With housing costs dominating Canadians’ financial and economic concerns, Canadians are widely supportive of expanding co-operative housing as a potential solution. The most recent survey from the Modalis Omnibus also finds majority support for government investment in co-operative housing.
Key findings in this release:
- There is strong support for expanding co-operative housing in Canada.
- A solid majority support government investments in co-operative housing.
- Canadians’ familiarity with co-operative housing is modest.
About two-thirds of Canadians support expanding co-operative housing to help address affordability.
Almost two-thirds of Canadians support the expansion of co-operative housing to help address Canada’s housing affordability crisis. Very few are opposed to this measure.
This result is generally consistent across region and other demographic variables with a few minor but notable variations:
- Renters are significantly more likely to support expansion of co-operative housing than homeowners (72% vs. 60%, respectively).
- Homeowners that have a mortgage are more likely to oppose expanding housing co-operatives than those without a mortgage (14% vs. 8%, respectively).
A majority of Canadians also support government investment in co-op housing.
When asked about government investment in co-operative housing, opposition doubles as compared with support for housing co-operative expansion generally. That said, a solid majority support government investment.
Opposition runs higher with certain demographic subgroups:
- Males (24%)
- Alberta and the Prairies (both 27%)
- High income households (24%)
- Homeowners (24%)
- Homeowners with mortgages (26%)
Canadians' familiarity with housing co-ops is limited.
While over three-quarters of Canadians are at least somewhat familiar with co-operative housing, fewer than a quarter say they are highly familiar.
There are some minor variations in these results across different demographic groups:
- Regionally, familiarity runs lowest in Alberta (33% unfamiliar).
- Familiarity runs higher among renters than homeowners (28% vs. 19% high familiarity, respectively).
- Those living in high rise apartment buildings show the greatest familiarity across demographic groups (32% highly familiar).
Discussion
With less than 1% of Canada’s housing stock being co-operative housing it is not surprising to find modest familiarity. Despite the lack of experience Canadians have with housing co-operatives, there is broad-based support for expanding it.
Our recent findings show that Canadians are highly concerned about the impact of housing costs. They want solutions for it. This is one potential solution that garners solid support.
Methodology
These results come from the latest Modalis Omnibus which is powered by the Modalis Public Opinion Panel – 100% recruited using random probability telephone sampling. Unlike other research panels, Modalis contains no AI bots or ‘professional’ respondents.
Because the Modalis panel is built entirely using random probability sampling, it is valid to cite the margin of error for this survey. The survey is based on a representative sample of 1,604 Canadian adults and has a margin of error of +/- 2.4% points, 95 times out of 100. The survey data was collected from July 24 to August 7 and is weighted by age, gender, and region according to the latest Statistics Canada census.
