With many Canadians struggling to find a place to live with rising home prices and interest rates, governments at both provincial and municipal levels are trying new methods — but those in the industry say building more homes is the key factor to actually solving Canada’s housing crisis.
The calls to keep the focus on building more comes after Nova Scotia Municipal Housing Minister John Lohr last week announced the government was extending its contract with the national online home-sharing platform Happipad, and called on residents who may have a spare bedroom to consider opening up their home to share.
The platform brings together renters seeking affordable, month-to-month accommodation with residents who have rooms to rent in their home. Lohr said this could mean housing for a variety of groups including students, health-care workers or tradespeople.
“It’s just a very small part of everything that we’re doing as a government to try to address the housing crisis,” Lohr said in an interview with Global News.
“We think it will be beneficial right across the province, not only in communities where we have had traditionally had this going on with our universities and colleges, but also in other parts of the province where we know there’s health-care workers needing a place to stay or, you know, people coming into a community on a temporary basis to do work need a place to stay.”
Happipad says it conducts background checks before matching renters with hosts, with the provincial government saying rents — which are paid to Happipad and then passed onto the home owner — are typically at rates below those of other rentals in the market.
The non-profit is nationwide and, according to its estimates, there could be more than 12 million empty bedrooms in homes across the country.
And the idea is that it could help alleviate some of the concerns that come with renting, such as timely payment of rent or, as Lohr describes, helping to make a “good match” between renter and home owner.
Rentals.ca senior analyst David Aizikov told Global News that while renting out spare bedrooms can be a good tool to help those looking for a place to live, it’s not a solution.
“I think that if more governments or more localities were introduced … this may provide a little bit of relief,” he said. “But unfortunately, I don’t think that it’s enough. I think that this is only lowering the barrier to entry.”
The solution, he says, is to build more.
Canada saw rental prices jump to a level unseen in the country’s history last month, with data from Rentals.ca and Urbanation showing the average rent hit $2,078, just shy of nine per cent above the same month last year. Compared to July 2021, the average asking rent increased by 21 per cent.
At the same time, the country is also millions of homes behind what is needed to reach housing affordability this decade. The CMHC forecasts a need for 3.5 million more homes by 2030 than the country is on track to build.
The need to build more homes is one that has been echoed by politicians from coast to coast, but the logistics of how to do so remains a challenge in jurisdictions across the country.
“Introducing more secondary suites might alleviate a little bit of the strain. It might help with some smaller communities here and there maybe that are dealing with an upsurge in homelessness,” Aizikov said.
“But at the end of the day, we’re not going to bring enough units or enough rooms to market to resolve these issues.”
One of the issues that an initiative like empty bedrooms does not address is finding housing for entire families who are also looking for homes in Canada.
However, Leah Cogan, a knowledge transfer specialist at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, says while building homes is important to tackle the crisis, every effort can help.
“We’ve got these solutions, we’ve got these innovators and these implementers,” she said.
“We just need to scale them because we’ve tested them, they work, and now we need everyone around the table to … govern the implementation at a larger scale.”
Happipad is one of the companies under the CMHC’s National Housing Strategy project profiles and has seen funding support from the organization, but Cogan said the goal of this support is to help people be housed long-term.
Canadians are still calling for both the federal and provincial governments to invest more and find solutions.
In July, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faced criticism after saying housing was not a primary federal responsibility despite the tens of billions of dollars the federal government has poured into funding for housing affordability over the past decade.
Housing has also been a prominent campaign focus for all federal parties during recent elections.
Lohr told Global News that all three levels of government do have a role, noting municipalities deal with land use planning and approving where people can build. He added he planned to have upcoming discussions with newly appointed federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser, also a Nova Scotia MP, who he said knows the province and its housing situation “very well.”
Aizikov added as the cost of living increases people are starting to open themselves up to the idea of having roommates to help with costs, and while building homes is needed, governments should recognize renting out single rooms as an option and invest in ways to promote it.
“I see this as a real logical next step as more people realize, ‘You know what? I can’t afford to live alone. I need to make a little extra income. I need to cover the cost of my mortgage. As my interest rate goes up, maybe I should rent out a room.’”
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