Housing Shortages & Doubled Up Households
Tracking doubled-up households to benchmark housing shortages.
When housing is too expensive or scarce, households form differently than they would under unconstrained conditions: adult children stay home longer, unrelated adults share units, and couples delay forming independent households. This working paper tracks these “doubled-up” households as a direct demand-side measure of housing shortage.
By benchmarking doubled-up rates in tight markets against those in comparable markets with looser housing supply, the paper estimates how much additional housing would be needed across Canadian metro areas to resolve observed shortfalls.