Households in Core Housing Need

A household is in core housing need if their housing does not meet at least one of the adequacy, suitability, or affordability standards and their household would have to spend 30% or more of its total before-tax income to pay the median rent of alternative local housing that is acceptable. Housing is considered acceptable if it meets all three housing standards above.

Certain types of households are at greater risk of being in core housing need due to additional financial and resource pressures. This typically includes renters, as well as lone-parent and one-person households.

Housing standards are defined as follows:

Adequate housing: Housing that is reported by their residents as not requiring any major repairs.
Affordable housing: Housing with shelter costs equal to less than 30% of total before-tax household income.
Suitable housing: Housing that has enough bedrooms for the size and composition of resident households according to National Occupancy Standards (NOS).

Trend in households in core housing need by tenure in Metro Vancouver

Households in core housing need by tenure in Metro Vancouver in 2021

Distribution of households in core housing need by household type in 2021

Household type distribution for all households versus households in core housing need in 2021

Key observations

The 2021 Census showed that there were 166,100 households in core housing need in Metro Vancouver, representing 16.9% of all households.
Although the proportion of households in core housing need decreased between 2016 and 2021 (from 17.6% to 16.9%), the number of households in core need increased by 9,290 households.
The COVID-19 pandemic and associated Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) may have provided relief to some households living in core housing need, especially those living in unaffordable housing. As a result, the actual number of households in core need may have increased following the end of CERB in December 2021.
Renters continued to make up most households in core need, representing 60% of all households in core need in Metro Vancouver.
One-person households make up almost half of all households in core housing need, representing 48.4% of households in core need in Metro Vancouver.
One-person renter households were the largest group of households in core need in Metro Vancouver (52,745 households in 2021)
The incidence of core housing need was highest among lone-parent renter households (40.9% of all lone-parent renter households were in core housing need in 2021 across Metro Vancouver).

Households in core housing need by tenure in 2021

Notes

The glossary provides definitions of each technical term, ensuring consistent interpretation.
Jurisdiction and Metro Vancouver totals may not equal the sum of individual values due to rounding, data suppression, or the omission of smaller data points to maintain visual readability. If a geography is not listed or appears missing, the associated data was either unavailable or did not meet reporting thresholds.
Core housing need is not assessed for on-reserve households. Only private, non farm, non reserve, and owner or renter households with incomes greater than zero and shelter-cost-to-income ratios less than 100% are assessed.
Non-family households with at least one maintainer aged 15 to 29 attending school full time are considered not to be in core housing need. This is considered a transitional phase.

Source
This information is from Statistics Canada census data .

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