Edmonton builds new homes at a record clip, but affordable rental lags
Ximena Gonzalez, Published October 15, 2026
In October of 2023, Edmonton city council passed an updated zoning bylaw that allowed up to eight dwellings as-of-right on any residential parcel. The efficiencies enabled by the zoning changes, bolstered by construction incentives, facilitated the start of a record 31,555 new homes since 2024, including 17,264 purpose-built rentals.
Because the rate of construction has kept up with demand, Edmonton is the only metropolitan area in Canada on track to restore affordability to prepandemic levels by 2036, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) latest housing supply report, which characterizes Alberta’s capital city as having no measurable supply gap.
However, affordability issues persist for many Edmonton tenants.
Although the metro area’s rental universe has expanded at a faster pace than its population, one in four Edmonton tenants scramble to find a suitable rental that won’t gobble up more than a third of their pretax income.
“We know that there are still issues finding affordable and suitable housing at the bottom end [of the rental market],” says Taylor Pardy, CMHC’s lead economist for the Edmonton and Calgary markets. “Our models don’t really deal with things like homelessness and the need for more social housing.”
New supply has certainly expanded tenants’ choices in Edmonton, but vacancies have concentrated at the top end of the market, meaning renters are forced to choose between affordability, suitability or quality.
For Brook Laprise, continuing to live on their own means taking on two side hustles on top of their full-time job at an Edmonton non-profit.
While abundant supply in the purpose-built rental market spurred Mx. Laprise’s landlord to offer a discounted rate, paying a monthly $1,435 in rent, plus fees and utilities, swallows 40 per cent of Mx. Laprise’s take-home income.
“If I could not be working 12- to 14-hour days and weekends to make ends meet, I would love it,” Mx. Laprise says. But the options available within a third of the young professional’s income are far from ideal.
“Last year I lived in a basement suite with insulation so bad that I could hear every noise, and my windows iced over in the winter,” Mx. Laprise says. “That’s why I moved.”
To live within their means, other Edmonton tenants are giving up on living alone.
For three years, Erika Buhler spent roughly 40 per cent of her income on rent. Tired of counting pennies, in May the school teacher moved into a two-bedroom apartment with a roommate.
Splitting a monthly $2,000 in rent brings Ms. Buhler’s housing costs below 30 per cent of her take-home income, a share that’s well within the realm of affordability. “Now I am able to save and put money aside,” she says.
Because the options available at the middle end of the market remained limited, however, finding a suitable rental wasn’t easy for the roommates.
“We couldn’t find many livable two-bedroom apartments for $1,600 or less,” she says. “It would be either a very old building or in a less safe location.”
With secure full-time jobs and steady paycheques, tenants like Mx. Laprise and Ms. Buhler have a better chance at finding a suitable home as Edmonton’s rental market continues to soften. By contrast, the prospects of renters employed in unstable, low-wage jobs, or on income support are dismal.
Monica Bottomley shares a bungalow in Edmonton’s Forest Heights with two roommates, yet the monthly $535 she spends on rent consumes at least half of Ms. Bottomley’s meagre wages. She works part-time for a landscaping company, and receives income support from Alberta Works, a provincial program for working Albertans unable to meet their basic needs.
“When you don’t have any money, there’s nothing to look forward to,” she says. “That makes you feel pretty hopeless.”
As wait-lists in affordable, non-market housing continue to swell, finding a rental that’s a better fit relative to Ms. Bottomley’s income is nearly impossible. In 2025, CMHC pegged the vacancy rate for rentals at the lowest end of the market at 2.9 per cent.
Rowe Dixon and Hart MacAulay, both of whom rely on disability income, pay a monthly $1,330 in rent for a two-bedroom apartment in west Edmonton. Although the couple’s monthly rent is $140 below the median, it consumes close to 45 per cent of their household income.
Earlier this year, looking for a more affordable setup, they reached out to Civida, Edmonton’s largest affordable housing provider, but the agency’s wait-list has consistently exceeded 10,000 households since last year.
Civida manages only 5,300 units.
Joshua Evans, an associate professor and research lead at the University of Alberta’s Affordable Housing Solutions Lab, says that the situation in Edmonton is not surprising. Market housing seldom meets the needs of lower-income households simply because investors make development decisions based on a project’s profitability.
“Anticipating rising incomes and rising rents is what’s driving their decisions to invest in new construction and add to supply,” he says.
While new supply is presumed to trigger a “filtering” effect – a process where more affluent tenants move to newer, more expensive rentals and vacate older, cheaper ones that lower-income renters can afford – a recent working paper suggests that it could take decades of sustained construction for the average rent to become affordable to the median income earner.
Indeed, CMHC’s model projects that, even with sustained construction – and no supply gap – rents in Edmonton are set to increase by at least 24.5 per cent by 2036.
To meet the needs of lower-income tenants, bolstering the supply of social housing is paramount, Prof. Evans says.
“The impact of waiting years on affordable housing lists while spending a large share of your income in rent puts people at a greater risk of homelessness. We know that one of the causes of homelessness is eviction due to non-payment of rent.”
According to CMHC’s latest survey, there were fewer than 15,500 affordable and social housing rentals in the Edmonton metropolitan area in 2025.
