Urban Data Centre

Affordable Housing Problems and Data

Requirements
Report of the Affordable Housing Panel

Urban Data Centre

School of Cities
University of Toronto

Report Editor: Malini Pandya

Released: 17 February 2023

© 2023 Urban Data Centre

urbandatacentre.ca
Executive Summary
This report outlines the findings from the Urban Data Centre (UDC) 2022 Affordable Housing
Panel. The panel was undertaken as part of the UDC’s development of an Urban Data
Catalogue that will document the existence of urban datasets and a repository for open
Canadian urban data. In order to identify the data and data sources to be included in the
UDC catalogue/repository, a series of expert panels were conducted on specific topics in
urban research, thereby providing a variety of views on the problems currently existing
within each area, as well as a wide range of suggestions for the data needed to tackle them.
For the Affordable Housing Panel, representatives from academe and industry were brought
together to discuss and share their thoughts and experiences in the domain, with the goal of
identifying major affordable housing research problems and the types of data necessary to
address them. Specifically, the panel consisted of two one-hour sessions, held virtually in
February and March of 2022. Both sessions were facilitated and recorded, forming the basis
of this report.
In order to document the Affordable Housing research problems, the panel transcriptions
were analysed to identify broad categories of interest, yielding eight categories: Definitions
and Approaches, Housing Continuum, Policies, Programs, and Providers, Financing and
Funding, Demographics, Shifts in Housing, Neighbourhoods, Infrastructure, and New Builds,
Construction. These categories were further broken down into subcategories and within
each subcategory, a set of questions emerged, encapsulating the types of inquiries that are
being posed by practitioners in the field.

The Affordable Housing Panel also identified data types needed to address these research
problems. They were grouped according to their corresponding research problem category,
listed above, and presented in a table in order to more easily navigate the information. The
two-column table lists the specific data needs along with examples and/or sources of the
corresponding data type, where they exist. Those data types that are either unavailable or
difficult to access were identified with an asterisk.

The findings from the Affordable Housing Panel contained in this report will be used to
further inform the development and expansion of UDC’s data repository/catalogue.

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Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Format of Panel 3
Panel Members 4

Affordable Housing Problems 4

Definitions and Approaches 5
Housing Continuum 6
Policies, Programs, and Providers 7
Financing and Funding 10
Demographics 11
Shifts in Housing, Neighbourhoods 11
Infrastructure 13
New Builds, Construction 13

Affordable Housing Data Needs 155

Affordable Housing Data Needs Table 15
Housing Continuum Data 15
Policies, Programs, and Providers Data 17
Financing and Funding Data 18
Demographics Data 19
Shifts in Housing, Neighbourhoods Data 19
Infrastructure Data 21
New Builds, Construction Data 22

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Introduction
The development and operation of “smart cities” is predicated on the availability of
relevant, accurate urban data. Yet the plethora of sources of urban data, be it open city
data, IoT data, or data from 3rd parties, presents both opportunities and challenges:
opportunities in what the scale, breadth and depth of the data enables practitioners and
researchers to achieve, and challenges in achieving useable results due to issues of quality,
sparseness, validity, interoperability, accessibility and relevance of the data.
A goal of the Urban Data Centre (UDC) is to develop an Urban Data Catalogue1 that will
document the existence of urban datasets and a repository for open Canadian urban data.
The Catalogue documents three categories of datasets: 1) datasets stored in the repository
in their native format that are openly available for download; 2) datasets not stored in
repository but are accessible under separate agreement; and 3) datasets that are accessible
by web services (API).
In order to identify the data and data sources to be included in the UDC catalogue, a series
of expert panels were conducted on specific topics in urban research, thereby providing a
variety of views on the problems currently existing within each area, as well as a wide range
of suggestions for the data needed to tackle them.
This report outlines the findings from the UDC’s Affordable Housing Panel, held in the
second quarter of 2022.

Format of Panel
Panel members from academe and industry were brought together to discuss and share
their thoughts and experiences, with the goal of identifying the major research problems in
the Affordable Housing domain along with the types of data necessary to address them.
Specifically, the panel consisted of two one-hour sessions, held virtually in June and July of
2022. Both sessions were facilitated and recorded. In preparation for the first session, panel
members were asked to consider a three-point questionnaire, below:
1. What are the main research problems in the area of Affordable Housing?
2. What types of data do you believe are necessary to address these problems? Are any
of these data types currently available to you? If so, where and how can they be
accessed?
3. What data types are NOT available to you? Where can they be found, if they exist?
How can they be accessed?
The first panel session, led by the facilitator, centred around these three areas. The
recording of the session was subsequently transcribed and distilled into a working
document that captured the responses to these questions. This document was shared with

1
https://urbandatacentre.ca/urban-data-catalogue

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the panel members in preparation for the second session. Members were asked to review
the summary and provide feedback and additional thoughts in the second session. Again,
the session was recorded and transcribed. The working document and the subsequent
feedback form the basis of this report.

Panel Members
The Affordable Housing Panel was composed of the following experts:
● Ahmad Bonakdar - York University
● Cherise Burda - Toronto Metropolitan University
● Cheryll Case - CP Planning
● Prentiss Dantzler - University of Toronto
● Iain Dobson - SRRA
● Tahereh Granpayehvaghei - StrategyCorp
● Mukhtar Latif - Pomegranate Housing Consultancy
● Nemoy Lewis - Toronto Metropolitan University
● Mark Richardson - HousingNowTO
● Patrick Sheils - Public Realm Capital
● Jeanhy Shim - Housing Lab Toronto
● Alan Walks - University of Toronto

Affordable Housing Problems

In order to document the findings from the panel, the information from the transcriptions
was analysed to identify broad categories of research problems. In all, this analysis yielded
the following eight categories:
1. Definitions and Approaches - issues relating to what is meant by affordable housing,
affordability, and how it is approached in different contexts
2. Housing Continuum - issues relating to the different levels of housing, including
homelessness, social and public housing, rental housing, and ownership
3. Policies, Programs, and Providers - issues relating to government and non-
government initiatives to support affordable housing
4. Financing and Funding - issues relating to how housing is funded, monetary
incentives, and wealth creation through housing
5. Demographics - issues related to the characteristics of the end users of housing
6. Shifts in Housing, Neighbourhoods - issues relating to how communities change,
housing trends, and how people travel through different housing, geographically and
economically
7. Infrastructure - issues relating to the relationship between housing and the built
environment
8. New Builds, Construction - issues related to the creation of new housing, land use,
and the industries that are involved

DEFINITIONS AND APPROACHES

● Defining Affordable Housing

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 ○ How do we define “affordable housing”?
○ Who is the end customer?
○ What metrics should be used?
○ Can we use outcome-based solutions, metrics?
■ i.e., optimise for transportation costs
○ How do we distinguish between housing affordability vs affordable housing?
○ How should transportation/transit costs be factored into affordability?

● Maintaining Affordable Housing

○ How do we keep affordable housing affordable?
■ i.e., maintenance, mortgage rates, inflation
○ Who is responsible?
■ Government? Developers? A shared societal responsibility? As a
shared societal responsibility, employers, unions, pension plans and
others are stakeholders - how can they play a role?
○ How can policy support it?
○ Where does non-government funding come from? Not-for-Profit (NFP)
organisations?
○ How could delivery of Affordable Housing by NFPs align with ESG mandates?
○ What are the Social impacts?
○ What is the impact of housing affordability and affordable housing on
economic development?
○ What is the impact of stakeholders having a vested interest in helping to
narrow the rent gap, for example, because of the knock-on impacts in
communities in which they operate or stakeholders they represent:
■ more of a growing the pie approach than dividing up the pie?
■ more idea generation amongst those varied stakeholders in particular
when targeting housing for essential workers and workforce stability.
Which would recognize the role housing plays in a number of other
public policy portfolios like transit, health etc.?
○ What is the impact of cross subsidisation?
■ i.e., market rents/sale price supporting subsidised rents/sales based
on tenant/owner income or wealth

● Human Rights-Based Approach to Housing

○ How do we define housing through a human rights lens?
○ What human rights are related to and necessary for housing?

● Housing Outside of Urban Areas

○ How does affordability impact people outside of dense urban areas?
○ What are the resources? Needs?

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 ○ What role does infrastructure play, including transportation and the need for
regional transit plans and oversight?
○ What impact do regional economic development policies have on rural
housing?

● Global Best Practices

○ What can we learn from other cities, regions, countries?

HOUSING CONTINUUM
● Rental Housing
○ How is rent control operationalized?
○ What is the effect of the pressure placed on the rental stock from
unaffordable home ownership (i.e., people staying in the rental market
longer)?
○ What is the trajectory of people being pushed further down the housing
ladder?
■ i.e., people who had the most affordable rents end up with nowhere
to go and are pushed down to the street
○ What is the net loss/gain on affordable rentals over time?
■ What is the net gain of what we are losing in terms of rental housing?
How many rental units are being removed from the system versus
how many are being added?
■ What kind of rental buildings are being approved and delivered in
terms of their price point of affordability?

● Homelessness
○ How do we determine the true number of people experiencing
homelessness, including the hidden homeless?
■ What is the true demand for affordable housing?
○ What is the impact of addiction and mental health on homelessness rates?
○ What other factors contribute to homelessness?
■ Most people fall into homelessness for reasons other than addiction
and mental health.
○ What are the health outcomes of homelessness?
■ Health services close involvement.

● Defining the Full Housing Spectrum

○ Can we more precisely define what is meant by housing for people in
different socio-economic categories?
■ How do we define different segments?

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 ● i.e., household income between 40-120 K - can they afford
home ownership? If not, how can they get there?
■ Can we define who they are? How many people are there in a
particular segment? Where are they now? What are the linkages to
transportation, to employment, to social services, to medical
services?

● From Street to Home

○ What is the journey from street to home? Can we track it?
○ What are successful models?

● Affordable Ownership
○ What are the needs around affordable ownership?
○ What models exist for expanding affordability?

● Social Housing
○ Outside of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, is social housing still being built?
○ What plans, if any, are there to create more social housing, either within
urban areas or outside of them?

● Cooperative Housing
○ What kinds of cooperative housing currently exist?

POLICIES, PROGRAMS, AND PROVIDERS

● Government Policies
○ How do Federal, Provincial, and Municipal policies affect housing
(un)affordability?
○ What was the impact of the insured mortgage purchase program where the
Bank of Canada started buying up the Canada mortgage bonds?
○ How much of the housing bubble that occurred during the pandemic was a
result of government policy?
○ Was the current potential crisis caused by raising interest rates after a
housing bubble a result of previous negative federal interest rates?
○ What are the effects of the leveraged mortgage system?
○ How do government policies at all three levels of government play a role in
where people locate and their individual housing decisions, for example,
immigration, health care, employment and economic development plans?

● Zoning
○ Are changes to zoning, such as inclusionary zoning, up zoning, density
bonuses, leading to affordability?

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 ○ Do these changes/policies create a situation where we depend on the private
sector to deliver affordable housing units?
○ How does restrictive zoning open neighbourhoods up to profit motivated
developers?
○ Are cities that have passed zoning changes to address missing middle housing
and residential development getting the results that they were expecting? Is
there uptake? Is it going to result in anything that's affordable, instead of
market housing, as some new studies are suggesting?
○ Can we track these missing middle housing policies and what kinds of housing
they are actually translating to in real time?
○ Is there the potential to promote area specific development by reducing
development charges rather than an ad hoc site specific zoning negotiation
process?
○ Do these non-prescriptive by-laws that allow for subjectivity create
uncertainty and result in the public realm negotiating from a position of
weakness?

● Supply-based Policies, Approaches

○ Does increasing supply lead to affordability?

● Sprawl-based Policies, Approaches

○ Does expansion lead to affordability?

● Speculation, System of House Flipping

○ What are the policies that encourage it?
■ i.e., access to loans.
○ How much wealth has been created by this system? For whom?

● Affordability Protections, Restrictions

○ How effective are affordability protections at maintaining existing affordable
housing rates?
■ E.g., rental constraints/restrictions where redevelop of rental housing
is one-for-one.
○ What happens in the future when the time periods for affordability expire?
Will we be back in a new housing crisis?
○ How is it possible to facilitate the delivery of affordable housing by an NFP,
allowing it to have the affordable housing in perpetuity unless certain
circumstances arise that metrics are triggered saying it is no longer needed?

● Interactions Between Communities

○ How does policy in one municipality impact others?

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● Public Policy
○ What policies are actually creating affordable housing as opposed to more
and more market housing?

● National Housing Strategy

○ Given that a lot of money has been funnelled into it over a long period of
time, what is the result in terms of affordable housing? What is actually being
delivered?

● Residential Tenancy Laws and Policies, such as Ontario’s Vacancy Decontrol

○ What is the impact?
○ How much supply is being lost because of provincial policies?
■ i.e., when these buildings are acquired, some of these landlords are
paying tenants to leave these units. This type of displacement is not
captured within eviction data.

● Toronto Community Housing (TCHC)

○ What is the impact of recent and ongoing changes to the TCHC management
structure on long-term tracking of families and households?
■ TCHC divided into two separate organisations in June 2022 - one
focused on family housing and one focused on senior housing.

● Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMCH)

○ Is CMCH’s mandate more financial than outcome-based? Is this the correct
approach?

● Subsidised Housing Programs, Toronto

○ How effective is Toronto’s Rent-Geared-To-Income (RGI)? Choice-Based
Housing Offer process?

● Coordinated Housing Approach to Housing Vacancies

○ Can we create coordinated access to housing, including co-ops, non-profit,
and private organisations, that would allow people to see vacancies across
different providers/programs?

● Community Land Trusts

○ Will the current movement towards community land trusts have a positive
effect on affordable housing?
○ What about the role of consolidating smaller affordable housing groups?

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 ■ This creates opportunities of operational leverage/economies of scale
and the access to capital that could see additional density built on to
relevant sites.

FINANCING AND FUNDING

● Financialization of Rental Housing
○ How do we address the crisis of financialization of rental housing?

● Financialization of Owner-Occupied Housing

○ In what ways has it been structurally conditioned by federal government
policies?
○ What impact do the Canadian Mortgage Bonds and Securitization programs
have on affordability? On land values that price out non-profit and social
housing providers?
○ What can we take away from other areas in the world?
■ There are models elsewhere in the world where Affordable Home
Ownership that is targeted to lower incomes, without grants or
subsidies, use home appreciation loans to create ownership
opportunities at the same level as rent geared income.
■ If applied in Canada could this be a means of countering the
financialization that has to date added to inflated property values and
pushed rents higher.

● REITs, Major Institutional Players

○ What is the effect of the rapid land value increases seen by REITs and other
major institutional players?
○ How much of their business model is dependent on evictions?

● Section 37 Funds (Toronto)

○ How much money is available to pull from those funds to subsidise affordable
housing?

● Affordable Housing Subsidies, Funding

○ What funds are available to subsidise affordable housing?
○ Who is going to fund building affordable housing?
○ Who is going to fund keeping and maintaining it?

● ESG Corporate Mandates

○ Can they be leveraged to influence affordable housing funding?

● Impact of Interest Rates

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 ○ How do interest rates impact the ownership market vs the rental market?
○ At what point do people leave the ownership market in favour of renting?
Does this eventually lead to more affordability?
● Inclusivity, Community Investment
○ How can we build an inclusive economy?
○ Can the wealth being created in development be invested into supporting the
well-being of our communities?
○ How much of a role can NFPs play in creating, maintaining inclusivity?

DEMOGRAPHICS
● Race Demographics in housing
○ What are the race-based disparities within affordable housing? Evictions?

● Housing Mismatch
○ How much of a problem within housing is a result of families living in houses
that are either too big or too small?
○ What is the role of policy to facilitate smoothing out some of these
mismatches without taking away from the community, being prescriptive?

● Independent Living for People with Developmental Disabilities

○ What housing is available for this population, for example with three, four
residents along with caregivers?

● Tenants’ lived Experiences across Geographies

○ Who are the people? What are their experiences?
○ Which financial actors impact their experiences, affordability, and their
neighbourhood choices?

SHIFTS IN HOUSING, NEIGHBOURHOODS

● Net Gain Loss of Affordability.
○ What impact has the financialization of housing had on the overall number of
affordability units available, being built?
○ How has the rise of housing as a means of gaining wealth impacted housing?
○ How many units of affordable housing units are being lost versus what is
being delivered?
○ How best can we use data related to the length of time a unit will remain
affordable?
■ It is important for future risk mitigation so as to plan on how to
address future affordability as units move back to market rents over
time.

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● Gentrification
○ What impact does gentrification have on the rental housing stock?
○ What impact does gentrification have on homelessness?
■ i.e., as prices start to increase alongside gentrification, houses are
sold, basement suites renovated and re-rented at a higher price,
people are moving/moved out, sometimes with nowhere to go.
○ How are particular neighbourhoods being gentrified?
○ Can gentrification be tracked through retail, commercial space?
■ What types of buyers are buying within these particular geographies,
which are likely to be destined for redevelopment?

● Informal Missing Middle/Multi-Unit Housing

○ How do we track informal missing middle housing, where multi-unit housing
is being created unofficially?
■ Informal missing middle housing happens throughout cities around
North America, with unofficial basement suites or makeshift
accessory dwelling units.
■ These aren't being tracked because they're informal, and people don't
want to be on the radar, because suddenly, it'll be taxable.

● Density Changes
○ What are the drivers for changing densities?
○ What is the impact on affordable housing?
○ What templates exist to bring a broader group of stakeholders into the
development process earlier.
○ Could more localised planning in major urban centres provide wider
perspectives that could be turned into a shared vision?
○ What does density look like, and how does it serve the community?

● Virtual Workers
○ What is the impact of increasing numbers of people working from home?

● Housing Trends
○ Can we understand housing trends earlier, before they are a “problem”?
■ i.e., using vacancy rate for an appropriately sized economic region
may be a better metric than an absolute number of units, tying
housing to other public policy areas and encouraging creative
solutions.

● Displacement and Evictions

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 ○ What is the percentage or number of evictions in a particular area?
○ Are there race-based connections to evictions? If so, what are they?
○ Who is being evicted?
○ Who is carrying out the evictions?

INFRASTRUCTURE
● Housing Shortage
○ Is a lack of supply impacting housing affordability, affordable housing? How?

● Transportation
○ What is the relationship between disposable income and transportation
costs, and how may this inform definitions of affordable housing?
○ How can we better align transit and housing development?

● Infrastructure Investment Projects

○ How does public infrastructure investment exacerbate the affordability and
displacement problems across geographies?
○ What are the impacts of infrastructure investment projects on affordability?
■ How much affordability is being generated?
■ What is the measure of displacement and gentrification, such as the
loss of affordable housing stock, as a result of these projects?
■ Can we measure the net loss versus net gain as a result of these
projects?
■ What is the increase in land values, real estate values?
○ How has public infrastructure investment been used to attract new rounds of
capital investment (e.g., Eglinton LRT on Little Jamaica)?
○ How is it possible for the public realm to maintain some equity participation
on developments where public land is sold, in order to maintain influence
after the public land is sold, otherwise the only influence is through
litigation?

NEW BUILDS, CONSTRUCTION

● Affordable Housing Construction
○ Where is it being built?
○ Who is actually building it?
○ What are the timelines for new builds? When do units become available?
○ How much does it cost to create an affordable housing unit in Toronto, net
new?
○ How many units are being built?

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 ○ How long must they remain affordable (wide variation from project to
project, based on who is involved, communication, etc)?
○ How best can we use data related to the length of time a unit will remain
affordable?
■ It is important for future risk mitigation so as to plan on how to
address future affordability as units move back to market rents over
time.
■ It also establishes needs on a regional/localised level that is important
for communities to recognize well ahead of time.

● Private Sector
○ What is the role of the private sector in housing, creating housing? What
should it be?
○ Is there a lack of expertise? What is the impact?

● Non-Profit Organisations
○ What is the role of non-profit organisations? What should it be?
○ Are they a means of helping to address the housing issue at scale, and if so
what needs to be in place to achieve that?

● Net New Mixed-Use Developments

○ What is the affordable housing component in net-new large, multi-use,
residential, mixed-income communities?
○ What is the speed and scale of these developments?

● Area-Specific New Housing

○ How many units of housing are being built in a particular area?
○ What percentage is being built for apartment condominiums as opposed to
affordable housing?

● Developer Fiduciary Responsibilities

○ How do we address/resolve the inherent contradictions of depending on
profit-motivated developers to create affordable housing?
■ Developers have a fiduciary responsibility to their investors and
shareholders to maximise their returns, so how do they play a central
role in addressing the affordable housing crisis?

● Identifying Land Opportunities

○ What land is governmentally owned, municipal, provincial, and/or federal?
○ What is owned by not-for-profit organisations? Privately owned?
○ What surplus land is available?

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○ Can this information be accessed in one place?

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Affordable Housing Data Needs
The following table conveys the data types identified that are needed to address the major
research problems in the Affordable Housing domain. Data needs were grouped within the
table in order to more easily navigate the information. The groupings correspond with the
research problem categories above. The left-hand column of the table lists specific data
needs within each group. The right-hand column provides examples and/or sources of the
corresponding data, where it exists. Those data types that are either unavailable or difficult
to access are identified with an asterisk.

Table 1: Affordable Housing Data Needs

Data Needs Examples/Sources

* Barriers to access or unavailable

HOUSING CONTINUUM DATA

Populations along Housing Continuum data*

● Breakdown of people across housing
continuum, i.e., number of people in
○ Social housing
○ Public housing
○ Rental units
○ Purchased units
○ Unhoused
● How are they housed currently
● Where are they geographically
● Personal demographics
● What are their linkages to
○ Transportation
○ Employment
○ Social services
○ Medical services

Social, Public Housing data ● Municipal data

● Total number of units ● Local government agencies, e.g.,
● Providers Toronto Community Housing
● Number of Residents ● Wellesley Institute
○ Per unit ● Housing Provider, Program, and
○ Overall Services data
● Location
● Availability
● Size of units, e.g., bedrooms per unit
● Resident demographic data, e.g.,
○ Age

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Data Needs Examples/Sources
* Barriers to access or unavailable

○ Source of income
○ Income levels
○ Race, ethnicity-based data*
● Cost per unit
● Community Land Trust data
○ Outcomes

Rental data ● Provincial data

● Rental stock ● Municipal data
○ Cost ● StatsCan
○ Number of rental units ● Rental agency data
○ Location
○ Unit sizes
○ Vacancy rates
● Affordability of current rental stock
● Rent increases over time
● How much rental stock is being lost
year to year, particularly private,
affordable rental stock
● Impact of Vacancy Decontrol, e.g.,
changeover of units
● Percentage of population who rent
● Demographics of renters
○ Income level
○ Proportion of income to rent
● Condition of rental units

Ownership data ● Government data, federal,

● Housing prices provincial, municipal
● Housing stock ● CMHC
● What proportion is affordable ● Real Estate data
ownership ● StatsCan
● Demographic of homeowners
○ Income level
○ Proportion of income to
mortgage payments
● Household size
● Housing size

Private Sector Housing data ● Real Estate Market data

● Property Market data ● Canadian Mortgage and Housing
○ Condominiums Corporation (CMHC)
○ Rentals ● Urbanation
○ Single family units ● MPAC (Ontario)

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Data Needs Examples/Sources
* Barriers to access or unavailable

○ Land Development ● Financial Sector*

● Property values, assessments ○ Banks
○ Pension Funds
○ Private Equity Firms

Homelessness data ● Municipal data

● Number of unhoused people ● Shelter data
● Demographics ● Wellesley Institute
○ Age ● Housing Provider, Program, and
○ Medical conditions* Services data
○ Race, ethnicity-based data* ● Making the Shift Youth
○ Education Homelessness Demonstration Lab,
○ Source of income, etc York University
● Youth homelessness data
● Hidden homeless data*
○ Number of people outside the
shelter system
● Shelter data
○ Location
○ Capacity
○ Occupancy

POLICIES, PROGRAMS, AND PROVIDERS DATA

Zoning data ● Municipal data

● Site-specific zoning
● Comprehensive, zoning across
municipal regions*

Affordable Housing data ● Government data, federal,

● Cost per unit provincial, municipal
● Cost breakdown ● Developers
● Unit specifics, kind of unit ● HousingNowTO (Toronto)
● Real-time availability ● Canadian Federation of
○ Weekly project approvals Municipalities
○ Deal specifics
○ Unit cost of currently available
units

Government Housing Programs and Policy ● Government data, federal,

data provincial, municipal
● e.g., CMHC, National Housing Strategy ● Open Door Affordable Housing
(federal), Vacancy Decontrol policy Program data (Toronto)
(provincial), Zoning policies ● CMHC

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Data Needs Examples/Sources
* Barriers to access or unavailable

(municipal)
● Funding data*
○ Fund allocation
○ Spent funds
○ Recipients
■ E.g., private
developers?
○ Overall funds available to
subsidise affordable housing
○ Value for money
● Outcomes*
○ E.g., rent prices post-2018 (end
to Ontario rent control)
○ Soft evictions
○ Units built
○ Impact on affordability
○ Housing prices
○ Completion rate

Non-government Housing Programs data ● Non-profit organisations

● Providers ● Housing Provider, Program, and
● Participation Services data
● Overall number of programs*
● Services provided, duplication of
services*
● Outcome data*
● Metrics*

FINANCING AND FUNDING DATA

Funding Opportunity data ● Grant, funding providers e.g.,

● Capital funding opportunities Toronto Institute
○ Private, e.g., banks, ● Housing Provider, Program, and
organisations aligned with Services data
funding affordable housing, ● Private institutions
ESG
○ Public, e.g., CMHC
● Operations funding opportunities, e.g.,
○ CMHC
○ Other government programs
○ Foundations required to
redeploy capital into the
community

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Data Needs Examples/Sources
* Barriers to access or unavailable

Public Pension Fund data ● Public Pension Funds

● Dollar value of investments
● Percentage of public money invested
in housing that goes to affordable
housing
● Specifics on investments, which
companies

Housing Speculation data*

● How much wealth is being created
● For whom

DEMOGRAPHICS DATA

Household data ● Census, Statistics Canada (StatsCan)

● Demographics
○ Income
○ Age
○ Education
○ Immigration status
○ Race, ethnicity-based data*
○ Wealth data*
● Number of members in household
● Longitudinal data*
○ Household-level
○ Family-level
● GIS-level data linked to Census data*

Personal Finance data ● Research Data Centres, StatsCan

● Assets ● Survey of Financial Security (SFS)
● Debts ● Canadian Financial Capability Survey
● Employment
● Income
● Education
● Personal money management
strategies
○ Day-to-day
○ Long term
● Budgeting skills
● Financial planning

SHIFTS IN HOUSING, NEIGHBOURHOODS DATA

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Data Needs Examples/Sources
* Barriers to access or unavailable

Centralised Real Estate data* ● CMHC

● Comprehensive environmental scan of ● Housing registries
housing prices ● Rental organisation websites
● Unit sales prices
● Buyer profile
○ End user
○ Investor
● Comprehensive rental market data

Neighbourhood data ● Municipal data

● Number of housing units ● GIS data
○ Overall ● Community Foundation surveys,
○ By size, e.g., two-, three- such as Toronto Foundation's Social
bedrooms etc Capital Survey and London
● Population Community Foundations Vital Signs
● Dissemination areas
● Average housing prices
● Zoning
● Commercial Retail
○ Proportion
○ Sales figures
● Boundaries
● Stability data*
○ How long are people staying in
a neighbourhood?
● Housing needs at community level,
across housing continuum
○ How many residents are
unhoused, low-income,
working etc
● Comparable census data across
neighbourhoods, communities,
regions, scales*

Rural Affordable Housing data* ● Provincial data

● Number of units ● Municipal data
● Scale
● Organisations managing and building
housing in non-urban areas
● Rural housing services
● Rural rental market data
● Migration of residents priced out of
rural housing market - where are they

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Data Needs Examples/Sources
* Barriers to access or unavailable

going

Evictions data ● Provincial government

● Number of evictions being filed ● Evictions Tribunal
● Form of notification of eviction* ● Wellesley Institute
○ Letter
○ Visit from landlord
● Number of hidden evictions*
○ I.e., landlords paying tenant to
move (result of provincial
policies, i.e., Vacancy
Decontrol)
● Outcome of eviction notice*
○ Did tenant vacate premises
● Demographics*
○ Tenant demographics
○ Landlord demographics
● Family-focused data*
○ Where are they going to,
where have they been
displaced to

INFRASTRUCTURE DATA

Housing Unit data ● Real Estate Market data

● Price ● Canadian Mortgage and Housing
● Size Corporation (CMHC)
● Sales/rental history
● Intersection of housing data with
census data*
○ E.g., intersection of race,
migration status, gender,
income data with housing data
● Turnover rate*
● Number of households per unit
○ Including Informal Missing
Middle units, e.g., basement
suites, makeshift accessory
dwellings

Overall Housing Supply data* ● CMHC

● How much overall supply is being ● Government data, federal,
added to the housing market provincial, municipal

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Data Needs Examples/Sources
* Barriers to access or unavailable

● Impact on affordability

Impact Infrastructure Investment Projects ● Government data, federal,

data* provincial, municipal
● How much affordability is being
generated by these projects
● What is the measure of displacement
and gentrification
● What is the resulting net loss vs net
gain of affordability
● Impact on real estate values

Transportation data ● Government data, federal,

● Intersection of transportation and provincial, municipal
housing data*
○ Transportation expenditure
○ Percentage of income towards
transportation
○ Availability of transportation
○ Commuting distances
○ Transportation mode uses
○ Transit Oriented Communities
(TOC) - percentage of housing
in TOCs that are affordable

NEW BUILDS, CONSTRUCTION DATA

New Build data ● Government data, federal,

● Fine-grained new build data* provincial, municipal
○ Number of affordable housing ● CMHC
units being built ● Building Permit data
○ Buyer/renter type ● Ratio City
■ End user ● Canadian Cost Guide, Altus Group
■ Investor ● Provincial Land Use Appeal Boards,
○ Listing price e.g., Ontario Land Tribunal data
○ Actual selling/rental price ● Developers
○ Percentage sold/rented
○ Price point per unit
○ Size of units, e.g., two-, three-
bedrooms etc, square footage
○ Scale of buildings being built
● Number of rental units vs. purchase
units being built

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Data Needs Examples/Sources
* Barriers to access or unavailable

● Project Completion data

● Building Mass data

Construction data ● Developers

● Construction costs ● Suppliers
○ Per unit cost ● Canadian Cost Guide, Altus Group
○ HIgh level real estate
development and
infrastructure construction
costs
○ Fine-grained construction
costs*
● Capacity of the Construction Industry,
e.g.,
○ Labour
○ Suppliers
○ Supply chain

Private Developer data ● Developers

● Company names ● Funding, grant agencies
● Executive Board Members ● Government programs
● Owners
● Financial data
● Project data
● Demographic data*
○ E.g., Race of developers,
(impact of white developers
constructing housing for
majority BIPOC areas)

Land Use data ● Government data, federal,

● Land development market data provincial, municipal
● Land Title data ● Urbanation
● Comprehensive Land Ownership data* ● Teranet
○ Government
○ Private
○ Non-profit
○ Surplus
● Central Repository of Government
Real Estate Holdings*
● Disaggregated land prices*

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