For the past 15 years, affordable housing has been a policy orphan. No one at any level of government admitted to owning this responsibility, and everyone shrugged, implying that the real estate industry – builders and developers – should do it. The industry, however, has made it very clear that it will not build units where profit margins are too low to justify the investment. This paper, by Tom Carter and Chesya Polevychok, assesses the impacts of this state of affairs on housing need. Little, if any, affordable housing has been built in recent times, and some affordable units have disappeared as a result of redevelopment and upgrading of neighbourhoods. At the same time, the demand has increased rapidly, as a result of difficult times for many Canadians – especially lone adults and young families. They are vulnerable because they cannot earn enough to pay market rents. Yet, the authors demonstrate that housing is in many respects a missing link in our social and economic policy toolkit. When people have affordable housing, their family lives are more stable, health improves, children’s school performance gets better, immigrants are better able to integrate into society, and dependency on income supports diminishes. On the economic side,
adequate housing supports community economic development, enhances consumer spending, and increases the availability of workers.