Canada continues to face two interconnected challenges: a shortage of affordable housing and a shortage of licensed child care. While governments often treat these issues separately, a recent report, Co-Locating Child Care and Housing in Canada by Dr. Carolyn Whitzman and Priya Perwani, argues that planning them together can create stronger communities and improve outcomes for families. The report suggests that integrating child care into affordable housing developments can reduce barriers to employment, improve access to services, and make better use of public investment. 

Why does co-locating child care and housing matter?

Housing alone does not create a complete community. Families also need access to services that support everyday life, including child care, schools, health care, recreation, and public transit.

The report notes that Canada has approximately 4.4 million households in need of affordable housing, including 3 million households requiring deeply affordable homes. At the same time, many communities continue to experience significant shortages of licensed child care spaces. Single mothers are among those most affected because they often face both housing affordability challenges and difficulty accessing child care needed to participate in the workforce. 

Locating child care where families live can provide several benefits:

• reduces travel time and simplifies daily routines;
• supports parents returning to work or education;
• reduces transportation costs and congestion;
• creates more complete neighbourhoods;
• improves access to child care in communities that currently have few or no licensed spaces.

Unlike workplace child care, neighbourhood-based child care continues to serve families even if parents change jobs, making it a more stable long-term solution. 

If the benefits are so clear, why isn’t this happening more often?

According to the report, the challenge is not a lack of good ideas, but rather barriers related to funding, coordination, and planning. Several recurring issues continue to make co-located housing and child care developments difficult to deliver:

• Fragmented government coordination: Housing and child care are funded and managed by different levels of government and departments, making projects complex to coordinate.
• Funding uncertainty: Housing and child care often rely on separate funding streams with different timelines and requirements, delaying projects or preventing child care components from moving forward. For example, housing developers need commitments 4 years prior to construction.  So far, child care commitments are only running up to a maximum of one year in advance.  Thus, the timing mismatch means that opportunities are lost.
• Affordability challenges: Current definitions of affordable housing do not always reflect what low-income families can realistically afford.
• Planning and data gaps: Governments tend to measure the number of housing units and child care spaces created rather than whether families have access to both services where they live. The report recommends identifying and addressing both housing and child care “deserts.”

Ontario is already demonstrating what co-location can look like

Although challenges remain, Ontario has several projects showing how housing, child care, and community services can be integrated.

Recommendations for Moving Forward

The following recommendations are drawn directly from Co-Locating Child Care and Housing in Canada:

• provide long-term capital and operating funding for both affordable housing and child care;
• create dedicated funding for adding child care to housing retrofits and redevelopments;
• prioritize projects that integrate affordable housing with child care and other community services;
• use Build Canada Homes to create complete communities that include child care, schools, health services, libraries, and parks;
• require governments to identify housing and child care “deserts” and target investments accordingly;
• prioritize public land for non-market housing and public or non-profit child care;
• improve coordination between governments and departments responsible for housing and child care;
• remove planning and regulatory barriers that make mixed-use developments more difficult; and
• expand support for Indigenous-led housing and child care projects.