The Impact of Community Housing on Productivity - November 27, 2023

Conversely, the impact turns negative in the second half of the sample, a timeframe that corresponds with a decline in the community housing stock as a share of GDP over much of the sample and lower shares of investment in new construction as a share of GDP compared to the earlier period. [...] In all cases the dependent variable is MFP and the community housing explanatory variable is the share of community housing in the total housing stock. [...] The scenario we study is: What is the impact of boosting Canada’s community 17.5 housing as a share of total housing stock to reach the OECD average of 7% in 2030? 17.0 Constructing the Forecast 16.5 • To obtain Canada’s current community housing as a share of total housing, we start by updating the OECD estimate for Canada. [...] After measuring the impact to productivity and factoring in the opportunity cost of moving housing construction from private homes to community housing, the net impact on GDP of the additional Impact to Productivity units of community housing would be between $67 billion and $136 billion by 2030. [...] We then take the Canadian results from the regression analysis and apply those responses to the provincial percentage increase in the dollar community housing share of total housing stock to determine the impact on GDP from the productivity boost.