This map shows the percentage of households with shelter cost higher than reported pre-tax income. Also see the corresponding map based on 2006 data.

Overall in Canada 4.5% of households had income lower than running shelter costs, up from 3.6% in 2006. Direct comparisons between 2006 long form and 2011 NHS can be difficult because of the different methods, on the Country level this change is probably outside of the range that can solely explained by NHS non-return bias.

Among the provinces BC stands out with a rate of 6.2% and within BC Metro Vancouver has the highest rate with 7.7%.

Within Metro Vancouver, Squamish-Lillooet D and UBC/UEL take the lead with almost 30% of households having income lower than running shelter costs. Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond lead the larger municipalities with rates above 9%.

This map is best viewed at or above the Census Tract level. We grey out areas where we detect the possibility of statistical rounding that could skew the results. With this in mind, it can be useful to drill down further into Vancouver to better understand the origin. We see that UBC/UEL's high rate is partially because of the students on campus, but some non-student residential areas also feature very high rates. It is striking that this phenomenon does not seem to ease off on the more affluent West Side and areas like Coal Harbour.

There are several reasons why households may have lower income than running shelter costs. For example students often have no or very little income that gets reported on tax returns, but receive financial support from parents. A household maintainer may be between jobs and living on savings for a while (retirement income would show up on a tax return and count toward income.

Other large Canadian cities like Calgary, Toronto and Montreal have rates at 4.8%, 7% and 6.6%.