Rental housing types and economic wellbeing in Canada

September 3,  2024

Xavier Leloup, Catherine Leviten-Reid, Nazeem Muhajarine, Kristen Desjarlais-deKlerk & Laurence Simard 

Centre urbanisation Culture société, institut national de la recherche scientifique, Montréal, Canada;bCommunity economic development, Cape Breton university, sydney, Canada; cCommunity Healthand epidemiology and saskatchewan Population Health and evaluation Research unit, saskatoon,Canada; dBusiness and Administration, university of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine the association between different types of rental housing and household economic wellbeing. Its main objective is to better understand how the different types of assistance promoted by housing policies contribute to the reduction of material hardship among renter households. To achieve this objective, the study is based on the creation of an original typology designed to catch the different models of social and non-market housing that characterize the rental housing system in Canada. The research design it adopts controls for compositional effects linked to housing policy through a matching procedure that reduces the imbalance existing between households residing in social housing and the rest of the population. The analyses produced demonstrate the importance of promoting and maintaining social and non-market housing models that favour rent-geared-to-income housing, guarantee long-term affordability, and value public and co-operative tenure models.