Metro Vancouver housing figures underscore massive gap in affordable units

A new housing report from Metro Vancouver says in order to keep up with pressures across the region, development needs to double.

VANCOUVER — The latest housing report from Metro Vancouver underscores the significant gap between current affordable rentals and the number of units required to prevent more people from falling into homelessness, the head of the BC Non-Profit Housing Society said as the district released its data Friday.

Jill Atkey said the region’s housing needs report shows Metro Vancouver needs 11,400 new affordable rental homes each year.

That’s a steep increase from an average of 433 between 2018 and 2023.

At the provincial level, Atkey said her group has projected B.C. needs 12,500 affordable homes each year, while the government has indicated it will complete about 4,500 annually over the next three years.

“A lot of this gap needs to be made up from direct investment from the federal government, and that investment has been lagging,” she said.

Atkey said there have been “historic investments” in affordable housing in B.C. since 2018, but it’s taking time for those homes to come online.

In the meantime, she said many people are feeling stuck in their current rental homes knowing the cost of rent will skyrocket if they move.

“There are many, many seniors who have been living in a building for … 10, sometimes 20 or 30 years (with) very affordable rents in their current circumstances, so $800 or $900 a month,” she said.

“If they have a forced move, if their building sells to somebody else in the market and it gets redeveloped … they are very, very at risk of homelessness.”

Atkey said seniors are the fastest growing demographic among the increasing number of people experiencing homelessness in the region.

The Metro Vancouver regional district’s annual housing data report shows homelessness has increased by 33 per cent since 2020.

The report also shows there was a 14 per cent increase in the number of households on the wait-list for social housing last year, surpassing 21,500.

Seniors and families make up the largest share of households on the registry for BC Housing, it said.

Atkey said the number of households on the wait-list is an “under-assessment of the actual need that’s out there.”

“It’s really just reflective of the number of people who have added their name to a wait-list, not reflective of the number of people in need of affordable housing,” she said in an interview on Friday.

The Metro Vancouver report shows social housing stock has increased by 5.8 per cent since 2022, and Vancouver had nearly half of the social housing units across the region.

Rent increases across the region slowed to 4.5 per cent in 2024, down from 9.1 per cent the year before, the report said, and rental construction was at a 20-year peak.

There was a 35 per cent increase in housing starts and a 48 per cent increase in completions between 2015 and 2024. Purpose-built rentals accounted for 37 per cent of starts and 31 per cent of completions in 2024.

“However, more is needed to reach historical per capita construction rates and meet the demands of anticipated population growth,” the report said.

There is a particular need for family-sized rental units. Only 30 per cent of all purpose-built rental units in the region have two or more bedrooms, it said.

For almost a decade in the early 2000s, the report said rental starts and completions were down, resulting in pent-up demand.

“It was, you know, long-term inaction as the crisis started to slowly build,” Atkey said, adding the trouble has been brewing since the 1980s.

While it is taking time for government investments to materialize as new homes, Atkey pointed to the B.C. government’s Rental Protection Fund as a key initiative aimed at protecting and expanding the affordable rental supply.

The fund allowed the group to buy 35 buildings last year, she said.

“Taking those out of the private market and moving them into the non-profit sector, where we can protect affordability in perpetuity, helps us work at both of those problems — the new supply problem and the erosion of affordability,” she said.

Nearly 40 per cent of Metro Vancouver households are renters and the “trend toward renting continues,” the district’s report said.

The shift toward renting is “especially pronounced” among younger households ranging in age from 25 to 44, the report noted.

Atkey pointed to low incomes among renters as another indicator of housing stress.

The report shows the average cost of rent for purpose-built rentals in the region was $1,929 last year, rising to $2,541 for rental condominiums.

The median rent in the region increased by 143 per cent between 2002 and 2024, while average wages in B.C. rose 93 per cent and inflation jumped by 58 per cent over the same time period, the report said.

While the pace has slowed, rents are expected to continue rising, it said.

Meanwhile, vacancy rates across Metro Vancouver increased to 1.6 per cent in 2024, up from 0.9 per cent in the previous two years.

But the district said in a statement that vacancy rates across the region remained “well below a healthy level” of at least three per cent.

This report by Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press, was first published April 25, 2025.