New housing in Iqaluit not keeping up with demand, report finds

Housing in Nunavut is getting more unaffordable, and this problem is especially bad for Inuit, finds a report released Wednesday by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

The report explores housing conditions in Iqaluit, Yellowknife and Whitehorse, including trends in supply and demand, as well as affordability and the role of public housing. CMHC compared data collected in 2025 to those in its last northern housing report, released in 2021.

Iqaluit residents put an average 56 per cent of their total household income towards a new mortgage in 2025, compared to 41 per cent in 2021.

When looking only at Iqaluit’s Indigenous population, the vast majority being Inuit, households were putting 70 per cent of their income towards a new mortgage in 2025, up from 51 per cent in 2021.

Indigenous workers in the North earn anywhere between 12 per cent to 20 per cent less than non-Indigenous workers, with Nunavut having the largest gap.

Ideally, households should be portioning no more than 30 per cent of total income to their mortgages. Anything more is unaffordable, the report said.

This situation has largely kept Iqaluit residents reliant on housing options outside of signing a new mortgage for a home, the report said.

The rental situation in Iqaluit is similarly challenging, with the city’s vacancy rate sitting at 0.3 per cent between 2023 and 2025, despite a “modest rental supply growth.”

This works out to six vacancies out of about 2,000 rental unit in Iqaluit.

“Underlying housing needs stemming from overcrowding continued to keep demand ahead of available supply,” the report said.

“As a result, nearly all unit types remained virtually fully occupied.”

Those in Iqaluit living in these rental units are paying the highest rent in the North, with the median cost sitting at $3,025 in 2025. This is compared to the median rent in Yellowknife at $1,975 per month and $1,364 per month in Whitehorse.

While northern income has grown between 2021 and 2025, nearly half of Iqaluit households still cannot afford rent.

The higher cost of living in Nunavut also means more income is put towards food, transportation and utilities. This means affordability measurements “based on rent or mortgage costs may understate the financial strain households face compared with the rest of Canada.”

Meanwhile, public-sector spending on housing continues to support economic activity, especially in Nunavut, where public housing accounts for 93 per cent of new residential construction. This is compared to a national rate of six per cent.

Nunavut Housing Corp. administers 20 per cent of all rental stock in Iqaluit, according to the report. As of February 2025, there were 36 vacant public housing units in Iqaluit, while waitlists exceeded 400 households.

The amount of new public-housing builds also contributes to the size of Nunavut’s transient workforce.

Transient workers work in a different province or territory than where they live. In Nunavut, the labour force was made up of 37 per cent of transient workers in 2025, compared to 21 per cent in Northwest Territories and 14 per cent in Yukon. Nationally, the rate sat at three per cent in 2025.

The high rates of transient labour in Nunavut might be a symptom of the overall lack of housing in the territory, according to the report, as it’s harder for workers to permanently relocate to Nunavut if they can’t find a place to live.

All of these factors leave people in Nunavut heavily reliant on government and staff housing, the report found.

In Iqaluit, these “non-market housing” options make-up about two-thirds of the entire rental stock.