Being comfortably housed describes a state of housing security and satisfaction relative to your neighbours. It is often associated with ownership and relatively low shelter cost payments.

This map tries to explore this by showing the difference between median owner and median renter shelter cost in each region. Owner shelter costs include mortgage payments, property taxes and utilities, tenant shelter costs are comprised of rent and utilities.

In brown areas, the median owner has higher shelter costs than the median renter, in teal area the median renter pays more on shelter than the median owner. On average owners live in nicer dwellings than renters, yet in many areas renters have higher monthly shelter costs. This can be partially explained by some owners having payed down their mortgage.

Canada wide the median owner has slightly higher shelter costs than the median renter, but at the provincial level the reverse is true in the maritime provinces as well as British Columbia.

In most metro areas owners have higher shelter costs than renters, including in Metro Vancouver. But looking at the municipal level in Vancouver there is a stark difference in central cities, where renters have higher shelter costs than owners, and cities further east where it is reversed. In particular, in almost all of West Vancouver renters have significantly higher shelter costs and owners. This pattern holds up when zooming in to the census tract level and the abundance of areas where owners have lower shelter costs than renters in the central parts of Metro Vancouver is a phenomenon that does not play out this way in other metro areas like Toronto, Montréal, or Calgary where renters have lower shelter costs than owners in most areas.