The housing shortage has Canadians pointing fingers at each other, and some of those accusing digits are directed at well-off baby boomers. In her new book “No Place Like Home: The Missing Key to Our Housing Crisis,” Jessica Barrett suggests they might yet be a big part of the solution.
My dad has been sending me links to news articles he thinks I might find interesting for decades now. In the beginning of my journalism career these were mostly stories about the declining fortunes of media companies and massive rounds of layoffs.
Eventually I asked him to stop with those. Once I got on this kick with housing, though, he switched gears and started sending articles he thought might be relevant to my research. One text, which arrived early on a summer morning as I was packing up for a camping trip, came with a bit of personal exposition that made a familiar headline hit home in a new way.
Subject line: Empty Bedrooms. Text body: This is us.
The article was about seniors unable, or unwilling, to downsize from their large suburban homes. According to Statistics Canada, nearly 95 per cent of people aged 55 to 74 have one or more spare bedrooms in their home. It’s not a new phenomenon, certainly, but it is a trend that’s receiving new interest in relation to our housing crisis, and something I’d never really thought about in relation to my own family.
In the abstract, it’s hard to feel sorry for people like my parents who are well off, partly because they were born into the most prolonged period of economic prosperity humankind has ever known. It’s not that the baby boomers didn’t work hard or face any adversity in their lives — their generation certainly isn’t a monolith, and not everyone fell into a charmed life of easy upward mobility. It’s just that, historically speaking, they are likely to be the most financially prosperous of any generation to come before or after them.
Mostly this comes down to luck. They were born into a ridiculously good economy that lasted well into their early adult years. For the most part, this generation landed secure, decently paying jobs right out of school, which they were able to pay for without student loans. Without student debt, they were able to save their paycheques to make down payments on reasonably priced houses that accrued more wealth than anyone could have imagined while they were busy working and raising their kids.
Many experts have posited that these houses are now poised to become part of one of the biggest transfers of wealth the world has ever known as members of this “silver tsunami” start to pass away or otherwise pass that wealth onto their kids. But it might not work out exactly as anticipated. As they get on in years and their housing needs change, people my parents’ age are butting up against the same problem young families, students, new immigrants and just about everyone else out there has been contending with for decades. When they need to move, there are few options that are both affordable and appealing.
When I talk to my parents about it, moving to a condo is out of the question. They love their house, of course, but equally important, they have friends in the neighbourhood; they take regular bike rides past the old elementary school; and they start most mornings sitting out on their deck with a cup of coffee, even in the dead of winter, watching the birds flutter in from the woods behind their house. Holding on to these relationships and rituals, plus their raft of empty bedrooms, might seem selfish. But the instinctual drive to hold on to their homes might actually be a matter of survival.
Moving house is widely recognized as one of life’s most stressful events, and when elderly people move from a place they’ve lived for a very long time, that stress can be catastrophic, even lethal. People who work in geriatric fields are familiar with a condition known as relocation stress syndrome, or sometimes transfer trauma, characterized by the rapid declines in mental and physical health many older people experience after moving out of a long-term home, especially if the move is involuntary.
Essentially, seniors who may be dealing with certain health issues but are overall doing pretty well tend to tank rather quickly when removed from their homes. (When I think about how stressful it was for me to move in my mid-30s with lots of energy and no health issues, this tracks.) Moves go better when seniors have agency and can decide where they want to go, but people my parents’ age often find the choices lacking.
For all the “luxury” and “convenience” they promise, many condos are as impractical and uncomfortable for downsizing seniors as they are for younger demographics. There’s no space for guests to stay the night, no place to host a big family meal, not enough outdoor space, and, due to zoning restrictions, they’re often far away from the familiar single-family neighbourhoods they have long called home. Condos that tick all these boxes are often so in demand and so expensive, the purchase price would eat up any equity seniors have stored in their existing homes. That’s a big problem for the more than half of Canadian seniors who say they plan to use home equity to fund their retirement.
Of course, there may come a time when holding on is no longer an option, when living in a big suburban house full of stairs becomes untenable or even unsafe. The options in that scenario don’t get much better. At anywhere from $1,000 to $6,000 a month, or more, assisted living facilities can be so expensive that people like my parents, who are hoping to be around for a while yet, worry about running through their entire life savings before their life has run its course. And even before the pandemic exposed the shortcomings of many long-term care facilities, most seniors dreaded winding up in them. Survey after survey consistently shows that seniors want to age in place, meaning in their family homes, and when that’s no longer possible, still within their neighbourhoods.
In order for our housing situation to improve at the pace we need it to, more members of older demographics will have to advocate, and vote, for policy shifts away from the system that created their comfortable surroundings and, quite frankly, made many of them rich.
Paul Kershaw doesn’t think this outcome is as unlikely as it may sound. A public health researcher at the University of British Columbia, Kershaw started Generation Squeeze, a movement for “generational fairness,” off the side of his desk in 2012. Since then, it has become a non-profit “think and change tank” that advocates for a more even playing field among the generations when it comes to government spending and policy. Though Kershaw cautions against blaming any one group for our current housing woes, data shows there is a clear generational component to this crisis that must be taken into account when devising solutions. According to data from Generation Squeeze, it would’ve taken someone in their 20s or 30s 17 years to save for a 20 per cent down payment on a typical home in Canada in 2022, compared to five years for the same age group in 1976. In Vancouver and Toronto, it would have taken 27 years.
Younger generations also face barriers to accessing financing that their parents did not, like the mortgage stress test that requires first-time buyers to prove they can withstand a sharp jump in interest rates. By Generation Squeeze’s estimates, housing prices across Canada would have to come down by more than half their current value in order to be considered “affordable” for people earning average incomes today, which would mean a huge hit to the housing wealth many baby boomers are sitting on. If there’s any hope of even inching toward that kind of equilibrium, it comes down to finding common ground between the different generations and their distinct experiences with housing.
“I think the solution can be found at the intergenerational table, at Thanksgiving, or the winter holidays,” Kershaw told me. “We’ll have multiple generations around that table and they love one another and that intergenerational love can be the root.” Just like I don’t want to see my parents shuttled off to an old-folks home against their will, where they might very well die of a broken heart, parents don’t want to see their adult children struggle to find affordable housing that will allow them to build their own families.
It’s because of this that so many aging parents are helping their children get into the market. One 2024 study found a whopping 48 per cent of first-time homebuyers made their down payment with a loan or gift from family, while a further 20 per cent used money from an inheritance. But just because some families have the resources to hack the system doesn’t mean it’s not broken, Kershaw said. Even hefty withdrawals from the “bank of mom and dad” often prove inadequate to fully shield loved ones from the effects of declining social mobility wrought by high housing prices. Nowhere is this more evident than in patterns of residential mobility.
Mobility is a defining feature of our modern age, almost universally celebrated as a net positive largely because it is the beating heart of our industrialized economy. For the past 250 years we’ve been relying on people to move where work, education and other economic opportunities would take them in order to boost productivity and prosperity. Our housing crisis has disrupted that pattern. As housing prices have gone up over the last 40 years, residential mobility has declined, while those who are moving are doing so, according to some, for the wrong reasons.
“Many Americans are stranded in communities with flat or declining prospects, and lack the practical ability to move across the tracks, the state, or the country — to choose where they want to live,” writes American historian Yoni Appelbaum. “Those who do move are typically heading not to the places where opportunities are abundant, but to those where housing is cheap.”
In Canada, nearly 40 per cent of prospective homebuyers say they’d move cities in order to afford a home, and another 25 per cent say they’d consider moving to a new province.
With the age of first-time home buyers creeping ever upwards — 43 per cent were 35 or older in 2023 — many millennials and Generation Z are delaying having children until they can find secure housing, meaning they may not have as many children as they would like, or have none at all. The impetus to drive — or fly — until they can qualify for a mortgage on a home they want often means the distance between adult children and their aging parents increases at a time in life when they might otherwise rely on each other for support.
Kershaw is hopeful realizations like this will unite extended families in petitioning for change. “I think when you’re gathering around these intergenerational tables people will say, ‘I want my kids to be able to have homes somewhere near to where I live and I want my kids to feel like they can afford to have (our) grandchildren,’ ” he said. “That can be the source for people saying: ‘You know what? This system is broken. I realize it’s been giving my demographic maybe some benefits financially, some more security in this system, but actually the cost is too grave.’ ”
Excerpted from “No Place Like Home: The Missing Key to Our Housing Crisis” by Jessica Barrett. Copyright © 2026 by Jessica Barrett. Published by Viking Canada. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
