Measuring, for the first time, what public housing is truly worth
For decades, public housing has been treated as a cost to manage — a line in a budget to defend or to trim. The Public Housing Dividend asks a different and more important question: what is public housing actually worth to the people who live in it, the communities around it, and the economy as a whole?
Produced by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis using ONEMODEL, and commissioned by the GTHA Community Housing Collaborative with support from Scotiabank, this study is the first to measure the full return on public housing investment across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area — bringing economic impact, social value, health and justice effects, and fiscal outcomes together within a single, connected framework.
Why this project matters
Public investment decisions have long been made with tools that look at housing, health, employment, and public finances in separate boxes. But people do not live in separate systems. Housing shapes health; health shapes work; work shapes income; and income shapes the next generation’s opportunities. When we measure only the cost of public housing, we miss the value it creates — and we make decisions that look prudent on paper while quietly shifting costs into hospitals, the justice system, and lost productivity.
The Public Housing Dividend changes that. By modelling the whole system over a 25-year horizon, it shows what is gained when we invest in public housing, and what is lost when we let it decline.
What the study found
The headline is striking. A capital program of about $36 billion to renew existing homes and build new ones is estimated to return roughly $102 billion in total value over 25 years — about $2.80 back for every dollar invested.
That return is both economic and human. In the strongest pathway, which combines renewal and new construction, ONEMODEL estimates:
- about $49.6 billion in GDP and approximately 14,200 job annually;
- about $12.6 billion in federal and provincial tax revenue, and roughly $6.0 billion in private capital drawn into improving communities;
- about $48.3 billion in social value — the measurable worth of healthier, more stable lives;
- by 2050, compared with current expected funding, around 4,700 fewer people experiencing homelessness every year;
- over the next 25 years, about 524,000 fewer hospital days, and about 156,000 fewer emergency room visits
The study also makes the cost of inaction concrete. Under a reduced-funding pathway, it estimates about 139 building closures, roughly 13,322 homes lost, and approximately $8.8 billion in social value destroyed by 2050. Renewal and new construction are not competing choices; they are complements, and the greatest return comes from doing both.
How it changes the way we think about public housing
The deeper contribution of this work is a shift in frame. Public housing is not charity, and it is not simply shelter. It is productive infrastructure — and like transit, water systems, and hospitals, its value reaches far beyond its immediate purpose. When public housing is stable and well maintained, people are healthier, communities are stronger, public systems face less pressure, and the regional economy performs better.
That conclusion is only as credible as the method behind it, and this is where ONEMODEL is different. It is an agent-based digital twin of the region, built from real data, held to scientific standards used in the physical sciences, and designed so that every result can be traced and checked rather than simply accepted. It measures social value not by assertion, but by modelling the region with an investment and without it, and measuring the difference in people’s lives.
The Public Housing Dividend reframes a long-standing debate. The question is no longer only what public housing costs. It is what public housing is worth — and the evidence now shows that the answer is far larger than we have been counting.
