For decades, the housing ladder in Ontario was predictable. A young couple could buy a modest starter home, build equity, and later move into a larger family place. In 2004, policy expert Mike Moffatt bought a brand-new detached home in London for about $168,000 and used the equity from that and from a second home to eventually afford a larger family house.
That pathway has largely vanished. Today, many first-time buyers in the Greater Toronto Area start in a tiny condo, often at a price that bears no relation to their income. Others never get in at all. The result is a generation that cannot move up, and older Ontarians who cannot move on.
When the housing ladder breaks, seniors are left carrying more than their share of the burden. Adult children delay having kids or have fewer of them. Research from the University of Toronto links rising housing costs since the 1990s to 11 percent fewer children and more than half of the recent drop in fertility, which hit about 1.25 children per woman. That is not an abstract number. It shows up as fewer grandkids at the kitchen table and thinner support networks as Ontarians age.
The collapse also shows up in care. When young workers must chase distant, cheaper housing, home care agencies and long-term care homes in cities like Toronto struggle to keep staff. Seniors who want to downsize to free up the family home often find there is nothing smaller and affordable in their own neighbourhood, so they stay put, even when the stairs get harder to manage.
This is why Ontario needs a three-pillar starter home strategy that treats seniors as central, not an afterthought.
The first pillar is to build real starter homes again, not just more shoebox condos. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reports that almost 80 percent of Toronto’s 47,428 housing starts in 2023 were apartments. At the same time, single detached construction fell by 20 percent across Canada and hit a record low. Seniors feel that shift when they look around and see towers, but very few ground-level townhomes, multiplexes, or small cottages where a young family could realistically plant roots near them.
Land use policy must catch up. Ontario still fights over permitting fourplexes, while British Columbia has moved aggressively to legalize more housing forms. In Toronto, only about 2.1 percent of the city is vacant residential land, so gentle density is not optional. It is the only way to add family-sized homes in established communities where seniors already live, worship, and receive care.
The second pillar is to repair the broken housing ladder for both younger families and older owners. Moffatt points out a growing group of condo owners who bought around the recent price peak and now find that if they sell, they might walk away with only 2 or 3 percent of a down payment for a larger place. That traps would be second-time buyers in cramped units just as they are ready for kids.
At the same time, many seniors are stuck in houses that are larger than they want but are the only asset they fully understand. Extending programs that now help only first time buyers, such as federal sales tax credits, to downsizing seniors would reward those who free up scarce family homes for the next generation. That is a concrete way to honour lifelong work and help grandparents stay near their families rather than being pushed to the outer edge of the region.
The third pillar is stability and honest engagement in land use rules. CMHC data shows Toronto’s housing starts grew only 5 percent between 2022 and 2023, far behind Vancouver at 28 percent and Calgary at 13 percent. Moffatt credits British Columbia’s clearer pro-housing reforms and notes that Ontario’s tendency to announce, reverse, and relaunch urban growth boundary changes has spooked builders.
Seniors understand instability. They have lived through enough policy zigzags to know that when rules change overnight, nothing gets built and trust evaporates. A clear provincial framework that supports missing middle housing and protects renters, paired with real consultation at the neighbourhood level, would give older residents a voice without letting fear of change block every new duplex.
Three deeper truths often get missed. First, starter homes are senior policy. Without them, there are fewer working-age neighbours to shovel the walk, fewer nearby caregivers, and fewer taxpayers to fund health care. Second, building only tiny investor condos fuels geographic sprawl as families leapfrog out to distant towns, which pulls adult children and grandchildren farther from their elders. Third, when young people see that hard work no longer buys even a modest home, their faith in the social contract erodes, and that puts pressure on the intergenerational bonds that hold communities together.
Why this view is grounded in real conditions
This perspective rests on a mix of public data and observed patterns. CMHC’s report shows Toronto leading in raw housing starts but heavily tilted to apartments, with single detached construction down sharply. It also documents Toronto’s very low share of vacant residential land compared with cities such as Edmonton and Ottawa, which underlines how important gentle density is for Ontario.
The Missing Middle conversation with Moffatt and Sabrina Maddeaux provides lived examples that match what many Ontario families describe. A starter detached home in 2004 at a price below $200,000 made family formation and even small business creation realistic. Today, similar homes in major urban regions sell for several times that, and condos that were supposed to be stepping stones often leave owners boxed in.
The strategic conclusion is that Ontario cannot treat starter homes as a nostalgic idea or a youth-only issue. Seniors and their advocates can ask three simple questions of any housing proposal. Does this create more family-sized homes in existing communities, not just more tiny units in towers. Does it help both younger households move up and older owners downsize without leaving their networks. Does it offer stable, transparent land use rules so that builders, neighbours, and municipalities can plan together.
Ontario can rebuild a housing ladder that works from the first rung to the last chapter of life. Doing so will not fix every pressure on seniors, but it will protect something priceless, the ability to age in place, surrounded by family, caregivers, and a living community that is not hollowed out by policy failure. The evidence is imperfect and often local, so these recommendations are starting points that should be tested, refined, and improved in partnership with seniors themselves.