The share of Canadian households in core housing need held at 11.6 per cent in 2024, unchanged from 2022, according to results from the 2024 Canadian Housing Survey published by Statistics Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation on Sept. 21, 2026.
The finding arrives nearly three years into a national home price slide that has pulled benchmark prices down in most major markets this year, including a third straight monthly decline in August reported by the Canadian Real Estate Association. Yet the survey shows little movement for the households the housing system serves worst, and one group lost ground: renters living in social and affordable housing.
A household is considered in core housing need when its home fails to meet at least one of three standards, adequacy, suitability or affordability, and the household would have to spend 30 per cent or more of its before-tax income to find acceptable housing in its own community, according to CMHC’s definition of the measure.
Renters remained far more exposed than owners. CMHC’s Housing Observer, drawing on the 2024 survey, put the renter core housing need rate at 22.1 per cent, statistically unchanged from 2022, while the rate for homeowners eased to 5.7 per cent from 6.1 per cent two years earlier.
Within the rental market, the survey found a split by ownership type. Renters in the primary market, meaning purpose-built rental buildings, had a core housing need rate of 22.9 per cent in 2024, CMHC reported, versus 18.4 per cent for renters in the secondary market of condos and houses rented out by individual landlords. Average household income among primary-market renters was $77,900, compared with $90,000 in the secondary market, the survey found.
The steepest deterioration was among renters in social and affordable housing. Their core housing need rate climbed to 33.4 per cent in 2024 from 30.8 per cent in 2022, according to CMHC, meaning roughly one in three households in housing meant to be the system’s affordability backstop still could not find it affordable, adequate or suitably sized.
Affordability, rather than crowding or poor repair, drove the vast majority of cases. CMHC said affordability alone accounted for 71 per cent of core housing need nationally in 2024, consistent across provinces.
The survey also found sharp disparities by demographic group. Indigenous households had a core housing need rate of 20.1 per cent in 2024, CMHC reported, while racialized households were affected at 13.7 per cent, compared with 10.6 per cent for non-racialized households. One-parent families and people living alone also faced elevated rates, at 19.1 per cent and 20.4 per cent respectively.
Recent homebuyers fared comparatively well. Among households that had purchased their home within the previous five years, just 4.6 per cent were in core housing need in 2024, CMHC’s data show, underscoring that the survey’s affordability strain is concentrated among renters and long-tenured owners rather than the buyers currently active in a market where prices have been falling.
The national rate’s stall comes as Ottawa and the housing industry continue to argue over how much new supply the country actually needs. CMHC’s own Fall 2026 supply outlook, released earlier this month, called for as many as 4.69 million additional homes by 2036 to restore affordability, well above the 3.5-million target the same agency set in 2022 for 2030. The 2024 survey results suggest that even as starts have picked up in several large markets this year, the population already in core housing need, particularly renters in the affordable housing stream meant to protect them, has not yet felt the difference.
Statistics Canada and CMHC jointly run the Canadian Housing Survey, which is separate from the 2021 census-based core housing need estimates CMHC also publishes; the two use overlapping but not identical methodologies, and the census-based series last put the national rate at about 10 per cent for 2021. The 2024 survey figures cited above come from CMHC’s Housing Observer analysis of the Statistics Canada release.
