When a paycheque can't cover rent
Canmore, Alberta — the postcard-perfect mountain town just outside Banff National Park — has become one of Canada's starkest examples of a housing market pricing out the very workers who keep it running. Faced with sky-high rents and a limited supply of long-term housing, a growing number of local employees are choosing to live in their vehicles rather than commute long distances or go without shelter altogether.
The town's response has been its overnight van parking program, a designated space where residents can legally sleep in their vehicles instead of scrambling for informal — and often precarious — parking spots around town. According to the CBC, demand for the program remains strong, and despite the municipality introducing stricter eligibility rules to manage who qualifies, the lots are once again filling up fast.
A symptom of a national problem
Canmore's situation is an extreme but telling snapshot of a housing affordability crisis playing out across Canada. Mountain and resort towns in particular have been squeezed by a mix of limited developable land, high demand from tourists and remote workers, and a service-sector workforce that simply can't compete with short-term rental income or wealthy buyers looking for a second home. The result is a widening gap between what local jobs pay and what it costs to live nearby.
While van living has long existed on the margins in ski towns and resort communities, the fact that a municipality has had to formalize an overnight parking program — and that even a stricter version of it is nearing capacity — underscores how normalized this coping mechanism has become for full-time workers, not just seasonal transients.
Why this matters beyond Canmore
Canmore's van program is a municipal-level patch on a much bigger structural issue: housing supply hasn't kept pace with demand in communities across the country, from major cities to small tourist towns. Local governments are increasingly being asked to manage the fallout of that gap — sanctioning van living, expanding shelter capacity, or building affordable units directly — because provincial and federal housing strategies haven't moved fast enough to bring costs down.
For Ottawa readers, the story is a reminder that the affordability squeeze isn't confined to Canada's biggest cities. Housing pressure is reshaping how and where Canadians can afford to work and live in communities of every size, and the solutions — more purpose-built rentals, workforce housing tied to major employers, and loosened restrictions on secondary suites — are the same conversations playing out in housing committees across Ontario as well.
As Canmore's van parking lots fill up again, it's a small but pointed data point in a much larger national story about who gets priced out of the places they work.
Source: CBC News
