National Housing Council calls for a shift from counting units to measuring real results
Canada’s housing crisis has reached a critical juncture, with affordability slipping further out of reach for many and persistent gaps for equity-denied groups, according to a new report from the National Housing Council (NHC).
The release of “Measuring What Matters: Proposing an Outcomes Framework for Federal Housing Policy” comes as Ottawa launches its Build Canada Homes initiative, raising the stakes for how success is defined in housing policy.
Affordability and access slipping for most Canadians
The NHC report paints a stark picture: “Home ownership is affordable in fewer than 20% of Canadian markets, and asking rents are unaffordable for most renters,” the report found.
“Canadians face increasing barriers to moving through the housing system, from renting an apartment, to moving into ownership and from a first-owned home to a family-sized unit.”
Persistent equity gaps mean lower-income households, women, Indigenous people, and racialized communities continue to experience worse outcomes.
Tim Richter, chair of the National Housing Council, said, “What we’re proposing is a fundamental re-orientation of housing policy away from outputs (like the amount of money invested and the number of units built) to outcomes – are housing conditions for Canadians measurably improved by the government’s housing policies.”
The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s October 2025 update found that the national gap between average house prices and what a typical household can afford shrank from 80% in September 2023 to 34% in August 2025.
Measuring what matters: Beyond units built
The report argues that federal policy has too often measured success by dollars spent or units built, rather than by whether people’s lives have improved.
“Success is often measured by inputs and outputs... rather than improvements in housing outcomes,” the report stated.
The proposed framework would track progress using seven elements of adequate housing, including affordability, habitability, security of tenure, and accessibility.
The NHC called for a “Team Canada” approach to address the cost-of-delivery crisis, urging all levels of government to unite around the right to housing and to remove barriers to supply.
“Policy needs to ensure that new homes are the right homes, that meet people’s needs, at a price they can afford,” the report said.
Policy, supply, and equity
Industry leaders have previously warned that policy misalignment and supply bottlenecks are leaving too many Canadians behind. Only the highest-income quintile of renters can afford to buy, and that the lack of affordable homes is squeezing those on the lowest incomes.
Canada’s income gap remained at a record high in the second quarter of 2025, with new Statistics Canada data revealing that the country’s wealthiest households continued to outpace the rest in both income and net worth.
The NHC’s recommendations include tracking outcomes, uniting stakeholders, and supporting all segments of the housing system. The report warns that without a shift to outcomes-based measurement, “corrective action could have been taken much sooner to mitigate the current housing crisis.”
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