(Joint with Jens von Bergmann and cross-posted at MountainMath)

In May we estimated suppressed household formation across Canada using what we called the Montréal Method, finding strong evidence for suppression across many parts of Canada. As a reminder, we designed the Montréal Method to estimate housing shortfalls related to constraints upon current residents who might wish to form independent households but are forced to share by local housing markets. Now that we’ve got 2021 Census data out, it’s time to update our estimates. Given the data available, currently we can only estimate metro area effects of our previous Model 1 (crude household maintainer rates) and Model 2 (age-adjusted household maintainer rates). But that’s a start, and we’re also now enabled to extend the long timelines for Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver from our previous post to include 2021. Overall, current suppression of households alone suggests a shortfall of over 400,000 dwellings in Metro Toronto, and 130,000-200,000 across Metro Vancouver.

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