Housing Needs Assessments

On this page

• Overview
• What is a Housing Needs Assessment?
• Benefits of a federal Housing Needs Assessment
• Housing Accelerator Fund - Round 2
• Download the federal Housing Needs Assessment template
• Request a pre-populated Housing Needs Assessment template

Overview

Housing Needs Assessments (HNAs) provide data to support evidence-based decision making at the local and community level. Having this data helps all levels of government make informed decisions about their infrastructure and housing investments in order to build the most suitable housing for their communities. An assessment helps a community gather critical housing data to guide decisions on the type and location of housing to build, as well as the infrastructure needed to support community growth.

The federal government is taking an integrated approach to housing and infrastructure. Communities with a population of 30,000 or greater will need to complete an HNA to be eligible for federal funding under infrastructure programs.

What is a Housing Needs Assessment?

An HNA is a report informed by data and research that describes the current and future housing needs of a municipality or community. It includes both:

• Quantitative research such as economic data, population and household forecasts; and,
• Qualitative research such as interviews, policy analysis and stakeholder engagement.

Benefits of a standardized federal Housing Needs Assessment

The federal government has developed a standard HNA template. The federal approach has been inspired by what provinces and municipalities are already doing with respect to HNAs and included consultation with provinces, territories and other stakeholders, including housing experts and academics. A federal standard for HNAs has many benefits, including:

• Providing the necessary evidence to inform local housing policies, investments and planning practices, grounded in the current and projected needs of a community;
• Fostering the widespread development and adoption of a recognized best practice;
• Ensuring an evidence-based, equity-focused and long-term planning approach to determining the housing needs of Canadians;
• Encouraging integrated, systems thinking by linking HNAs to federal infrastructure programs and planning for future population growth;
• Allowing for comparability across jurisdictions and facilitating roll-up of data to ensure an informed, evidence-based, long-term planning story at the municipal, regional and ultimately national level;
• Supporting local governments in fulfilling the HNA requirement for federal infrastructure funding; and,
• Ensuring local governments have a tool that they can leverage for their own evidence-based long-term planning needs.

Housing Accelerator Fund - Round 2

For those that need to complete or update their housing needs assessment for the Housing Accelerator Fund, resources are available on the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) website. Municipalities with populations of 30,000 or greater who are completing a new housing needs assessment must use the federal template published on the Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada's website.

Download the federal Housing Needs Assessment template

The following links will allow you to download a blank Microsoft Word or HTML version of the federal HNA Template for reference:

• Housing Needs Assessment template (Microsoft Word Version) (136.29 KB)
• Housing Needs Assessment template (HTML Version)

Request a prepopulated Housing Needs Assessment template

Housing Needs Assessments are a core component of the delivery of federal infrastructure programming, including permanent transit funding and the Canada Community-Building Fund (CCBF). Completing an HNA by March 31, 2025 is required for communities with a population of 30,000 or greater to fulfill their commitments under the CCBF.

To reduce the administrative burden on communities, a prepopulated HNA template is available for all communities with a population of 30,000 or greater. It includes pre-filled public data, such as Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data and Statistics Canada census data. Communities must input the remainder of the information within the template.

It is important that municipalities email hna.secretariat-secretariat.ebml@infc.gc.ca to request their pre-populated HNA template, in either official language, in order to complete their assessment for the purposes of fulfilling program requirements.