The Widening Gap: A Longitudinal Jurisdictional Comparison of Housing Regulation and policy Implications in Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montréal (2015–2023)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the changes in the affordability and accessibility of low-cost rental housing in Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and Montréal over a 9-year period, from 2015-2023. Using data provided by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation onmedian and first quintile rental rates juxtaposed by social assistance income data provided by the Maytree Foundation, the research breaks down how regulatory frameworks within each province and provincial income support shape housing stability. Using a longitudinal comparative analysis, annual median and first quintile rents for single-bedroom apartments are compared against similar unit types across each jurisdiction. The results of this research display an upward trend in the price of housing across all jurisdictions, with the gap consistently widening in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver. Social assistance income routinely fails to be sufficient for recipients to afford even the lowest cost units, worsening the economic security of homeless and housing insecure populations. Data indicates that Montréal and Québec stand in contrast to the other cities and provinces, having a Residential Tenancy Act that regulates increases based on tribunal consent, historical rates and landlord expenses, in addition to income support better aligned to costs of living. This results in median and first quintile rates far below that of Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver, translating to Montréal having the most affordable housing across all metrics, in addition to having the slowest rate of growth in rents year-over-year. The analysis highlights how residential tenancy acts specific to each city impact affordability over longer periods of time. The results underscore the inability of Calgary’s housing policy and rental regulation to limit unprecedented surges in rents, creating worse outcomes for individuals already in dire situations. It is recommended to remodel Alberta’s Residential Tenancies Act, SA 2004, c R-17.1 to better resemble Québec’s Act respecting the Administrative Housing Tribunal, CQLR c T-15.01, implement first quintile affordability targets into municipal housing strategies. And categorize social assistance to match median single-bedroom rental rates. These recommendations are informed by promising practices in other provinces, ultimately with the goal of increasing housing stability and reducing homelessness across Alberta and Canada.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".