I’ve studied housing for over 15 years. These Canadian towns are showing us how to fix the crisis

Posted on November 25, 2025 in Governance Debates

Source: — Authors:

TheStar.com – Opinion/Contributors
Nov. 25, 2025.   By Brian Doucet, Contributor

Housing is inarguably one of the biggest challenges facing Canada. Everyone talks about it constantly and there’s no shortage of ideas about how to solve the crisis.

Frequently, we hear from politicians and others that the solution is clear: increase supply, unleash the cranes and eliminate rules holding back development.

But what if we need to think bigger? Too often we frame housing simply as a question of how much we need and defer to the market to build it. Instead, we need to focus on what kind of housing and for whom.

I’ve studied housing for more than 15 years and there’s a surprising truth: Solving the housing crisis isn’t about developing new solutions, but rather having the courage and political will to implement measures we know will make housing more affordable.

Speak to housing researchers and the answers become clear: in addition to more market housing, we must also regulate rents, curb speculation — and most importantly, build nonmarket housing, preferably on publicly-owned land.

Presently only 3.5 per cent of Canada’s housing supply is nonmarket; it’s the only type of housing protected from market forces, which also ensures affordability in perpetuity. Even if that doubled to 7 per cent we would only reach the OECD average. A report from Scotiabank — hardly a bastion of socialist thought — recommended exactly this.

While we do need supply to grow with our population and thus need more market-based housing, we also need to understand the limits of the market when it comes to providing affordable shelter. For example, in Toronto 60 per cent of downtown condos built between 2016 and 2020 were bought by investors who preferred small units; now we have a glut of tiny condos rather than a range of supply.

The crux of the problem is that housing currently serves two conflicting goals: as shelter and a human right for all; and a commodity from which to make money for some. To put it bluntly, it cannot succeed at both.

There is hope, however. I’ve spent the last few years making a documentary film about housing. I travelled across Canada to learn about programs, policies and projects that are ensuring housing is a human right.

Why did I spend time making a film? Because as a housing researcher, I feel compelled to share my knowledge beyond the world of academia. I want to enhance debates in what I call the ‘4Ps’: planning, policy, political and public conversation.

In every community, there are inspiring initiatives. Small projects such as Kitchener partnering with the YW to use city-owned land to build supportive housing are quick wins. The challenge is replicating this model by the thousands. Build Canada Homes uses this model but must be more ambitious.

Whistler has a housing authority that builds, manages and finances nonmarket housing for people who work in the resort municipality. Through this, they’ve managed to house more than 75 per cent of their workforce within an otherwise very expensive community.

The City of Montreal has an urban development corporation which upzones its own sites to provide more affordable housing, a “no-brainer idea” Toronto should emulate on municipal parking lots. Montreal also has the best housing acquisition program in Canada, giving the municipality the right of first refusal on more than 500 buildings when they’re sold.

New Westminster eliminated renovictions with a 2019 bylaw that was so successful, the B.C. government adopted similar rules province-wide (that’s a distant dream here in Ontario). Next door, Burnaby has clear rules that have stimulated both market and nonmarket construction, while also protecting tenants.

It won’t be easy to make housing more affordable, but these examples give me hope. They also show that we don’t need to look to Singapore, Vienna or Sweden for inspiration. Instead, we can learn from our own communities, where many of the solutions to the housing crisis are hiding in plain sight.

Dr Brian Doucet is an award-winning planning professor at the University of Waterloo and director of “Thinking Beyond the Market: a film about genuinely affordable housing.” www.housingfilm.ca

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/ive-studied-housing-for-over-15-years-these-canadian-towns-are-showing-us-how-to/article_72d20852-d170-470a-bbb8-c1a83c959e2a.html

Tags: , , , ,

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2025 at 11:27 am and is filed under Governance Debates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Leave a Reply