Nearly 1 in 4 Canadian households live in unaffordable housing, StatCan says

Housing affordability just worsened for a growing share of Canadians, new data from Statistics Canada shows.

Nearly one in four (23.2 per cent) Canadian households were living in unaffordable housing in 2024, compared to 22 per cent in 2022, Statistics Canada said in a report on Monday.

Statistics Canada defined households living in “unaffordable” housing as those that spent 30 per cent or more of their income on shelter costs.

Renters (33.7 per cent) were more likely than homeowners (17.4 per cent) to live in unaffordable housing, the report said.

In 2024, more than one -third (36.6 per cent) of all households in Canada were homeowners with a mortgage, while 27.8 per cent were homeowners without a mortgage.

Another 31.3 per cent were renters in the private market.

Affordability worsened for homeowners with a mortgage as well, with more than one-quarter (26.1 per cent) of living in unaffordable housing, up from 23.6 per cent in 2022.

Higher mortgage rates following the lows during COVID-19 pandemic meant many homeowners renewed their mortgages at high rates in 2024, with more than one in three (36.2 per cent) of homeowners with a mortgage reporting financial difficulty due to mortgage costs.

This was up 7.9 per cent compared to 2022.

Among renters, those who moved houses faced higher costs compared to those who stay put. The average monthly rent for those who had moved within the past two years was $1,740 a month in 2024, compared to $1,290 for those who had lived in their current home for more than two years.

Those who moved recently were more likely to face unaffordable housing, with 40 per cent living in unaffordable housing compared to 32.2 per cent among sitting tenants.