proven solutions that can put us on the path to solving Canada’s housing crisis. Our country’s future depends on it. Our government must make housing a top priority, recognizing both the urgency of the moment and the transformative potential of bold action. Leadership, collaboration and co-ordination can ensure we build the housing Canadians deserve. The question is: will we collectively rise to meet this challenge, or will we remain stuck in legacy thinking and incrementalism?
National Post
Gary Berman is president and CEO of Tricon Residential.