Interim Housing Needs Reports

CitySpaces was busy throughout the second half of 2024 supporting 15 local governments to meet the Interim Housing Needs Report deadline of January 1^st 2025, following the release of the HNR Method guidelines by the Province in late June. The new legislatively required HNR Method to estimating housing need for 5- and 20-years includes six components to estimate current unmet housing unit need and future household growth.

While it is vital to estimate the total number of units needed, the first question any local government will ask is “but what should those housing units be?!” To help answer this question, CitySpaces developed an income- and affordability-based approach to categorizing the housing need by four type and tenure categories, price-point, and number of bedrooms. This information will support local planning and policymaking to better match the future housing supply to actual housing need, through a detailed understanding of what housing is needed for all households.

This approach built upon methodology developed by CitySpaces, rennie intelligence, and the City of Kelowna in 2023, which won a 2024 Planning Institute of BC Silver Award in Research & New Directions in Planning with jurors noting “it will be very useful as a model and adds to our tools for housing planning as a profession.” This award-winning approach continues to evolve and provides a strong foundation for local governments to understand their housing needs.

Our role in the project

CitySpaces undertook the mandatory HNR Method calculations, and supplemented the findings with advanced housing type analysis, report writing, staff workshops and council presentations to meet, and exceed, the legislative requirement for local governments to receive an Interim Housing Needs Report in 2024.

CLIENT: The Cariboo Regional District (five Electoral Areas), City of Kelowna, City of Kimberley, City of Nanaimo, City of Port Alberni, City of Vernon, City of William's Lake, District of Houston, District of Kitimat, and Regional District of Central Okanagan (two Electoral Areas).

Project location: Various