2024 Canadian Housing Survey

The 2024 Canadian Housing Survey offers a detailed look at Canadians’ housing experiences and how they shape everyday life. This article highlights selected findings from the newly released 2024 results, focusing on future housing aspirations, core housing need and self-reported experiences of housing discrimination.

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A safe and secure place to call home matters most to Canadians

In 2024, the Canadian Housing Survey introduced new questions to better understand the short- and long-term housing aspirations and goals of people living in Canada. These questions ask about desired housing outcomes over the next 5 to 10 years, including:

• geographical location
• tenure type
• number of bedrooms

The questions also examine the challenges people face in achieving their housing goals.

Almost all respondents (96%) said that having a safe and secure place to call home is an important or somewhat important long-term housing goal (see Table 1). More than 60% of all households also said that building wealth through housing and buying their own home are important or somewhat important goals. More than 60% said that owning assets to fund retirement or leave to their children was important or somewhat important. While most renter households aspire to homeownership (around 60%), a notable minority (28%) said that buying a home is not important to them.

*Calculated among renters only

Source: CMHC calculations, adapted from Canadian Housing Survey, 2024 (Statistics Canada).

Renters want more room

According to the 2024 Canadian Housing Survey, renters aspire to have more bedrooms than they currently have (see Figure 1). This differs from homeowners, who are generally satisfied with the number of bedrooms in their homes. On average, homeowners aspire to have the same number of bedrooms they currently have: an average of 3.2 bedrooms. Renters, by comparison, currently have 1.9 bedrooms on average, but aspire to have 2.6 bedrooms. On average, this is about 37% more bedrooms than they have in their current home.

The aspiration for larger units with more bedrooms is even stronger among renter households experiencing core housing need because their housing is unsuitable. Figures 1a to 1c show this pattern for homeowners, renters and renters living in unsuitable housing. Among renters living in unsuitable housing, households currently have 1.8 bedrooms on average but aspire to have 3.3 bedrooms. On average, this is about 84% more bedrooms than they have in their current home. This gap shows how far existing housing falls short of meeting their bedroom needs. This trend also highlights the rise in overcrowded housing in Canada, especially in high-rent markets like Toronto and Vancouver.

Figure 1. Distribution (Density) of the Number of Observed and Aspired Bedrooms

Core Housing Need remains stable over time

The Canadian Housing Survey shows that Canadians continue to aspire to housing that better meets their needs, yet many still face challenges in doing so. Core housing need highlights the challenges many Canadians face in finding safe, suitable and affordable housing.

Overall, core housing need remained stable between 2022 and 2024. As shown in Table 2, more than 1 in 10 households continued to live in core housing need, unchanged from the 2022 survey results. The 2021 survey was the only exception. It showed lower rates than other years, partly because COVID-19 relief supports improved affordability, which is a key driver of core housing need.

Renters continued to face higher rates of core housing need than owners. However, core housing need among renters remained largely unchanged, with more than 1 in 5 renter households affected in both 2022 and 2024. Renters in social and affordable housing had the highest rates of core housing need. Increases in rents over the past 5 years and poor housing conditions may help explain this pattern. These patterns were also highlighted in the results from the fifth cycle of CMHC’s Social and Affordable Housing Survey.

Across all provinces, affordability was the main driver of core housing need, accounting for 71% of cases nationally. The prevalence of inadequate or unsuitable housing contributes to provincial variations in core housing need, but these factors play a smaller role. These findings align with previous cycles of the Canadian Housing Survey. They also show that while adequacy and suitability matter, affordability is the main driver of core housing need across Canada.

For the first time, the 2024 Canadian Housing Survey distinguishes between primary and secondary market segments using Rental Market Survey definitions.² Households in the primary rental market have substantially higher rates of core housing need than those in the secondary market. Suitability appears to be an important differentiating factor, accounting for 9.7% of core housing need in the primary rental market compared with 3.2% in the secondary rental market.

Income differences also help explain this gap. The average renter household income in the primary rental market is $77,900, compared with approximately $90,000 among renters in the secondary rental market. This difference of 15.5% may limit the types of housing renters can afford and how well that housing meets their household needs.

First-time homebuyers who purchased their first home in the last 5 years have slightly lower rates of core housing need than other owners. This is consistent with some of the factors that shape entry into homeownership. Mortgage qualification requirements act as a strong affordability screen, meaning only households with sufficient income, stable employment and manageable debt loads can enter ownership.

According to CMHC’s 2025 Mortgage Consumer Survey, first-time homebuyers tend to be younger, at 25 to 34 years old, and have relatively high incomes between $60,000 and $105,000. They also have higher rates of employment (91%) than other mortgage consumers, including repeat buyers, mortgage renewers and refinancers. First-time homebuyers are also more likely to receive financial gifts from family or friends to help with their down payment.

Source: CMHC calculations, adapted from Canadian Housing Survey, 2018, 2021, 2022 and 2024 (Statistics Canada).

Core Housing Need differs across population groups

Table 3 shows the share of households in core housing need by racialized and Indigenous identity and family type.

Racialized households experience higher rates of core housing need (13.7%) than non-racialized and non-Indigenous households (10.6%) across all tenure types. This aligns with the 2022 survey results, which found core housing need rates of 14.1% for racialized households compared with 10.7% for non-racialized households. Among Indigenous households, core housing need reached 20.1% in 2024.

Core housing need also varied by family type. One‑parent families experienced core housing need at a rate of 19.1%, compared with 6.7% for couples with children and 5.1% for couples without children. Rates were high among both women-led (18.6%) and men-led (20.0%) one-parent families, suggesting that one-parent households face greater challenges in meeting housing standards.

The elevated core housing need rate for one‑person households (20.4%) further highlights the role that having a single income can play in housing vulnerability.

Source: CMHC calculations, adapted from Canadian Housing Survey, 2024 (Statistics Canada).

Core Housing Need is not the only challenge facing racialized and Indigenous households

New results from the survey indicate that higher rates of core housing need are not the only challenge facing racialized and Indigenous households. The 2024 Canadian Housing Survey introduced new questions to better understand people’s experiences and perceptions of discrimination within the housing system.

The survey asked respondents whether they had ever felt discriminated against while trying to acquire or keep housing in Canada. Respondents were asked to consider whether their experiences were related to their race, age, gender, disability, immigration status or language. Discrimination in the housing system can happen at different stages of the housing journey. This can include searching for housing, such as trying to rent or purchase a home or obtain a mortgage. It can also happen when a person is already housed, for example when requesting accessibility accommodations, repairs or maintenance. The responses reflect the experiences and perceptions of individual respondents and not those of the entire household.

Based on self-reported experiences of discrimination within the housing system at any point in their lives, Table 4 shows the differences between racialized and non-racialized people. Racialized people self-reported discrimination at approximately 3 times the rate of non-racialized people (18.2% and 6.0%, respectively). Respondents who identify as Black had the highest rate of self-reported discrimination in the housing system (30.2%). The rate was slightly higher for Black respondents in core housing need (33.1%).

Looking across tenures, self-reported experiences of housing discrimination were highest among Black homeowners (35.9%). This finding aligns with existing research on barriers to Black homeownership in Canada. The recent report, Buying While Black: Barriers to Black Homeownership, identifies racial discrimination in the homebuying process as a key barrier for Black Canadians. Previous CMHC research has also found that Black homeownership rates are significantly below the national average.

Respondents who identified as Indigenous in the 2024 Canadian Housing Survey also frequently self-reported experiencing housing discrimination during their lifetime (16.2%). Using a distinctions-based approach, the survey results show that respondents who identify as First Nations experienced higher rates of self-reported housing discrimination than those who identify as Métis or Inuit (22.6%, 10.5% and 17.4%, respectively). These findings echo Indigenous-led studies that highlight high rates of discrimination, including housing discrimination, faced by Indigenous communities in Canada, such as Systemic Barriers for First Nations People: Security of Tenure in Canada (PDF).

Source: CMHC calculations, adapted from Canadian Housing Survey, 2024 (Statistics Canada).