08/19/2026
Hot off the press, this week we are looking at the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness report, "Homelessness is a Housing Problem in Canada." 🏘
It’s easy to think about homelessness beginning with an individual or a family.
New Canadian research looked at rent prices and vacancy rates in 36 Canadian communities and found something different:
⬆ Homelessness increased most where the lowest-cost rental housing became more expensive and less available.
In other words, when the bottom of the rental market disappears, more people fall through it.
This doesn’t mean individual circumstances don’t matter. They do.
But Canadian data now confirms the role of the rental housing market:
Homelessness is directly connected to whether people can actually find and afford a home.
(For example, in Hamilton, the vacancy rate for the lowest-cost rental units fell from 2.3% to 1.2% between 2018 and 2024, while rents rose 47%. Over the same period, homelessness increased 224%.)
We have explored this concept in our Rethinking series before, but this report provides new Canadian data to support the argument.
🧐 Dig into the report further yourself at:
caeh.ca/news/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem-canada
