Labour, housing shortages are complicating P.E.I.'s population strategy
CBC
After a pandemic-induced slowdown in 2020, P.E.I.'s population has resumed growing at a record-setting pace – and there are signs housing in the province can't keep up.
Statistics Canada's latest population estimate for the Island is 167,680.
The province added 4,817 people in 2021 — the biggest population increase in more than 50 years — and estimated growth in the first half of 2022 has already outpaced last year's.
That growth is no accident. It's the result of a five-year strategy aimed at increasing the population, and reversing the province's aging population.
"If you don't try to solve that aging demographic issue … it's only going to get worse over the next decade," said APEC economist Fred Bergman.
But the growth has come with a cost.
Population growth was identified as a factor in P.E.I.'s housing crisis as early as 2019.
A study by the City of Charlottetown found housing construction slowed as the population started growing. That study found the roots of the housing crisis went back to 2014 and 2015, when a number of factors contributed to a construction slowdown.
When the province's population began to grow with the introduction of the provincial population strategy in 2017, the construction industry ramped up to build new housing. But it's struggling to keep up.
The number of housing completions more than tripled to almost 1,400 last year, up from a low point under 400 in 2015, according to Statistics Canada.
But with population growth at almost 5,000 in 2021, there's still a massive shortfall.
The average P.E.I. household, according to the 2021 census, is made up of 2.3 people. Assuming that's the case, those 1,400 units would house an estimated 3,200 people. That still leaves a shortfall of 1,800 people, or about 780 housing units.
This broad analysis, notes Bergman, doesn't take into account that some population growth doesn't require new housing.
When a child is born, for instance, the parents likely already have housing lined up. Alternatively, someone returning from work out of province may have a household to come back to.
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