Canada’s housing crisis is no longer confined to Toronto, Vancouver, or a handful of overheated markets. Across the country, home prices remain elevated relative to incomes, rental vacancies are tight, and new supply struggles to keep pace with population growth. Even as price growth slowed in parts of 2025, affordability has not meaningfully improved for first-time buyers.
At the same time, Canada continues to rely on high levels of immigration to support economic growth and address labour shortages. Federal targets have added hundreds of thousands of new residents annually, most of whom settle in Ontario and British Columbia. This inflow has reinforced demand for housing, particularly in urban regions already constrained by land availability, zoning rules, and construction capacity.
Against this backdrop, a growing number of housing thinkers are questioning the foundations of traditional ownership models and whether or not they can still work at scale. One of them is Adam Gant, a Victoria-based real estate investor and entrepreneur whose ideas are increasingly being discussed well beyond British Columbia. Gant has spent years studying how financing structures influence affordability, and his work raises questions that resonate nationally.
The core issue, he argues, is arithmetic. In many Canadian cities, the cost of building housing has reset higher due to land prices, labour shortages, and materials inflation. Even if demand cools, those costs place a hard floor under prices. Detached homes have already slipped out of reach for most people in land-constrained regions of Ontario and B.C., leaving condos and townhomes as the primary form of new ownership supply. Yet even these typically require down payments and monthly payments that far exceed what middle-income households can afford.
One idea that’s gaining attention is the use of large-scale housing funds designed to lower financing costs rather than prices themselves. These funds can borrow at institutional rates, often one to one-and-a-half percentage points below standard consumer mortgages, and amortize loans over 40 or even 50 years. For buyers, that combination significantly reduces monthly payments. For households locked out by today’s lending rules, some models also allow entry with as little as a 1 percent down payment.
The implications extend beyond buyers. Housing funds can offer developers forward purchase commitments for a portion of a project’s units. In practical terms, this means a developer can secure financing knowing that part of the building already has a committed buyer. In Ontario, where projects are delayed or cancelled due to financing risk, this kind of certainty could make the difference between stalled proposals and new supply entering the market.
Shared equity sits at the centre of these models. Instead of a buyer carrying the full cost and risk of ownership, a partner, such as a housing fund, contributes part of the equity. When the home is eventually sold, gains are shared proportionally. Buyers gain stability and partial ownership without taking on unsustainable debt, while the fund earns a return linked to long-term housing value rather than short-term rent.
For a country grappling with rapid population growth, the appeal is obvious. Supply must expand quickly, and at price points people can afford. Relying solely on market corrections or interest rate cuts will likely not be enough. Shared equity does not increase supply on its own, but by improving project viability and buyer affordability at the same time, it may help unlock supply that would otherwise remain unrealized.
Ontario’s situation illustrates the stakes clearly. In the GTA, benchmark prices remain far above what average households can support, even after recent softening. Purpose-built rental has expanded, but ownership options for first-time buyers remain limited. At the same time, population growth continues to concentrate demand in the region. Without new ownership pathways, more households risk remaining permanent renters by default rather than choice.
There are all open questions, and shared equity offers enticing answers to many of them. Shared equity would require clear rules around resale, appreciation sharing, and long-term governance. Policymakers would determine how these models interact with existing tax and housing policies. Critics warn that poorly designed programs could introduce complexity or unintended incentives. There is certainly a need for transparency and careful structuring rather than pushing one-size-fits-all solutions.
But the growing interest in alternative models of ownership is a reflection of a broader shift in thinking. Canada’s housing crisis is no longer just about building more units, but about aligning financing, supply, and population growth. As cities from Victoria to Toronto confront similar pressures, ideas that once seemed niche are being considered in mainstream policy conversations.
Whether shared equity becomes a feature of Canada’s housing system remains to be seen. But as affordability strains persist and immigration continues to shape demand, the country may be forced to rethink what ownership looks like in a high-cost, high-growth environment. In that sense, the debate sparked by investors and thinkers like Gant is less about promoting a single model and more about asking a necessary question: how can housing work again for the majority of Canadians, not just the asset-rich few?
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