CMHC October 2025 and the 2024 point-in-time counts
One market,
read from both ends
The average purpose-built rent in Toronto is $1,916 with 2.8% of units empty. On one night in October, 15,400 people were counted with nowhere to live. Those two figures describe the same housing market.
- Average rent, Toronto
- $1,916
- Vacancy rate
- 2.8%
- Counted without a home
- 15,400
- Of everyone counted in Ontario
- 48.0%
Rent across Ontario
The same apartment,
half the price
Across the 9 cities in the file the spread from dearest to cheapest is 54.4%. That is not a small regional variation. It is the difference between a wage covering rent and not.
Spans Peel, York, Halton and the Ajax–Pickering part of Durham as well as Toronto. It is not any one of them.
Receipt
City rows only, 9 of the 21 geographies in the file. The regional rows repeat the Toronto CMA figure of $2,163 four times, once per region it covers, which is why it appears here once and labelled.
- Source
- CMHC Rental Market Survey
- Published by
- Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
- Period
- October 2025
- Retrieved
- 12 July 2026
- File
- data/civic/housing_cmhc_2025-10.csv
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
Purpose-built rental only: no condos, no basement apartments, no rooms. The Toronto CMA figure spans Peel, York, Halton and part of Durham, so it is not a Toronto number and not a suburb number either. Several county rows are proxied from the dominant urban centre and carry a quality flag.
Rent against vacancy
Tight markets
are dear markets
Not a law, and the sample is small, but the shape is what a renter already suspects: where almost nothing is empty, almost nothing is affordable.
Receipt
All 21 geographies with both a rent and a vacancy figure. The tightest market in the file is Greater Sudbury at 1.1%.
- Source
- CMHC Rental Market Survey
- Published by
- Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
- Period
- October 2025
- Retrieved
- 12 July 2026
- File
- data/civic/housing_cmhc_2025-10.csv
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
Purpose-built rental only: no condos, no basement apartments, no rooms. The Toronto CMA figure spans Peel, York, Halton and part of Durham, so it is not a Toronto number and not a suburb number either. Several county rows are proxied from the dominant urban centre and carry a quality flag.
Several rows are proxies: a county with no CMHC geography of its own carries the figure of its dominant urban centre. Those rows are flagged in the table below.
One night in October
15,400
people counted without a home in Toronto. Each dot below is one hundred of them.
A point-in-time count finds people in shelters, in known outdoor locations, and in some institutions, on one night. It does not find people sleeping on a friend’s sofa, doubled up in a relative’s apartment, or deliberately out of sight. Every number on this page is therefore a floor, not a total.
Receipt
2024 Street Needs Assessment, 15,400 people. Some derivative reporting cites 15,418.
- Source
- 2024 Street Needs Assessment and Ontario point-in-time counts
- Published by
- City of Toronto and Ontario Service Managers
- Period
- October–November 2024
- Retrieved
- 12 July 2026
- File
- data/civic/housing_pit_2024.csv
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
Point-in-time counts undercount by design. They find people in shelters, in known outdoor locations, and in some institutions on one night; they miss people couch-surfing, doubled up, or staying out of sight. Count dates differ by region, so the totals are not a single national snapshot.
The October 2025 count, run under the City’s new annual requirement, recorded 9,026 in the base shelter system, 1,446 outdoors including encampments, and 1,724 in provincially administered settings, 12,196 in total. It is a different exercise from the 2024 assessment and the two are not subdivisions of each other.
Where people were, October 2025
Three systems,
one shortage
The 12,196 people found in October 2025 were spread across three systems that report separately and rarely add themselves up in public.
Receipt
City of Toronto point-in-time count, October 2025, recorded in the project claim ledger as CL-601. The base shelter figure includes 271 in Emergency Family Shelter Support.
- Source
- 2024 Street Needs Assessment and Ontario point-in-time counts
- Published by
- City of Toronto and Ontario Service Managers
- Period
- October–November 2024
- Retrieved
- 12 July 2026
- File
- data/civic/housing_pit_2024.csv
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
Point-in-time counts undercount by design. They find people in shelters, in known outdoor locations, and in some institutions on one night; they miss people couch-surfing, doubled up, or staying out of sight. Count dates differ by region, so the totals are not a single national snapshot.
Across Ontario
Toronto is half
of what gets counted
15 Ontario service areas ran a count in 2024 and found 32,105 people between them. Toronto is 48.0% of that. Every one of these counts used a slightly different date and method.
October 2024
23 October 2024
13 November 2024
22 October 2024
18 November 2024
4 November 2024
8 October 2024
2024
26 November 2024
22 October 2024
24 October 2024
8 October 2024
19 November 2024
2024
23 October 2024
Receipt
Counts ran between 8 October 2024 and 26 November 2024. Where a source gave a date range, the start date is used.
- Source
- 2024 Street Needs Assessment and Ontario point-in-time counts
- Published by
- City of Toronto and Ontario Service Managers
- Period
- October–November 2024
- Retrieved
- 12 July 2026
- File
- data/civic/housing_pit_2024.csv
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
Point-in-time counts undercount by design. They find people in shelters, in known outdoor locations, and in some institutions on one night; they miss people couch-surfing, doubled up, or staying out of sight. Count dates differ by region, so the totals are not a single national snapshot.
Two rows carry warnings worth reading in full: the Peel figure of 2,799 includes asylum claimants and the commonly quoted 1,674 does not, and the Essex figure was not endorsed by council. Both are shown as published, with the caveat attached rather than the number removed.
Every market
The rental file
Including the proxy notes, which are the part that decides whether a comparison is fair.
| Geography | Level | Average rent | Vacancy | Match | Why it is a proxy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peel Region | CD | $2,163 | 2.8% | Direct match | Toronto CMA spans Peel/York/Halton/Durham/Toronto; not equivalent to Peel Region alone |
| York Region | CD | $2,163 | 2.8% | Direct match | Toronto CMA spans Peel/York/Halton/Durham/Toronto; not equivalent to York Region alone |
| Halton Region | CD | $2,163 | 2.8% | Direct match | Toronto CMA spans Peel/York/Halton/Durham/Toronto; not equivalent to Halton Region alone |
| Durham Region (Toronto CMA portion) | CD | $2,163 | 2.8% | Direct match | Toronto CMA spans Peel/York/Halton/Durham/Toronto; covers only the Ajax/Pickering part of Durham |
| Toronto | CSD | $1,916 | 2.8% | Direct match | — |
| Durham Region (Oshawa CMA portion) | CD | $1,828 | 2.9% | Close proxy | Oshawa CMA = Oshawa/Whitby/Clarington only; does not cover all of Durham Region |
| Guelph | CSD | $1,759 | 2.9% | Direct match | — |
| Ottawa | CSD | $1,741 | 2.9% | Direct match | — |
| Kingston | CSD | $1,717 | 2.4% | Direct match | — |
| Frontenac County | CD | $1,717 | 2.4% | Direct match | Frontenac County has no distinct CMHC geography; Kingston is the Service Manager's dominant centre |
| Lennox and Addington County | CD | $1,717 | 2.4% | Direct match | Lennox and Addington County has no distinct CMHC geography; Kingston is the Service Manager's dominant centre |
| Simcoe County | CD | $1,699 | 4.3% | Close proxy | Barrie is a separated single-tier city, not administratively part of Simcoe County; partial-population proxy only |
| London | CSD | $1,554 | 3.8% | Direct match | — |
| Middlesex County | CD | $1,554 | 3.8% | Direct match | Middlesex County has no distinct CMHC geography; London is the Service Manager's dominant centre |
| Waterloo Region | CD | $1,550 | 3.6% | Close proxy | Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo CMA boundary is close to but not proven identical to Waterloo Region |
| Greater Sudbury | CSD | $1,482 | 1.1% | Direct match | — |
| Centre Wellington | CSD | $1,467 | 3.7% | Loose proxy | — |
| Hamilton | CSD | $1,439 | 3.9% | Direct match | — |
| Niagara Region | CD | $1,390 | 2.3% | Loose proxy | St. Catharines-Niagara CMA boundary is close to but not proven identical to Niagara Region |
| Windsor | CSD | $1,241 | 3.9% | Close proxy | — |
| Essex County | CD | $1,241 | 3.9% | Close proxy | Essex County has no distinct CMHC geography; Windsor is the Service Manager's dominant centre |