Housing Brackets
September 25, 2025 | Need to Know Vote Housing
We’re introducing a concept we’re calling ‘housing brackets’ to shed light on the importance of housing meeting the diverse needs of Calgary’s population and help you vote like housing is your priority too!
Definition
When we talk about ‘Housing Brackets’, we’re referencing the different categories of housing needs someone might have based not just on income or affordability and not simply by age or demography but also housing needs based on things like location, security, health, accessibility, and cultural adequacy. The following three ways of categorizing housing needs help us more easily understand why increasing supply alone is not enough and why we need to be talking about the TYPE of housing supply we’re increasing and the LOCATION of that supply.
Health Needs
This includes people whose housing needs are determined by their mental, physical, or psychological health needs and includes people who might require assisted living for mobility challenges, addiction, or psychiatric diagnoses etc.
Circumstance Needs
This includes people whose LIFE circumstances make up a big part of their housing needs such as university students who need to be close to their school, refugees or immigrants who may have multi-generational and cultural needs, seniors who are looking to downsize, young families who are looking to upsize, people without modes of transportation who need to be close to transit options.
Affordability Needs
This includes individuals whose income is the most significant factor in terms of their ability to choose where they live, often superseding all other factors i.e. they can’t live near their job, or they aren’t able to live near their family or their hobbies or their cultural groups because there is nothing in those areas within their price range.
Why are we talking about this for Calgary?
When we talk about the housing crisis, one of the most common concepts we rely on discussing is the affordability issue. We know that affordability is a major problem for at least 1 in 5 Calgarians[1], with estimates suggesting this 2023 statistic has been further exacerbated as of 2025. But affordability is often masking other housing challenges, preventing Calgarians from having the housing they need, not just the housing they can afford.
The City of Calgary publishes their Housing Needs Assessment report every five years and that research helps identify present and future affordable housing requirements in Calgary. Their assessment states the definition of suitable housing as having enough bedrooms for the size and make-up of the household, according to National Occupancy Standard requirements. But we believe it’s important to think of housing suitability through another metric – not just having enough bedrooms for the make-up of the household but having your health, cultural, location, and circumstantial housing needs met as well.
While it remains challenging to identify through data reports things like circumstantial and health related housing needs of individuals and families living in Calgary, the breakdown below helps us extrapolate some conclusions about the need for not just more housing but the need for more diversity in housing.
Of Calgary’s 84,600 households in housing need…
- 81% Are single and two-persons
- 56% Experience difficulties or long-term challenges
- 63% Non-racialized
- 32% Racialized
- 5% Indigenous
- 70% Working age
- 23% Seniors
- 7% Youth
- 10% Recent immigrants and non-permanent residents
Take for example the situation of an aging couple without dependents at home who would prefer to downsize given their decreasing capacity for lawn care, house maintenance, physical mobility, or other household management tasks. However, given the housing market, they will be hard pressed to find smaller or more condensed housing options that aren’t as expensive as their current home, so they occupy housing that both doesn’t meet their needs and they create a bottleneck for that type of home.
Take the reverse example, a young family who is looking to up-size their housing, but they have relatively limited options because the aging couple is staying in their home longer and the lack of supply is increasing prices beyond their capacity. This family stays renting in a 2- or 3-bedroom apartment for longer and creates a bottleneck for that type of housing for young, newly working couples who want to move out of their parents’ houses.
Take the example of a couple who are looking at a few years of caring for their elderly parents but who cannot afford or do not wish to move those parents to care facilities, but who also do not have the space for someone else to reasonably live within their existing home. Take the example of a parent whose adult child, or an individual whose adult sibling has physical, developmental, or mental health challenges of which the parent or sibling cannot support, but who also cannot find a suitable supportive housing alternative because there are too few facility options or there are no options anywhere near their housing.
Take the example of an international student who came to Calgary for our highly ranked universities but cannot find housing anywhere near their campus. Take the example of an individual whose mental or psychological health is deteriorating and their ability to live alone is becoming compromised; they could continue to live alone and work, but only with supports – without them they would be homeless.
Take the example of a multi-generational family whose culture promotes and encourages a single home space for everyone but who cannot comfortably do so because there are no housing options that accommodate their diverse needs in a location near other members of their diaspora.
Take the example of new grads excited to start work but who cannot find housing anywhere near their employment, their friend group, or their hobbies.
There is not any person in Calgary who is not personally or indirectly currently impacted or soon to be impacted by the lack of diverse housing options across the city. Which means the conversation has to move towards not just housing supply but housing options in multiple communities to manage the challenges facing a population with diverse needs. We do our city a disservice by suggesting that only building single-family homes in a single community or building one high-rise downtown and a few rowhouses in a sprawled community in Tuscany will solve our housing bottlenecks.
What piece of the housing puzzle does housing diversity fit into?
There are many studies that show housing as a social determinant of health, in which the quality, security, and affordability of housing someone is able to obtain has a direct impact on psychological and physical well-being.
In order to address the well-being of our population, we need various types of housing in every neighbourhood as this is the only way to properly provide options for the diverse group of people and needs that exist in the city. Building multiple types of housing in only specific neighbourhoods doesn’t adequately address the lack of options because we have limited the “increase in options” to specific geographies, which is antithetical to the definition.
We are also better able to fortify the economic stability of the city when all neighbourhoods attract groups from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, ensuring that essential workers like teachers, nurses, law enforcement, or hospitality staff can live in the communities they serve. More diverse neighbourhoods also mean greater customer bases for local businesses and, similarly, diversity in local businesses in each community. As a city, it means Calgary can better support the existing population’s needs and attract greater businesses and citizen investment through strong tax bases city-wide.
A lot of people will scoff at this conversation because it sounds fantastical. They’ll say “nobody needs housing near their job or their friend group or their gym,” And that might be true – no you don’t need to live near your school or your job or your friends, but wouldn’t your life be improved if you could? and wouldn’t the city benefit if our population’s wellbeing was improved?
The idea that housing that meets all your needs is a luxury rather than a right is a huge threat to the health and social equity of the entire city. [2]
Check out the rest of the content on our Vote Housing page (https://alphahousecalgary.com/votehousing ), where we have a lot of great information and commentary about housing in Calgary.
[1] https://www.calgary.ca/communities/housing-in-calgary/housing-needs-assessment.html
