One of the perplexing results of the 2016 housing data was that overall the proportion of households spending over 30% of their pre-tax income on shelter cost decreased in Vancouver. This map shows where the proportion increased or decreased compared to 2011. This also holds when viewing owner and tenant households separately, and when comparing with 2006 data. Also compare this to the maps only considering tenant households and the one only considering owner households.

In Metro Vancouver affordability increased by 1.5 percentage points using this metric, affordability increased by 3.1 percentage points in Calgary and 2.9 percentage points in Montreal, but affordability decreased by 1.6 percentage points in Toronto.

The 2011 data is based on the NHS and may not generally be robust enough to map with the ~2% resolution used in the colouring of this map. This map should be used with caution, especially when viewing for smaller population areas. Nonetheless it helps offer some geographic insight that could help explain the drop in Vancouver. Some analysis digging into this question using other demographic indicators can be found on our blog.