Canada’s housing starts have been stagnant since the 1970s, despite the country’s population tripling in that time, leading to a housing affordability challenge, a new report says.
The report “The Crisis in Housing Affordability” looked at housing starts over the past 52 years, from 1972 to 2024. It was published by public policy think tank Fraser Institute.
The authors said that Canada’s housing starts have not been keeping up with population growth.
The number of housing starts peaked in 1976 at 273,203, and reached 245,367 in 2024, according to the report authors. Between 1972 and 1979, Canada’s population grew by 279,975 people per year, they noted, compared to 859,473 people per year between 2021 and 2024.
“Despite unprecedented levels of immigration-driven population growth following the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada has failed to ramp up homebuilding sufficiently to meet housing demand,” said Steven Globerman, Fraser Institute senior fellow and co-author of the report.
In 2023, there were 5.1 new residents for every housing unit started in 2023, according to the report. That number dropped to 3.9 in 2024, the report authors said, and Canada’s population growth that year was double the rate observed prior to the pandemic.
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The report authors conclude by saying unless more homes are built or population growth is slowed, the country’s housing affordability problem will persist.
“The evidence is clear—population growth has been outpacing housing construction for decades, with predictable results,” Globerman said. “Unless there is a substantial acceleration in homebuilding, a slowdown in population growth, or both, Canada’s housing affordability crisis is unlikely to improve.”
The number of single family home starts has also dropped since the 1990s, the study says, when compared to multiple family homes. Authors said that by 2024, 22.2 percent of national housing starts were single detached units. Between 1972 and 1979, single family homes represented 63.4 percent of all housing starts.
Canada Population Growth
The federal government plans to reduce the number of permanent residents from 500,000 to 395,000 in 2025, and 380,000 in 2026. The number would drop further in 2027 to 365,000.
Ottawa also said it would cut back on the number of international student permit applications from 560,000 student visas issued in 2023 to about 360,000 in 2024. About 200,000 fewer international students were let into Canada in fall 2024 compared to the previous year, the immigration department said.
In July 2020, the country’s population was 38 million. That number reached an estimated 41.6 million as of March 2025.
Statistics Canada reported that 96 percent of the population growth in the second quarter of 2024 was from immigration.
Matthew Horwood contributed to this article.
