Is Canada Building Enough Homes? Housing Starts vs Population Growth

01New Residents for Every Home Started

The simplest test of whether a country is building enough is how many new people it adds for every home it starts. Canada averages about 2.4 people per household, so when population grows by much more than that per home started, the gap widens, before even counting homes that are torn down. In the three years to July 2025, Canada's population grew by 2,663,354, while builders started 744,662 homes in 2023 to 2025: 3.6 new residents per home.

Population growth in the 12 months to July 1 of each year, divided by housing starts in that calendar year. Canada from 1950, the United States from 1960.

02Homes Started per 1,000 People, by Policy Era

Canada started 11.9 homes for every 1,000 people in 1973, at the height of the early-1970s building boom, and nearly matched it in 1976 under the MURB tax shelter for apartment builders. The rate fell to 3.8 in 1995, after a slump that began in the late 1980s and deepened with higher interest rates; the end of new federal social housing funding at the end of 1993 removed one of the few remaining sources of rental construction. Building per person has not come close to the 1970s since. Canada still builds more per person than the United States or the United Kingdom; its problem in recent years has been how fast its population grew.

Starts for Canada, the US and the UK (the UK from 1978, with gaps in 2020 to 2022, when Welsh figures were published only for financial years); dwelling commencements for Australia. Era averages are for Canada. They start in 1950, because population growth in 1949 includes Newfoundland joining Canada.

03What Gets Built: Houses Gave Way to Apartments

In 1955, 72% of the homes started in Canada were single-detached houses. In 2025 it was 20%, and 66% were apartments. That shift matters when comparing counts over time: an apartment usually houses fewer people than a family home.

04The Return of the Rental Building

After the federal government stopped funding social housing and the tax shelters for apartment builders were gone, rentals fell to 5% of homes started in Canada's big cities. They began recovering in the early 2010s, and the recovery sped up after low-cost federal construction loans arrived in 2017 and GST was removed from new rental buildings in 2023. In 2025, rentals were 51% of big-city starts, helped also by a slump in condo starts.

Purpose-built rental starts as a share of all starts in centres of 50,000 people or more (CMHC intended-market data, available from mid-1988).

05What Changed, and When

06Canada Against the World: Homes per 1,000 People

Building rates show the flow; the housing stock shows where years of building have left each country. On the OECD's count, Canada and the United States both have about 426 to 428 homes for every 1,000 people, well below Germany, France and Italy.

Dwellings per 1,000 inhabitants, OECD Affordable Housing Database, latest year available for each country. Counts include vacant and second homes. These figures are from the OECD's published tables and are updated when the OECD updates them.

07The Current Pace

Each month, CMHC and the US Census Bureau publish starts at a seasonally adjusted annual rate: the number of homes that would be started over a year if the month's pace held.

08How to Read These Numbers

Starts, not finished homes. A housing start is counted when the foundation is poured. Most starts become finished homes within a year or two, but apartment towers can take longer, and some projects stall.

Population growth is not demand on its own. Household size, the age of the population, homes torn down and homes left empty all matter. The per-start figure is a simple yardstick, not a full measure of the shortage.

Different countries count differently. Canada (CMHC) and the US (Census Bureau) count starts, the UK counts starts from building inspections, and Australia counts commencements. The homes-per-1,000 figures are counts of the existing housing stock in different years.

09Questions People Ask

10Method and Sources

Canadian starts are CMHC figures published by Statistics Canada: quarterly sums for 1948 to 1954 and the annual table from 1955. Population is the July 1 estimate. US starts are annual totals of the Census Bureau's monthly unadjusted figures from 1959, and US population is the Bureau of Economic Analysis annual figure. The Canadian and US figures update automatically as new data is released. The UK and Australian figures are updated once a year.

• Statistics Canada: CMHC housing starts, quarterly (34-10-0135-01) and annual (34-10-0126-01)
• Statistics Canada: CMHC starts by intended market (34-10-0152-01) and monthly seasonally adjusted rate (34-10-0158-01)
• Statistics Canada: Population estimates, quarterly (17-10-0009-01)
• US Census Bureau: New privately owned housing units started (via FRED) and US population (BEA, via FRED)
• ONS: House building, UK, permanent dwellings started and completed
• Australian Bureau of Statistics: Building Activity, Australia
• OECD Affordable Housing Database (HM1.1)
• Library of Parliament: Housing Policy in Canada (federal housing history)
• CMHC: Housing shortages in Canada

Related: all Special Features