Housing one of the basic needs in society has become an increasingly contentious issue as the gap between housing costs and incomes grows in cities around the world. Sauder S3i, at the University of British Columbia, is located in Vancouver a city that is ranked the third least affordable city in the world1. This paper examines a range of alternative approaches to addressing housing affordability, drawing on best practices from around the world. Exploring some of the ways in which countries around the world, including Denmark, Austria, Scotland, and the US, have approached affordable housing, this report attempts to understand what lessons Canada could learn. Solving the housing affordability crisis requires a deeper understanding of the structural market mechanisms and public policy changes that have caused it, including declining investment by the Federal government over the last 30 years.

The report also presents and evaluates some of the recent legislative steps that governments have taken to tackle this issue. Reliance on rental assistance and measures to tax speculative investment have had no real impact on the underlying supply of affordable housing and supply-side measures, which cities and the Federal and Provincial governments can influence through planning and permitting and by leasing land they control for affordable housing development. While the downtowns of many cities in Canada have higher density, even in Vancouver, neighborhoods with single-family homes have low density and have been treated as off-limits for densification.