Despite a large body of research that suggests the contrary, in the ongoing debate about housing affordability in Toronto, some have argued that the region’s housing crisis doesn’t boil down to supply-and-demand fundamentals.
For example, some have noted that there are five million bedrooms sitting empty across Ontario — with many presumably in the Greater Toronto Area — while others have pointed to the fact that the average size of a GTA household hasn’t increased in more than a decade.
If Toronto didn’t have enough homes, wouldn’t the typical household grow as more and more residents were stuffed together in the same dwellings?
A new report from the Centre for Urban Research and Land Development seeks to debunk the latter argument.
“We can’t look at the household size and say just because it’s been stable, supply has not been an issue,” Diana Petramala, senior research fellow at Centre for Urban Research and Land Development, says.
To begin, the report confirms that the typical Toronto household in 2024 was unchanged from 2013. However, this doesn’t tell the full story.