Affordability

CHS Core Housing Need

A quick overview over the freshly released Canadian Housing Survey data

Jens von Bergmann

3 minute read

Today StatCan released four more tables of data from the Canadian Housing Survey, all around the concept of Core Housing Need. Core housing need aims to measure housing stress based on affordability, suitability (crowding) and adequacy (disrepair). It applies to all households with shelter-cost-to-income ratio less than 100%, excluding non-family student-lead households, that aren’t able to afford an adequate and suitable home in their region. We want to give a quick overview what’s in the new data release.

First-time buyer Lorenz curves

Taking a look at affordability for first-time buyers, and what useful metrics can be constructed to measure this.

Keith Stewart Jens von Bergmann

13 minute read

At the end of this odd COVID-19 summer we launched a reading group to bring together people interested in diving into papers and books looking at housing issues. Geoffrey Meen and Christine Whitehead’s recently released book Understanding Affordability: The Economics of Housing Markets has been the group’s first read. We highly recommend the book, it’s a good read for anyone looking for a practical understanding of how housing markets work and ways to think about supply and demand and what they mean for housing affordability.