Much of the debate about the housing crisis has focused on the market imbalance between supply and demand, citing factors such as foreign investment and lack of market supply.
Using the historical census data of five metropolitan areas — Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton and Calgary — from 1981 to 2016, our study reveals deeply entrenched housing inequality in accessing affordable housing in the post-1990s neoliberal era.
Federal expenditure on housing programs dropped from nearly 1.5 per cent in 1981 to slightly over 0.6 per cent of the total federal expenditure in 2016.
In 1999, responding to the demands of consumers and the financial sector, the federal government introduced Bill C-66 that aimed to turn the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation from home-builder to mortgage-insurer.
The residential mortgage debt to GDP ratio rose from 26 per cent, to a whopping 68 per cent between 1981 and 2016.
The share of renter households that spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing increased from 35 per cent to 42 per cent between 1986 and 2016.
The more commodified a housing sector, the more access to housing one would expect to have, contingent on an individual’s economic status rather than citizenship.
After taking factors such as household type and size and socio-demographic characteristics into consideration, we estimated that the average CIR for high-income households dropped from 46 per cent for low to middle-income income households, to 40 per cent post-2001.
While the withdrawal of the federal funding increased housing costs for both income groups, housing financialization exacerbated housing unaffordability only for low to middle-income households, while benefiting high-income households by improving housing affordability for them.
Young homeowners are the worst off due to easier access to mortgage loans and slow income improvement, representing a new form of housing vulnerability.
This implies the existence of systemic barriers in low-income female-led households, such as male bias in the design and planning of the residential spaces in social housing.
To date, housing policies have mainly focused on market solutions, such as discouraging foreign investment or encouraging the market supply of affordable housing.
State institutions have been utilized and transformed to facilitate, rather than limit, the commodification and financialization of housing.