[Matthias247]

the housing market is definitely bad - but are tech workers really a significant driver? Here in Vanouver the amount of tech workers overall are still low (far below 1% of population) - and a lot of them are younger singles which maybe are in the market for 1 bedroom condo. However prices for all housing types exploded, including single-family homes being now at an average sales price of 2M which isn't even affordable to lots of tech workers.

What I also found interesting about link [2] is that Alberta households have the highest average income, and despite that housing is a lot more affordable there. That somewhat contradicts that housing cost is driven by income.

[Tiktaalik]

Yes it's likely more the shortage of housing that is the driving issue in Toronto and Vancouver. With rental vacancy at 1% in Vancouver there's no doubt there's a serious housing shortage and that'll eventually cause the same sort of extreme rents as we've seen in SF. With high rents comes high house purchase prices too.

Meanwhile in Alberta, where their cities sprawl endlessly, as you point out the ultra highly paid oil workers can buy a detached house for cheap. Always easy to build more on the edge. Not at all possible in Vancouver, which is effectively nearly completely built out at this point.

At this point new housing development in Vancouver will be townhouse or denser and the only place to put it is in existing detached home neighbourhoods. Politically contentious so movement will be slow.