It's almost cliche to say that the high cost of housing is at the heart of Canada's affordability crisis. Although much media attention is placed on the home ownership market, for the one-third of households in Canada who are renters it is the soaring cost of rental housing that is top of mind. Renters are much more likely to be on the lower rungs of the income ladder, although the high cost of ownership housing has had a knock-on effect of keeping many higher income households in the rental market. Renting also means a lack of security and tenure-even if one lives in an affordable rental now, they could be displaced by a renoviction or demoviction.

The affordability of rental housing thus needs to be front and centre for all levels of government. In addition to rent itself, one's income ultimately determines affordability. In Canada we have typically used a threshold of paying rent less than 30 per cent of gross or pre-tax income as the benchmark of affordability. For example, a person earning $50,000 per year should be spending no more than $15,000 per year (50,000 x 30 per cent), or $1,250 per month, in rent for their situation to be considered affordable. The higher one's income, of course, the more options at higher rents are affordable.  

The CCPA's rental housing wage or rental wage is one attempt to look at affordability and how different parts of the country compare. Similar to the idea of a living wage, which is a much more detailed calculation typically based on families of four, the rental wage is a simple and intuitive tool to see how inclusive local wages, and minimum wages, are in terms of providing the most costly basic necessity, the roof over one's head.

The rental wage is the hourly wage needed to afford rent while working a standard 40-hour week and spending 30 per cent of income on housing. This is the CCPA's third update to the rental wage, and we highlight results for the largest Canadian cities (Census Metropolitan Areas or CMAs) and several other medium-sized cities. Data down to the neighborhood level is included as part of our Tableau interactive tool, which can be seen at the bottom of this post. 

In this update, we focus on the rental wage for one and two bedroom units, which comprise most of the overall rental housing stock, and we use Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's (CHMC s) rental market survey, which was last taken in October 2024. We also make some comparisons to provincial minimum wages in each city. In addition, we calculate rental wages for "asking rents"- the market rents for vacant or unoccupied housing. This is a relatively new dataset from Statistics Canada with results at the CMA level, and up to the first quarter of 2025. For the biggest cities, this provides a better sense of the actual rents someone looking for rental housing would face. 

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