Building Stronger Communities Through Better Data

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Supporting the Federal Housing Needs Assessment Template

Understanding housing needs is key to building inclusive, thriving towns and cities. Yet, across Canada, municipalities often face challenges in accessing reliable, standardized data to guide housing and infrastructure decisions. To address this, the Government of Canada has engaged the Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) team to support the federal Housing Needs Assessment (HNA) template.

This tool equips municipalities with a streamlined approach to identifying their unique housing needs, ensuring evidence-based solutions guide planning and development. By leveraging transparent, open data, communities can make informed decisions that shape their future while meeting funding requirements for critical programs like the Housing Accelerator Fund, the Canada Community-Building Fund (CCBF), and the Canada Public Transit Fund.

Why Housing Needs Assessments Matter

Housing Needs Assessments (HNAs) are central to the federal government’s long-term strategy for linking housing and infrastructure investments. HNAs enable municipalities to collect, analyze, and present data essential for planning housing solutions that address local demand.

However, creating an HNA from scratch can be time-consuming and costly, especially for smaller municipalities with limited resources. The updated federal HNA template, developed by Housing, Infrastructure, and Communities Canada (HICC) and supported by HART, simplifies this process by pre-populating up to 70% of the required data using publicly available sources like Census 2021 and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) Housing Market Information Portal.

Enhancing the HNA Template with Additional Data

While much of the data needed for the HNA template is publicly accessible, some municipalities require additional, complex datasets that must be sourced and analyzed independently. To bridge this gap, the HART team, supported by the University of British Columbia’s Housing Research Collaborative (HRC), is working to make 15 additional data points publicly available by Spring of this year.

This template will benefit not only municipalities with populations of 30,000 or more, which are required to complete HNAs, but also smaller communities and territories that have committed to developing Territorial HNAs under CCBF agreements. In fact, many smaller communities have requested pre-populated templates, and HICC is exploring how to extend this support to municipalities with populations under 30,000.

Reducing Administrative Burden, Empowering Communities

Standardizing the HNA process reduces the administrative burden on municipalities and allows them to focus on what matters most: meeting the housing needs of their residents. With access to detailed, reliable data and visualization tools, communities can identify gaps, plan effectively, and make evidence-based decisions that align with federal funding criteria.

A National Effort for Local Impact

This initiative represents a critical step toward creating more equitable and efficient housing and infrastructure planning processes across Canada. By working together—with federal agencies, research groups like HART, and local governments—we’re ensuring that housing investments are informed by accurate data and reflect the diverse needs of communities across the country.

This project is made possible through funding from the Government of Canada via Housing, Infrastructure, and Communities Canada. Together, we’re building stronger, more sustainable communities for all.

To learn more about the new federal HNA tool and other HART updates, sign up for our newsletter ➡️ hart.ubc.ca/newsletter/

This project is funded by the Government of Canada. | Financé par le gouvernement du Canada.


HART works with population data, housing data, and land data across Canada to help communities, non-profits, and the public to better understand the housing realities for people across the country, and make better decisions to improve those realities. If you want to work with HART, or if you’d like to learn more about our work, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Visit The HICC-HNA Webpage