A growing majority of Canadians believe owning a home has become a privilege that can only be afforded by the rich, a new poll suggests, with nearly three-quarters of those surveyed agreeing.
The Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News and released Friday further suggests two-thirds of Canadians have given up on ever owning a home. That number has also risen since the spring.
“Instead of the dream of homeownership, it is turning into a nightmare for an entire generation of Canadians,” said Sean Simpson, Ipsos’ vice-president of public affairs.
The poll, which surveyed 1,500 adults last month, also found 71 per cent of respondents live in communities where they say a housing crisis exists.
Simpson said Ipsos surveyed Canadians of all age groups, including those who already own a home.
The results suggest “a pan-Canadian attitude” that home ownership is increasingly unobtainable, he said, and that there is empathy among homeowners towards those who have been unable to break into the market.
“They are recognizing their relative privilege that they do own a home,” he said.
“This generation almost always wants the next generation to have at least what they had, if not better. And this is a key piece of the puzzle that seems to be missing, or will be missing for a lot of of younger Canadians.”
Federal data further suggests younger Canadians may be turning away from the housing market. A Statistics Canada report released on Thursday found mortgage debt for households younger than 35 years had a faster drop than the national average. The agency attributed the trend to those households seeking more affordable homes or leaving the market altogether “due to affordability concerns.”
The ever-increasing cost of owning a home has become the dominant issue plaguing the federal government and legislatures across the country.
The federal Liberals saw their poll numbers drop throughout the summer as the opposition Conservatives hammered them on the growing cost of living, and as inflation and high interest rates persist.
Ottawa has made a series of policy announcements aimed at getting more homes built faster, including waiving the GST from new rental construction, with promises of more to come. It has also begun rolling out funding to municipalities through the $4-billion Housing Accelerator Fund, which was first announced last year.
Yet the poll suggests the announcements rolled out so far have not inspired confidence among Canadians. Only 20 per cent of those surveyed believe the federal government is doing enough to address the housing crisis, down seven points from April.
About one-third of respondents said they have confidence in Ottawa and their provincial and municipal governments to get more homes built. By contrast, 44 per cent said they trusted land developers and home builders to lead the way, and nearly 50 per cent backed non-profit agencies that build not-for-profit housing.
“The subtext there is, ‘Government, facilitate or get out of the way, because we trust other people more to get the job done,'” Simpson said.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. is estimating Canada will need an additional 3.5 million new homes by 2030 to restore affordability. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government have not publicly committed to meeting that target.
What are the solutions?
Simpson said the poll suggests the growing housing crisis has led Canadians to entertain solutions they may have once resisted.
While he suggested so-called NIMBYism — resisting increased density in one’s own community — was once dominant, the poll found three-quarters of Canadians support the idea that more homes will lower housing prices.
A nearly identical number, 73 per cent, also said Canada’s immigration targets should be reduced until the housing shortage eases, while 68 per cent said there should be a cap on international students while the crisis is addressed.
Trudeau and Housing Minister Sean Fraser — who previously served as immigration minister — have resisted calls to reduce immigration and international student levels, arguing migrants can help solve the housing crunch by filling construction job vacancies.
“(They’re) acknowledging it’s a complicated issue, but Canadians want to see action — immediate action — to make sure that there are enough homes in this country for everybody to live in one, and own one should they choose (to),” Simpson said.
More Canadians believe the rising cost of housing in Canada is due to increased interest rates and inflation (68 per cent) or a lack of housing supply (63 per cent) than those who pin the blame on increased immigration to Canada (57 per cent), the poll found.
Yet only 56 per cent agreed that increasing housing supply will actually drive prices down for new homes, with the same number agreeing it will lower the cost of rent.
Two-thirds of current homeowners surveyed by Ipsos said they disagree that building more housing will cause their home to be worth less.
“At the end of the day, Canadians are supporting the building of more housing: more high density housing, more affordable housing, just more housing. Get it built,” Simpson said.
“There’s a growing sense of urgency, and Canadians are thinking outside the box of ‘normal’ solutions.”
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between September 20th to 22nd, 2023, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1,500 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 2.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18+ been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.
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