Ontario Home Builders Examining Regional Housing Demographics

One thing about the planning profession is that you can never have enough information and data to work with. When it comes to planning for housing supply, this statement couldn’t be more accurate.
​
With the release of Statistics Canada data in 2021, we finally have a clear picture of the housing landscape in Ontario. Led by the West End Home Builders’ Association (WE HBA), local builders' associations across the province began tapping into data through a series called Ontarians on the Move, produced by Dr. Moffatt with the Smart Prosperity Institute. The initial question concerned the city of Hamilton, Ontario: what led Hamilton to become the third most expensive housing market, considering average income vs housing costs in North America in 2021?

Understanding the research

Senior Director, Dr. Mike Moffat, and his research team at the Smart Prosperity Institute provided WE HBA with a detailed picture of Hamilton's demographic trends over the past 10 years and their relationships to housing supply and pricing. New construction is often the most expensive segment of the market: rising construction costs, development fees, and planning uncertainty, all get wrapped into the purchase price. Often though, new units filter down through the market as they age, becoming more accessible over time - but this is no longer the case. Both old and new housing across the province was selling at record prices. The short answer is we have not been building enough housing to keep up with our growing population.


Figure 1: Chart showing Ontario's population growth in 5-year increments compared with housing completions over the same time period.















Hamilton’s housing challenge by the numbers

Between 2015 and 2020, Ontario’s population grew by over one million people, but our housing completions in Ontario did not grow at the same rate. When we looked at Hamilton specifically, if our rate of growth had kept pace with Ontario's, we would have seen an additional 13,870 residents - far more residents than what the city's new housing supply could accommodate. In fact, between 2015-2020, Hamilton built 23% fewer homes than we had built between 2010 and 2015.
If we had kept pace with Ontario’s population growth, Hamilton would have built 11,536 new low-density homes and 349 additional apartment units. Instead, what happened was that over 10,000 people from the Hamilton area were forced to move to St. Catharines, Niagara, Brantford, and rural Ontario between 2016 to 2019 in a trend known as “drive until you qualify” where those who can’t afford a home in a certain area, predominantly families with young children, must keep driving further afield until home prices and mortgages become more affordable.

Despite this displacement, Hamilton’s population did continue to grow, thanks to a substantial increase in the number of international students and non-permanent residents who significantly boosted up the local economy. At the same time, it also experienced a number of people moving to the community from Toronto.


Figure 2: Intra-provincial migration between 2010-2015 and 2015-2020 for Hamilton CMA and regions for ages 0 to 14




Demographics and housing affordability

The success of the work WE HBA did with the Smart Prosperity Institute was contagious, with many other home builders’ associations commissioning research to see how demographic change is impacting their communities and housing affordability. You can read the report by the West End Home Builders’ Association, or check out regional data from other home builders’ associations in the following reports:

• Ontarians on the Move - Local Intelligence Report - Hamilton
• Baby Needs a New Home
• Forecast for Failure
• The Growth of London Outside London