Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
The average number of people per household in Canada has been trending down for decades. Smaller families, people getting married in their 30s rather than 20s, more childless couples, more single adults, more single seniors all add up to single-adult households making up a 29 per cent of Canadians households in 2023, up from 13 per cent in 1961.
With those demographic changes, it means we need more housing units to house 1,000 Canadians than we needed in the past. If supply and demand adapted the way we might expect, higher housing costs would mean fewer Canadians willing to pay to live alone. But we’ve seen the opposite. Which suggests those demographic trends and preferences are very powerful.
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That’s exactly the point housing price being high is not going to be fixed by lowering construction cost or taxation on housing. Demand is inelastic so prices just goes up to what people can pay. You need to create excess supply if you want to fix it. The market is not incentivized to create a solution.
Immigration isn’t the issue here when it comes to housing.