Reduced funding would push cumulative social value deep into negative territory
Cutting public housing funding in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area would cost governments more than it saves.
That is the central finding of The Public Housing Dividend, an April report prepared by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis (CANCEA) for the GTHA Community Housing Collaborative.
The report modelled five investment scenarios across the region from 2026 to 2050 and found that reducing public housing investment produces negative cumulative social value of -$8.8bn.
It also projects 139 building closures, the loss of more than 13,000 units, and about $1.2bn in additional downstream costs to health and justice systems relative to the status quo.
The strongest pathway, combining renewal of existing stock with new construction, generates approximately $102bn in total economic and social value by 2050.
That figure comprises roughly $49.6bn in cumulative GDP and $48.3bn in social value, which the report defines as the monetised value of improvements in resident and community well-being, including health, mental health, family stability, and housing quality.
The combined pathway supports approximately 354,500 cumulative job-years and about 14,900 full-time equivalent positions by 2050, and attracts roughly $6bn in cumulative private capital.
Cumulative federal and provincial tax revenue reaches approximately $12.6bn under the combined pathway, compared with $3.1bn under Reduced Funding.
Relative to simply maintaining the status quo, the combined pathway adds roughly $24bn in cumulative GDP and approximately 158,500 cumulative job-years.
The report benchmarks public housing investment against broader economic alternatives and finds the combined pathway performs about 76 percent better than directing equivalent capital into the general economy.
On a benefit-cost basis, the combined pathway returns 2.80 times for every dollar invested. Reduced Funding returns -0.08 times.
The report traces a direct line from housing quality to public-system demand.
Over 25 years, the combined pathway reduces inpatient days by approximately 524,100, emergency department visits by about 156,500 and justice events by about 44,200, relative to the status quo.
Those reductions produce roughly $1.8bn in cumulative utilisation savings, including approximately $1.5bn in lower healthcare costs.
The homelessness pathway adds to the case. By 2050, the combined pathway results in about 4,700 fewer homeless people relative to the status quo, with roughly 52,230 fewer homeless-years over the period and about $2.4bn in reduced government services.
Compared with Reduced Funding, the gap rises to roughly 83,000 fewer person-years of homelessness and about $4.9bn in reduced government services.
The report cautioned that lower utilisation should be interpreted as pressure relief rather than literal cash removable from public budgets, as capacity released in one place is often absorbed by other unmet demand.
The GTHA public housing system currently serves approximately 79,705 active units housing 159,227 residents across more than 600 developments in Toronto, Peel, York, Halton, Durham, and Hamilton.
Subsidised-housing waiting lists in the City of Toronto alone exceeded 80,000 households, according to City of Toronto data cited in the report, while purpose-built rental vacancy rates remained below 2 percent in most submarkets, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data also cited in the report.
Under the combined pathway, the system reaches approximately 102,500 active units by 2050, housing about 239,500 people with no building closures.
Under Reduced Funding, stock falls to about 66,400 active units and the system houses only about 153,300 people, roughly 6,000 fewer than today.
Health outcomes follow the same pattern.
The report projects that under Reduced Funding, over 67 percent of residents are likely to have poor or very poor health by 2050. The combined pathway reduces that share to 12 percent.
Reduced Funding averages about $260m in annual investment across the GTHA.
The combined pathway averages about $1.4bn annually, with total cumulative capital of $36.4bn over the evaluation period.
The report notes that the combined pathway outperforms putting equivalent capital into the wider economy by roughly 76 percent, and that delaying investment does not preserve flexibility but erodes future system capacity.
The study was prepared using ONEMODEL Version 7, CANCEA's proprietary agent-based socioeconomic simulation platform.
All monetary values are expressed in constant 2026 dollars.
The report noted that results are model-based estimates and should not be described as direct observational causal estimates.
