Introduction
Between 2020 and 2024, owning a home in Canada became exponentially more expensive. With only 26% of households able to afford a single-family detached house, homeownership is out of reach for many living in the country. Finding a rental home is also challenging: in 2023, Canada’s rental vacancy rate dropped to 1.5%, the lowest since the 1980s. Following the surge in demand, the average asking rent increased by 10% between 2023 and 2024, reaching a record high of $2,196. “Young people aren’t facing a housing problem, they’re facing a housing crisis,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remarked at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Annual Conference in 2021.
Vancouver is the most expensive Canadian city for both homeownership and rentals, averaging $2,683 per month for one-bedroom rental apartments. Lone-parent households, predominantly led by women, are especially vulnerable to rising housing costs. YWCA Metro Vancouver, a registered charity within the global YWCA network, is addressing this challenge by providing 16 affordable housing communities to 291 single mothers and their children as of 2024.
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This case was written by Momoko Ishida. The author prepared this case under the supervision of Professors Sonia Kang and Hyeun Lee.
The development of this case study was supported by the Latner GATE MBA Internships program.