Mapping Core Housing Need in Hamilton

Core housing need is a crucial concept to understand people's housing conditions. Statistics Canada defines core housing need as whether a household "falls below at least one of the indicator thresholds for housing adequacy, affordability or suitability, and would have to spend 30% or more of its total before‑tax income to pay the median rent of alternative local housing that is acceptable."

The table below outlines the definitions of adequacy, affordability, and suitability threshold indicators used in the first part of the definition. The second part of the core housing need definition ("spend 30% or more of its total before‑tax income to pay the median rent of alternative local housing that is acceptable") is a filter to separate out households that have a high income and are living in unaffordable housing because they are "house poor" but not "income poor". For example, households paying a large portion of their high income towards their mortgage on an expensive house. The core housing need indicator instead focuses on households who wouldn't be able to afford median rent in their community. Other households that have high enough income to afford the median rent for the number of bedrooms they need for their household and for a unit not in needs of major repairs, are excluded and are not considered to be in core housing need.

The indicator data are from the 2021 Census. Maps show each data indicator mapped by census tracts across Hamilton. Census tracts are Statistics Canada geographical unit at the neighbourhood level, that usually have a population between 2,500 and 8,000 persons.

Clicking on the census tracts in the map will show specific data for that area.

Click this button in lower left corner to bring up the legend to see the proportions of the indicator represented by the colours on the map:

This report has narrative on the left and maps on the right in desktop view. On a mobile device, the narrative will appear above the maps, but it is recommended to view this report on a device with a large screen to see the detail of this report.

Some of the maps take some time to load, please wait a moment before scrolling to see them appear.

Some of the maps have a slider with arrows in the middle - move the slider across to the right see one map appear and then move the slider to the left to see the second map, and be able to compare them visually as you move the slider.