The coming decades will see Canada’s population balloon from 38.2 million in 2021, to upwards of 52 million by 2043, according to Statistics Canada.sorn340
Amazon faced backlash from locals last year after it announced plans to set up a second headquarters in northern Virginia.
The potential influx of people would put further pressure on the already stressed D.C. housing market. The multinational’s original solution was to invest in and build thousands of affordable housing units, but the criticism was that the Amazon rentals would still favour those on the higher income side.
This is the current reality for businesses trying to set up shop in pricy urban centres. With Canada’s population set to increase dramatically in the next two decades, the outlook here could be bleak for both businesses seeking employees and for urban dwellers.
“Businesses shape housing and housing shapes businesses,” explains Andy Yan, urban planner and director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, who says the need to plan for and consider workforce housing has been an issue for years, but it is reaching a critical point in some of Canada’s cities.
“My favourite line about this is: ‘If you don’t deal with workforce housing, I hope you have a lot of self-services,’” Mr. Yan says. He adds that if people can’t afford to live in cities where they work, then businesses––from restaurants to retail––will have to go elsewhere, which will have a drastic impact, making urban centres less liveable and not as productive.
“Picking up your own sandwich is one thing,” he continues, “but what about firefighters, nurses and paramedics? Those will be a problem too.”
A 2020 report, Housing a generation of workers, by the Toronto Region Board of Trade, highlighted statistics from Silicon Valley, using it as a cautionary tale of what could happen if workforce housing disappeared in Canada’s most populated city.
The report states that while Silicon Valley created a record number of well-paying jobs and reached the highest average wages worldwide in 2019, “the area has also seen homelessness rise by 17 per cent and the loss of up to one-fifth of all teachers in a school district each year.”
The coming decades will see Canada’s population balloon from 38.2 million in 2021, to upwards of 52 million by 2043, according to Statistics Canada. The shift could exacerbate the cracks in affordable workforce housing that are already forming.
Mr. Yan says when it comes to the future planning of Canada’s urban centres, those in charge need to start asking themselves: Who are we building for? “If it’s not the workers then that’s going to show.”
For Mr. Yan, this issue is a result of lack of housing diversity. “There used to be basement suites and little apartments for the people that worked at the local restaurants, but many of those are gone now.”
Is Canada ready for this housing need given the future population projections?
“Right now? No,” says Shauna Brail, associate professor at the Institute for Management & Innovation at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She quickly adds that Canada could start to move in the right direction if there is a shift in mentality about how cities are built, mainly around the dedication by Canadians to the single-family home.
“We know that it’s incredibly important to actually build up rather than build out,” Ms. Brail says. “That’s a big change. There is an enormous amount of pushback by neighbourhood associations to try to prevent the densification of neighbourhoods that could and should accommodate more density.”
Without these changes, Ms. Brail explains, businesses may not be able to attract or retain talent, an issue that is already having a significant impact on several sectors. “It wouldn’t be inappropriate for firms, who are embedded in a city or in a region, to think through how they maintain their presence in that region.”
Add to this the strain being felt by some Canadian universities that can’t find affordable housing for students and faculty on or around campuses, and the future talent pipeline for Canadian businesses could be in real trouble.
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility. In fact, it already happens,” says Ms. Brail, “where people say, ‘I’m not coming to work for you because I can’t afford to live there.’”