07/28/2026
🏡 Is Halifax the least affordable city in Canada ?
In a recent interview with CTV, our Vice-President of Planning and Economic Intelligence, Neil Lovitt, discussed Halifax's status as affordability status according to The Urban Stress Index (USI).
Halifax scored the highest on the USI - above major cities including Toronto and Vancouver- concluding an extreme lack of affordability, with particular pressure on housing costs. According to the data, housing costs absorb over half of monthly income. But do these numbers convey the full picture?
The short answer is... no. As is common with “reports” claiming to make national or international comparisons across complex datapoints, the focus is on media reach, not analytical rigor. Case-in-point, the USI uses metro-level income data for 8 of the 9 Canadian cities it tracks, but without figures for Halifax, it simply (and silently) adopts the province-wide average, understating income by around 18%, and causes Halifax to appear as the outlier in all of North America.
But that is not to discredit the increased pressure Haligonians are experiencing, nor the value of making comparisons (properly, of course). Lovitt concluded with, “Being able to understand what’s happening in different communities across the country and who’s faring better and who’s doing worse and why that may be the case is a very useful thing,”
Check out the full interview and CTV article here:
Halifax’s cost of living has been ranked as “extreme” in an index ranking cities’ typical monthly income, rent prices, and costs of essential food.
