GTA Tour: City of Mississauga
Over the course of these past two weeks, we have been discussing the Greater Toronto Area and the housing market. This week, we are moving on to the City of Mississauga.
On June 10th, Mississauga residents are selecting their third mayor in nearly 50 years. The next mayor will have to deal with issues of uncontrolled immigration and a city with the most acute housing crises in the country. How the new mayor will approach the housing affordability remains to be seen. As recent history shows, the City Council has failed to adapt to the growing affordability concerns, drawing an ire from the Province.
Back in 2023, the City of Mississauga declared housing is a top priority, announcing An Action Plan for New Housing, which had a four-year action plan to get more housing built and make it more affordable. Ironically, the Province’s new home target for Mississauga was at 120,000 units over 10 years. In February of 2024 the City of Mississauga abruptly stopped its monthly disclosure and reporting on the progress of the new housing initiative.
Unsurprisingly, the City of Mississauga lost out on $30M in provincial investment after failing to meet its housing target in 2023. So far, the city has only compounded last year’s failure by achieving just 15 % of its 2024 target, leaving a towering challenge for the incoming mayor, even with ‘strong mayor’ powers that would allow them to push through housing policy without a majority support from council.
The new home target was inadequately low, given that Mississauga is the third most popular destination for scores of Indian students, primarily from Punjab. According to recent analysis by Mike Moffat, 70% of new housing demand in Ontario in 2023 came from newcomers. The impact of the housing crisis is being felt more severely in Mississauga than most of the country and with explosive population growth, housing prices are going to keep rising.
Let’s look at some demographic data from the 2021 Census of Population for Mississauga, according to the Statistics Canada website. The population of Mississauga is smaller than I thought, at 717,961 as of 2021. This is a 0.5% decrease from the 2016 census. The total number of private dwellings is 254,089. The average age of the area is 41.1 and the median age is 40.8.
The total number of occupied private dwellings is 244,575. Most of these dwellings are a single-detached house, with 90,660. In second place for number of dwellings is an apartment with five or more storeys, with 66,830 dwellings consisting of this property type. The third most common housing type in Mississauga is a row house, with 34,455 dwellings of this property type. Out of these private property types, the main household sizes are almost exactly the same: one person houses are 47,335 households in the total number of dwellings, three people households make up 47,360, and four people make up 47,210. The average household size in Mississauga is 2.9 people.
Interesting to note that 172,225 of private households are owned, 72,355 are rented with no homes provided by the local government.
Since Hazel McCullum’s housing policy was focused heavily on residential low rise dwellings, the most common number of bedrooms in the region is 4 or more. When considering suitability, which refers to “whether a private household is living in suitable accommodations according to the National Occupancy Standard, or whether there are enough bedrooms for each person. 216,910 dwellings are suitable. The most common era that homes were built in was 1961 to 1980.
WOWA tells us that the average home price sold has increased 4.6% from last year, being $1.126 million as of April of this year. Both detached and semi-detached homes have increased, now costing $1.66 million and $1.07 million respectively. Condo townhouses and condo apartments have both decreased roughly the same at around 5% and just under 4.5%, costing $814k and $627k respectively.
As noted, there are more immigrants in Mississauga than non-immigrants: 379,425 indicated they are an immigrant and 306,375 indicated they are not. Out of the entire population 441,480 indicated they are a visible racial minority. The largest ethnic or cultural origin group is Indian, with 90,560 Mississaugans being of Indian descent. 55,350 indicated they are Chinese. Another large ethnic group is Filipino, with 37,325 people indicating they are Filipino.
Overall, Mississauga is an incredibly diverse city with lots to offer, and already sky-high home prices are set to continue rising.