Canada’s housing crisis has created a happiness crisis
Canada's housing crisis is contributing to a decline in happiness among young adults, who face rising economic stress and housing unaffordability. Research using Gallup World Poll data shows that housing costs are the largest economic factor affecting life satisfaction for Canadians aged 20 to 34. Many young people report food and shelter insecurity, worsening living standards, and growing pessimism about the job market.
- ▪Victoria Livingstone, 21, works four jobs in Sydney, N.S., and relies on food banks while fearing homelessness if she loses her full-time job.
- ▪A study by Haifang Huang and John Helliwell found that housing affordability is the biggest economic factor reducing happiness among young Canadian adults.
- ▪Between 2008 and 2025, the percentage of young Canadians reporting food or shelter insecurity more than doubled.
- ▪Young adults are now the most pessimistic about the job market, a reversal from pre-2015 trends.
- ▪Over the past decade, Canada has seen one of the steepest global declines in youth life satisfaction according to Gallup data.
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Open this photo in gallery:Victoria Livingstone, 21, at her Sydney, NS, apartment. Livingstone, who works four jobs, says she is 'very, very aware' that if she lost her full-time job, she’d be homeless.Steve Wadden/The Globe and MailShareSave for laterPlease log in to bookmark this story.Log InCreate Free AccountRaised in a low-income home, with parents haunted by debt, Victoria Livingstone dreamed about the house she would own one day.“Some people picture their dream wedding or travelling the world,” she says. “My dream was stability. It was having a home that was mine, and that I knew nobody could ever take away from me.”Ms. Livingstone is only 21, but that dream already feels as if it’s slipping away.
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